"Survivors Must Fight For Trans Women Too" thoughts?

[Happy101]

Stumbled across this article, and was shocked to see some of the sentiments being displayed, primarily accusing domestic abuse survivors of weaponising their trauma to stop access for trans-women to their shelters. Quite a shocking read that places the protection of trans-women at the feet of already extremely vulnerable women? I've always been pro-trans, but this has just really rubbed me the wrong way for some reason and is making me question a lot of what this movement is seeking to achieve

Link: www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2020/07/9919890/transphobia-and-domestic-violence

YY to separate services that meet the specific needs of tw.

I have never experienced DV but have enough understanding to imagine that the last thing on a woman’s mind would be consciously discriminating or abusing the person in the room next door.

When you’re dealing with physical injuries, nightmares and flashbacks, jumping at every noise, potentially trying to help your kids grow and learn and recover from their potential abuse in a strange environment, deal with depression, guilt, lack of self worth, possibly self harm/substance abuse... you shouldn’t have to articulate that someone in the hostel is intimidating or triggering your trauma. This woman is not an abuser, they are not a paying customer with a choice to go elsewhere, they have no power.

It is for those in positions of power to protect all of their service users and to do a real assessment of their needs, if this is a male free zone, then that comes first. Transwomen need their own services.

I didn’t think they did. What an awful article. So many factual errors. How can people like that work with abuse victims? There is just no compassion. No awareness of safeguarding. The worst fear of anyone who has to go into a refuge is that their partner would find them. Abusers absolutely would say they identified as a woman to get into a refuge.

@Siablue

I didn’t think they did. What an awful article. So many factual errors. How can people like that work with abuse victims? There is just no compassion. No awareness of safeguarding. The worst fear of anyone who has to go into a refuge is that their partner would find them. Abusers absolutely would say they identified as a woman to get into a refuge.

Yes. I worked in a prison for a bit. One of the things hammered into us again and again: sex offenders are incredibly manipulative.

No nancybotwinbloom it’s not the law.

I've no wish to play top trumps with statistics over who is most abused by whom.

I'm happy to support anyone who is a victim of domestic abuse, but that support must be tailored to the needs of the victims. And for women that is often a female only refuge.

Is it the actual law now that if a man says he feels like a women he can access any of our spaces?

The Equality Act in theory still allows for single-sex provision.

Stonewall want to have that completely removed along with GRA reform. (See screenshot)

The problem is that the trans rights groups have been lobbying institutions so that many seem to believe single-sex spaces are discriminatory, leading to boys in the girls loos, boys in girl guides, trans women in refuges, women's prisons, changing rooms etc. So the law hasn't changed but the institutional capture has well and truly happened.

That's why talk of "rolling back" trans rights is such nonsense. People seem to think the law has already changed. It hasn't. Therefore maintaining the 2 year period for a GRC and keeping single-sex spaces is not "rolling back."

I was wondering when they would finally get round to talking about trans men.

the existence of trans men and non binary people has been all but forgotten. The impact is devastating. As trans survivor and activist Nim Ralph says: "With nowhere to go that either accepts us or explicitly understands the complex intersections of trans experience and gender-based violence, we are forced into the cold. Trapped between the silence of survivorship, and the solitude of transphobia, we have to carry those wounds alone."

Nim Ralph looks like a woman (but likes to be called 'they'), so is almost certainly female. So Nim would not be turned away from a women's refuge.

As for finding somewhere which 'explicitly understands the complex intersections of trans experience and gender-based violence', this is a good argument for separate spaces for trans people, both transwomen and women who don't want to be women.

Anyone ever noticed anyone exhorting TW to fight for females and the issues and concerns that solely affect female people? Since all being women together etc?

Anyone....?

……..Anyone...………………………….?

Translate this and it's a basic scolding that female people are selfish and nasty if they don't put the needs and caretaking of male people before their own interests. Good old fashioned sexist oppression of female people by males. #thesupporthumansaremalfunctioning

Not to forget:

The definition of oppression involves the demanding of labour from the subordinated group to the oppressors.

The labour being: for female people to stop all personal feelings and needs, hurl aside cultures and faiths and identities, and service the male people. Whose feelings and needs and cultures and faiths and identities absolutely matter to the nth degree and heaven help female people if they are perceived as disrespecting the male people's expression of these in even the most subtle way, while it's fine for male people to openly deride and invalidate the female people for even mentioning them.)

Additional labour demand: female people may not feel anger or unfairness about this, as this means those females are thinking of themselves instead of caring exclusively about male people.

You would have to be on glue to miss the male supremacism going on here.

^Why don't trans people campaign for their own refuges and safe spaces?
Most feminists would support that, stonewall probably have the money to make that happen right now, today, tomorrow and for years to come.^

Bluebellsarebells, Stonewall has never been involved in providing anything material or practical for their LGB constituency. They only sought to change the law and the observation of the law. So a) they can't spend money on shelters for transpeople. And b) if they're do get involved in that, why the hell haven't they done the same for their LGB constituency?

Why is T so much more vulnerable and so much more precious that it deserves better treatment than LGB people?

But when this defensiveness manifests as shaming and policing trans people’s existence and liberties in the (misguided) name of our own 'safety', cis women must recognise what we are doing: hiding behind our survivorhood in order to behave abusively.

The comma's they have put around 'safety' tells you all you need to know.
There are real-life examples already of transwomen in shelters in Canada causing problems with transwomen threatening women's safety.

I used to subscribe to R29 but deleted it when they posted some absolute trash like this once before.

All DV is underreported, just look at the screeds of threads on here going back years. Women who come on here to ask if we think very serious assaults are abusive, women who back away from doing anything to help themselves because they’re too afraid.

hiding behind our survivorhood in order to behave abusively.

Which of course the TRA political lobby never do....

or could this be possibly (yet_ another case of 'males are allowed to do this but females aren't' ?

You would have to be on glue to miss the male supremacism going on here.

Indeed. I don't think that article is likely to have the effect they were hoping.

I would think that one of the major reasons a woman fleeing DV doesn't want to live in a refuge with men is they wouldn't feel safe around men right then (perhaps they will always be nervous around men).

I think it's fundamentally telling that transwomen, even if fleeing violence from a female partner, apparently feel perfectly safe to live in a refuge full of women.

They clearly don't have the same visceral fear of women that women who've experienced DV have of men.

Women who come on here to ask if we think very serious assaults are abusive, women who back away from doing anything to help themselves because they’re too afraid.

I think its in the records of the debate held amongst the Scots MPs last year, evidence given that while TW are accepted into refuges as having suffered DA, it was extremely rare if ever happening that a TW was in danger of life threatening abuse. It wasn't rare at all for women coming into the refuge. It isn't a competition.

It's just about some female people needing female only spaces, and how males feel about that is not more important than how those female people feel about that, particularly when not having access to a female only space may mean that those female people die.

Turn a percentage of refuges mixed sex, as some females will be fine with that, leave others single sex, and let female people choose to meet all needs. Job done.

Except the mere existence somewhere in the UK of female people being allowed to have their needs met in a single sex space - even if those needs cannot be met any other way, even if those females may die without it - is something some males will not tolerate.

Turn a percentage of refuges mixed sex, as some females will be fine with that, leave others single sex, and let female people choose to meet all needs. Job done.

I think the main women who will be 'fine' with that is those with older male children, who, from what I understand, also have trouble accessing refuge space at the moment because of the (understandable) rules - they'd put their own recovery at a disadvantage because of their children - I think most mothers would.

I do worry that given how short refuge spaces are anyway, having mixed refuges like that will lead to some women having to take those spaces because there aren't any single sex available, rather than because they're OK with mixed sex refuge. I don't know if that's any worse than the situation now?

Has there been any incidences of transwomen being murdered by their partner or former partner. I have seen the statistic that one transwomen a year is murdered in the U.K. Were they murdered by a partner?

There's no benefit to women survivors of including male survivors with a trans identity, and very clear harms. That should close it down right there - if anyone saw those women as fully equal human beings.

Women survivors have one job: to heal, and recover. Trying to saddle them with responsibility for anyone, other than any children they may have, is genuinely evil. Almost all trans women are identifiably male, because gender identity is invisible, and subjective and unprovable, whereas biological sex is obvious and has clear and huge implications. Women do better in single sex provision when they're survivors of male violence. To dismiss that fact is to demonstrate contempt for women.

I agree that there needs to be a shelter for trans women. Very few trans women are killed, but the majority in this country who have been were killed by a male partner. So why aren't the trans orgs opening one? Appeal for funding and it would very clearly cascade in, given how well funded the trans lobby groups are. This would increase overall provision in the sector, and also ensure dedicated, specialist, expert care for trans women survivors, with properly trauma informed understanding of the unique challenges and implications for them, specifically. But that's not the goal, because many campaigners care less about trans survivor welfare than they do trying to eliminate single-sex women's spaces.

I remember a senior Labour party figure writing a piece, in the last few months, on the absolute disinterest in a promised package of millions of pounds of healthcare funding. The only concern, he said, from transactivists - most of whom were not trans - was in eliminating women's right to single sex spaces. They were not interested at all in any other discussions, or funding promises, around the welfare of trans people.

This is the issue that makes me see red mist like no other (so take great delight in Russell-Moyle's self-pitying flounce). I was a victim of DV and child abuse at the hands of my father. I was a rape victim. I've been stalked twice. I've experienced more lower-level unwanted contact, sexual assault or sexually inappropriate behaviour than I can count. It has all, all of it, been at the hands of men.

I personally don't find the term survivor helpful, although I appreciate others do and don't seek to denigrate that. I don't want these experiences to define my life from this point on. I didn't crawl out of some arbitrary train-wreck; I was specifically targeted. I could have done nothing against these assaults, therefore, at the time, I was a victim. It wasn't character-building: I achieved what I did despite these fuckers who tried to humiliate and destroy me, and I'm no longer a victim now. For me, that distinction is important.

I didn't ask to be raped, to be violently assaulted or abused. Men forced that upon me. It's taken me 25 years to be able to speak about it, thanks to #MeToo and therapy, so as to help others in the same position and NOT help our abusers by complying with their desire for our silence. Now, having done so, more men think they can come along and mansplain to me how I am allowed to identify, respond to, process, and articulate that trauma. It's the final fucking indignity. Fuck. Right. Off. with that noise.

As to the link, I only managed skim-reading beyond the disclaimer which incensed me like no other: Warning: This article contains descriptions of transphobia which some readers might find upsetting.

Nothing about the kind of offensive content which victims of rape might find upsetting. Right now I can't even put into words my inarticulate anger, dismay, helplessness and fury at such attitudes.

How fucking dare they!

@MarieIVanArkleStinks

When I was in a refuge one woman had been preparing to move into a hostel OR give up her 14 year old son temporarily to social services as the refuge wasn't allowed to have him there at 14. They'd been in that refuge for 18 months, that kid was heartbroken, absolutely sobbing his heart out at leaving the first safe place he'd ever lived and the other families that he'd been living with, but even he understood why he had to.

If you want a mixed sex service then all you need to do is make one. No one is stopping you.
That article is one ling screed of victim blaming and could be used as a textbook example of DARVO. Anyone working in the women's sector needs to take the training they have received about abusive behaviour and apply it to themselves.
There is no place in trauma recovery for support workers who mimic the behaviours of abusers.