Transmisogyny in women’s shelters.

[Whatdoyoudowhendemocracyfails]

A year-long investigation has concluded a “cohort of powerful feminists” is deliberately freezing out transwomen from accessing services for domestic violence victims.

Didn’t realise we had so much power

gal-dem.com/transphobia-sexual-violence-sound-like-a-man-hang-up-vawg-investigation/

It seems that Cara, as other posters have correctly pointed out, actually exists. In fact, Cara is just the sort of person who shouldn't be anywhere near a women's refuge.

genderedintelligence.co.uk/about-us/the-team

openlavs.com/

openlavs.com/aboutus

genderedintelligence.wordpress.com/tag/transgender/

There's Cara and there's "whistleblower" "Cora".

Here was one opportunity where women's refuges were invited to highlight any issues they saw in the male-inclusive approach:
parliamentlive.tv/event/index/0d07ff13-636e-4b51-a946-2877e583dc4c
(Women and Equalities Committee, 2019)

Karen Ingala Smith explained very clearly why single-sex spaces are needed.
The WA representative waffled on about gender and 'what is a woman'.

@NecessaryScene1I added that afterwards.

There is another refuge that takes in both men and women about 10 miles away*. We all share transport.

We are an oddity, we are a very large connected groups of smaller charities that have existed for years to serve quite a large rural/urban edge.

I used to work in the health side, now work in the food bank. But we all share clients, so know about all of the other charities and how best to use them. Or that is the idea

• This refuge started as a homeless shelter and soup kitchen. They have always had men and women and, when they took over a next door building, decided to use it as a half way house for homeless clients. That failed, the majority of their homeless clients were determined to remain homeless, as sometimes happens sadly. So they rebadged and are now a community refuge. Separate accommodation, joint communal areas and access to counsellors etc. Someone's sex or gender is of little importance to the service offered there.

Here the refuge is a female one. Set up that way, run that way, funded that way and currently determined to reman that way.

As far as I am aware, refuges being secretive by their very nature, there are a growing number of male refuges, they all accept transwomen, why wouldn't they? The ManKind initiative is going well, I think

There are also a few refuges that offer services to mean and women, until they are forced to allow transwomen into female refuges.

I though I had a link to a report on the nature of refuges, but it turns up a blank. It was a couple of years old and was a bit more informative than the ONS data! From memory there are less than 20 male refuges with less than 100 beds. Refuges that accept men and women are not officially called or funded as refuges... as far as I know!

There was a mumsnetter who posted that she and some others had approached a centre explaining how their "inclusive" approach was exclusionary to women like her who needed single sex services.

They were shut down at the meeting, and she later saw the staff claiming no clients had ever told them they had problems! A lie, but only the women who had complained could know that.

Worth advance-searching previous threads on Diana James, the Cornwall WA rep giving evidence in that parliamentary group. Interesting person. Interesting complaint to Great Western Railway (made while on the train on the way to/from this meeting). Interesting insight as to James' attitude to safeguarding revealed by James' twitter complaint.

Ereshkigalangcleg

You are right.
I picked up Cara from further down the article, the paragraph "Collective fightback".

There was a mumsnetter who posted that she and some others had approached a centre explaining how their "inclusive" approach was exclusionary to women like her who needed single sex services.

I was on the thread where the MNetter disclosed this. She mentioned that a number of the women, primary clients of the centre, were in tears by the end of the meeting at the lack of caring and interest from the male-centred staff in the needs and feelings of their female clients. While falling over themselves to support the needs and feelings of the male ones.

Did McKinnon finally get fired from their university position. I saw their fabulous appraisal a whilst back.

Thank you for clarifying @NecessaryScene1 .

I'm a woman and I've used these shelters and services since I was a teenager. I'm more than happy to share with transgender people. I don't mind sharing public toilets with them either. As long as they follow the rules and don't break the law like the rest of us there's no problem with me.
Instead of bans and exclusion I'd rather see actual punishments for abusers and a justice system that works as a deterrent for dv.

I think a lot of people (male and female) genuinely have no idea about the lengths to which abusive men will go to control and manipulate women.

The population of trans people is very small. The population of men is very big.

When a refuge has a blanket policy to exclude biological men, it is not (just) because women inside the refuge may be traumatized by the presence of a trans woman, (although this is also legitimate). It is also because they are aware of the ways that manipulative and abusive men will attempt to gain access to women and children inside the refuge.

I think thatany people, particularly young people, who want to be inclusive think that everybody is kind and well-meaning. And that things go wrong because of ignorance or misunderstanding (or evil, intolerant bigots). I've had several conversations with left-wing activists (I am one myself) who genuinely think that in a socialist utopia there would be no crime and no need for eg prisons, because everyone will get a good education and enough food, so there will be no trauma and no exploitation.

That translates into policies in the real world that are based in fantasies about human behaviour and are not robust to rare, edge-case behaviour that is designed to be exploitative and harmful.

When you point out how the policy can be exploited, you are told 'it will never happen' because the behaviour is a rare one and seems outside the parameters of what a reasonable person would reasonably do.

That really fails vulnerable people, especially in settings like refuges, where by definition the women who need to use them are already directly linked to unreasonable, edge-case men, who will go way way way beyond what seems reasonable to keep their victims under their control.

Punishment comes too late for many

Acceptance until proven guilty comes too late for many

Should we ever get close to there , great

Until then there are times when men and women deserve space , respect , dignity in a way that can only be achieved through single sex spaces

@CaraDuneRedux

Worth advance-searching previous threads on Diana James, the Cornwall WA rep giving evidence in that parliamentary group. Interesting person. Interesting complaint to Great Western Railway (made while on the train on the way to/from this meeting). Interesting insight as to James' attitude to safeguarding revealed by James' twitter complaint.

I meant Janet McDermott who was representing WA, but you're right, James' refuge is also part of the WA network. Interestingly the Cornwall male refuge has a self-contained unit for a 'high risk Trans victim of Domestic Abuse'. Does that mean that the women's refuge is now female only?

I used DV support services and would easily be counted as a privileged woman, in fact I was easily way more privilieged than anyone else at the two lots of 10-week counselling/group work I attended.
The safeguards were huge both at the venues - to get in - one was utterly anonymous, the other had security people and doors/grilles on the windows - and also we were told never to acknowledge other attendees if we bumped into them in ordinary life. At the point I realised I needed help quick was when I had to hide in the loos if my very, very mild-mannered male colleague raised his voice ever so slightly and when a man in a shop I was in got a little shirty with his girlfriend in the queue. I dropped my basket and ran out.
The other women had a huge number of complex issues, several were having to go to court to sort out arrangements over children, some substance abuse, other kinds of court cases - everything you'd expect. A couple of women had such a level of issues that at times threatened to overwhelm the group, each time that happened we discussed - led by the group professionals, older women - and voted whether they should stay or not. The rules that governed the group work were reposted at the start of each session, sometimes added to. It was all about empowering us as a group to begin to speak and listen and collectively will the woman who could barely stay in the room or take the cushion she was hiding behind away from her face, work through a set of common issues and being female and the expectations of what being female means was part of that.
To get a place - there was a long waiting list but some got bumped up it via SS or court request - you had to go for an individual session with two counsellors, fill in various questionaires. I don't know what the criteria were but from that article it is clear that neither Gal-Dem or the people they spoke to have been anywhere near the frontline of what supporting DV victims entails and how the work they do actually takes place.

@SirenSays it's nice for you, that you are able to be accommodating.

What would you say to women who can't be as accommodating as you are?
If for whatever reason they cannot have medical treatment from, be in a confined space with, be alone with male bodied people, including transwomen, what do you think they should do?

If a woman for cultural or religious reasons cannot be alone with a male body, should he have to be?
If a woman is afraid of male bodied people, should there be somewhere she can go where she feels safe?

Many women do not feel as you do. Do you feel able to welcome men into our spaces, regardless of how they feel?

@BrassicaRabbit

allcatsarebeautuful

I'm a survivor. I've not needed a shelter but have accessed other services in the past. I'm telling you I would avoid any situation where I was unable to ensure I was seen by a female person. I would not have the guts to complain because I would experience the abuse of trust by the service provider as abusive gaslighting and, frankly, terrifying. I'm now a pretty privileged person, able to go about my life avoiding being trapped in spaces with males (of any gender ID). The poor women who have nowhere else to turn to, who can't just avoid shelters like yours. Having decisions over their personal boundaries and safety taken by people like you. In your position of power. Who refuse to look at statistics and talk to the actual people who you profess to help

@BrassicaRabbit - your words are powerful, and go straight to the heart of the matter. I truly hope @AllCatsAreBeautiful listens to you.

*siren" I'm genuinely happy for you that you've not been left with lasting trauma by men. Do you support there being single sex provision for people like me, who have been left with PTSD and who need female only provision?

Look at the stats for report and conviction rape. It's practically legal.

We are a long way from tackling violence against women properly.

Please, people on this thread who wish for transwomen to be allowed into female spaces, put your privilege and influence to good use. Guessing many of you are young and middle class. Go and do something about the men who commit these violent and sex based crimes.

This is going to be the most semantic thing I've ever said but it's important. In the UK the word isn't 'shelter' it's 'refuge'. Now think about what it's a refuge from...

TRIGGER WARNING!
For the few on here that don't seem to understand trauma reaponse:

I have been attacked by 3 different men. 2 rapes, 1 violent fisting by a stranger, beginning as I slept. All 3 began as I slept. 2 were in buildings with many other people in.

I no longer sleep in any building with anyone male unless they are a family member, or I would not be upset to wake up to them beginning any sexual activity. I feel mentally unwell at the prospect of anything else. My mental ill health comes with physical effects of heart palpitations, panic attacks and issues with swallowing. This is a response to men's sex, not their gender. It is right that I, and the many other women like me, should be able to be housed in prisons and shelters that are segregated by SEX not gender. To expect otherwise is just cruel.

I wouldnt be able to use a shelter with male bodied people. My anxiety would take over

I'm confused why people assume I have no trauma. I'm a survivor with severe CPTSD. You don't typically live in these shelters because life is going swimmingly...
We aren't talking about men presenting as men in female spaces. We're talking about transwomen presenting as women and I know several transpeople who pass and haven't been clocked. So to me, they'd just be another service user, and that's not really any of my business.

herja

I'm getting pretty sick of the cruelty shown by people who purport to be progressive and inclusive. Single sex spaces were already fought for. Why do you effectively force women to bare trauma scars in an attempt to be heard?