New CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis

[TheFleegleHasLanded]

I struggled to even come up with a title for this thread as I am so enraged I know I will get deleted and even banned if I say what I really think.

twitter.com/EdinRapeCrisis/status/1389112490215288832?s=20

[quote TedImgoingmad]Apparently, they have confessed to having an alter ego called Louise, a white woman from the American south, and used this persona in a job dealing with welfare claimants

[/quote] It's come to something when this just doesn't even feel surprising.

"first time I felt power" when working in a call centre job organising food stamps for Americans in poverty, named Louise, after being allowed to choose their own western name.

Not empathy note. Power.

Power over people on their arses, asking for food?

Hold on that didn’t sound right - I meant on their knees (got muddled with on their uppers - Is that an expression?).

Either way - you don’t do that type of work for feelings of power - usually it’s empathy and ‘there but for the grace of god...’

Not empathy note. Power.

Nor guilt.

Interview with Fox Fisher:
(extract)
Q Is there a personal reason for getting into this line of work?

MW Staying on has been personal because it was pretty clear to me
that I was the only trans woman, in the women's aid movement.
And I wasn't even sure that if I had been hired, if they had known that I was trans.
When I came out individually to various colleagues, there was this disbelief: 'Oh, you can't be trans'.
What does a trans person look like? What does a cis woman look like? How do we know?
Over a period of time it became more and more important within my work in this movement to be a trans woman.
My activism wasn't around trans activism because what mattered to me more was my status as an immigrant woman and the women I worked with who came from immigrant backgrounds.
It means I've had the opportunity to deliver trainings across this country and so invariably it would come out in all of my trainings, not just for people to change their perception of what an immigrant woman looks like or who she is, but also what a trans person looks like.
So I think staying in it has become a personal thing."

I got two gifts. One was that I grew up in a household where my parents, not in any every day way ever told me not to be who I was, as an effeminate child.
But also I grew up to a spiritual outlook that don't have a concept of guilt in the same way.
I think that has been the biggest gift. I don't know what it feels like to be guilty or ashamed for who you are.
I have been lucky somehow to find myself in places where I was able to influence"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT_ryngVhcU

Wahwa would not have been hired if sex were declared honestly.

Point as made in the film, not concern that they have the welfare of that person in their hands, making decisions over whether someone accessed medical appointments or eats.

In the kindest possible light, they perhaps mean power over their own life, except it's extremely self centred in that context, dealing with other people who have no say in their own lives and rely on handouts in ten US. Also points strongly to a need for validation as a woman if taking a job advertised for a woman.

For the sake of balance, is there anything from Wadwha actually talking simply about the women they work with? Rather than "trans", "inclusion", "me"?

I'm struggling to get the sense that they ever really think about them and their needs.

Main mention I got scanning that podcast was them talking about their clients' homophobia/transphobia etc and how they'd have sessions to educate them about their prejudices.

An insight with Mridul Wadhwa into working in a rape crisis centre
by Karolina Zieba, 5/04/19
(extract)
The work is incredibly emotionally draining, so Wadhwa has to be balanced and mindful of her own emotional state. The Student asked her what she does to take care of herself: “Well I don’t deal with individual survivors every day, so for me what I do in terms of self-care is a lot of avoidance. I do see survivors – four a week usually – who help me stay connected to the cause…but it’s important to keep it fun. We should be able to laugh and use humour at work. In terms of my team, I try to cook for them once a week or every other week.”
studentnewspaper.org/article/an-insight-with-mridul-wadhwa-into-working-in-a-rape-crisis-centre

Vulnerable service users of supportive services should never be used to keep workers connected. The service exists to support victims of sexual abuse. Workers are employed to provide support.

Cont.
"Beyond that, she recommends debriefing: “By talking about what it’s like for you, you are creating that distance and also you remind yourself that the survivors who come to our centre have other lives outside of the centre.”

Supervision and reflective practice is vital in services such as this. What Wadhwa is describing is not, in my opinion, reflective practice.

Reading that student paper one, I increasingly get the sense that Wadwha is very uncomfortable when not talking about how they feel about something or cope with something. It always has to be at least 50% them.

I mentally contrast with all the interviews I've seen with women involved in this fight, and how little they tend to speak about themselves, rather than the issues. They certainly tend not to speak about themselves unless pressed by an interviewer.

On Validation and Tolerance
6 November 2020

(extract)
"About 14 y ago, at a party organised by a friend and colleague, I met MW, a friendly hijra. She was introduced to me as a woman but I could not fail to notice the Adam apple and the low voice. I instantly thought that M was trans and that knowledge occupied my thoughts for the best part of 5 seconds. She was fun, interesting and well, we were all having nice drinks and food with lots of people we liked. Everything was great and felt "familial" and relaxed.

Suddenly, my friend demands our attention and asks us all, out of nowhere: "Is M a man or a woman?"

I looked immediately at M expecting that this question would seem impolite and intrusive to her, but I saw that she was welcoming it. I now realise that she had asked my friend, our host, to question us about how we perceived her.

This question completely ruined the good-natured, warm and carefree ambiance of the party (and really, the party itself). Everyone stopped eating, looked uncomfortable. The trust and acceptance, the openness with which we had all interacted until then were gone. I'm sure most guests knew she was trans but it did not appear to be an issue. However, the demand to categorically validate or invalidate M as female or male felt like an encroachment to all of us. Rapidly though, I brushed aside my discomfort, attributing it to some failing in the "tolerance department" on my part.

Some of the guests were older, high caste Indians. I stupidly believed at the time that their unease was caused by their rejection of trans people, by intolerance, which surprised and shocked me as I knew and liked them dearly. So, in order to support M, I instinctively answered "woman" while others looked at the floor.

Later on that evening, the party split and we went out, M, my friend and I. They quickly both started to cast disparagingly the ones who avoided answering The Question as bigots, boring old farts, intolerant idiots...

I was not one of them, and I was glad.

But something felt "off", I felt slightly dirty. I felt I was betraying something in me, something called truth and something called self-respect. And I was betraying my other friends who refused to play the validation game.

I now understand better what happened that night. Some friends were having a good evening, men, women, trans or not, all together. There was acceptance and mutual respect. Then someone asked us to lie, or prove that we were willing to forgo truth and self-respect in order to validate someone else's identity. And people became torn between their desire to be kind and their need to be truthful. This was entirely unnecessary. There was already acceptance and validation: we all liked M, none of us were made uncomfortable by who she was.

It is the lie people objected to, not the person, not the person's choice or expression. It was the demand that our moral purity and values (kindness vs. truth) must be put on display, weighed and judged, that people objected to. "

virginiasroom.godaddysites.com/f/on-validation-and-tolerance

OK wims, Today my job is prepping a Fact Sheet on sexual offending, facts every single girl should be taught at school. IF, as it sounds like, you would like to be effective in your letter writing, social mediaising I am trying to create resources...BETTER if you or anyone you know can turn these into funky graphics, I am pretty sure my references are copper-bottomed. We do not have to keep re-inventing the wheel.

yes its the lie...and often in politics, it isnt the thing they were lying about, it is the fact of the lie.

Great work Pommie let us know if and when you get a response. Would complaints be accepted from those of us not in Scotland I wonder?

Has this blog been linked? Apologies if so.

A bit weird but fits with a familiar pattern.

virginiasroom.co.uk/f/on-validation-and-tolerance

@NecessaryScene1

Reading that student paper one, I increasingly get the sense that Wadwha is very uncomfortable when not talking about how they feel about something or cope with something. It always has to be at least 50% them.

I mentally contrast with all the interviews I've seen with women involved in this fight, and how little they tend to speak about themselves, rather than the issues. They certainly tend not to speak about themselves unless pressed by an interviewer.

It shines out, doesn’t it.

Glaring. Jarring. Shocking.

I think one of the main questions that should be asked is if they are continuing to “counsel” victims, what counselling qualifications do they have? Look at their LinkedIn.

[quote TedImgoingmad]Also (the confessional podcast is linked):

[/quote] Karen is rather wonderful isn't she?

Just listened to the podcast, she is brilliant.

Gosh, that podcast - she lays it on the line. Wonder how many of the people at Edinburgh Rape Crisis have watched it because they bloody should.

She is very good. And there is no getting away from it. As she says why would you reward a male individual who has lied to access vulnerable women.

The power admission is just so chilling, ERC ought to be hanging their heads in shame over this appointment.

As she says why would you reward a male individual who has lied to access vulnerable women.

Yes indeed.

Also, doesn’t this neatly demonstrate how important wording/language is.

Think of the incremental difference in impact, not to mention the lessening of the load for us, if we were able to say simply,

“why would you reward a man who has lied to access vulnerable women?”

But we can’t.

This rejigging of basic concepts of material reality into softened euphemistic workarounds just obscures the facts of any given situation, of the situation as a whole. Every concession we make dilutes the impact further. It costs us, constricts us, clouds the issue.

It sucks.

Nevertheless, we persist!

Wow. What a brilliant break down of this whole shit show of hiring him.

She is brilliant.

Wow! Karen Davis' on that podcast was right on! She's usually much lighter and funny, but I think this issue really hit home.

Karen knows firsthand the racism in the US...it's fucking appalling that a man would impersonate a white, southern American woman to feel power over vulnerable people's food benefits. This was chilling.