Times article: Protests over trans woman heading rape crisis centre

[stumbledin]

Quote: Rape Crisis Scotland, which runs 17 member centres in the country, said they were “proud” to have Wadhwa “as a colleague within our movement”.

Sandy Brindley, chief executive, said: “Mridul Wadhwa brings to this role extensive experience working in the violence against women sector. All rape crisis centres in Scotland work within equality and employment law. There is a lot of misinformation and targeted harassment in relation to Mridul. We think this is unacceptable.”

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/protests-over-trans-woman-heading-rape-crisis-centre-wp7hwbv09

Open for comments (I hope the Times isn't beginning to see this issue as click bait ). Very little to the article is about breach of the EA and more about the emotional aspect. Would have thought they would have done something more thorough.

ProfessorInkling
If Comments are first screened automatically, maybe the phrase "slap in the face" is to blame for the rejection?

@Kit19

Once the appointment of someone born male who doesnt even have the legal fiction of being female is accepted as meeting the EA criteria (I understand they have no GRC) then pretty much any organisation can point to it and say "well x identifies as a woman so they meet the criteria under the EA exception"

Rape crisis edinburgh could of course have chosen not to use advertise under the section of the EA that allows exemption. they could have just made it completely open and that would have been transparent - but having chosen to use the exemption, it is outrageous to then appoint a TW

This. It almost sounds deliberate.

Here were the screenshots with regards the Yaniv comments. It seems that a women's group for immigrants posted about their concern about Yaniv trying to coerce vulnerable women into touching his penis and Wadha's response was to call them transphobic.
Along with the fact that Wadha posted an illustration of someone being beheaded as a response to criticism, how in the ever loving fuck would anyone think this is a suitable person to run a rape centre?

[quote aliasundercover]@PlanDeRaccordement

What experience she has had has been uniformly rated by her clients as abysmally bad, uncaring, and dismissive.

Where did you find this info, please? I'll be arguing about this at the weekend, and I'd like to be as informed as possible.[/quote]
It was on another thread by a poster who had been treated by her. She said she look bored, yawned and kept checking her phone when she was supposed to be counselling thiscposter. I will try and find the post and thread.

@Helleofabore

I hear you Charley. However, applying for a role that stated it was invoking the exclusion would be construed as knowingly being deceptive in applying in the first place.

I rather think Mridhul was invited to apply for the post. RCS have made it abundantly clear that their minimum threshold for trans inclusion is a verbal statement of identifying as a woman. That is what the CEO of RCS believes makes a woman.

As Mridhul has done quite a bit more than make a verbal statement of identity, RCS would have zero objections. And they were not posting that advertisement intending to exclude all males.

And I know they believe themselves to be in full compliance with the law in including those who merely identify as women. They actually believe it would be a violation not only of UK law but of Mridhul's human rights (specifically to employment) to be excluded.

I rather think you are correct that they were ‘invited’. It seems a very political appointment.

I can' remember what the name of this group is, but their shared characteristics of this minority (not all transgender) is a desire to immerse in female biological trauma like stillbirth, rape and painful medical conditions. It feels like this needs to be named, recognised and guarded against.

[quote aliasundercover]@PlanDeRaccordement

What experience she has had has been uniformly rated by her clients as abysmally bad, uncaring, and dismissive.

Where did you find this info, please? I'll be arguing about this at the weekend, and I'd like to be as informed as possible.[/quote]
Here
“From thread above New CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis, page 4, all R0wantrees Mon 03-May-21 12:26:27 posted

“Sunflowergirl03 wrote, Thu 01-Apr-21
know this is an old thread, but having my own negative experiences with this person has led me here. I think some of the main questions that should be asked are: what experience do they have of managing and managing charities specifically? What experience do they have of the VAWG sector? What qualifications do they have? Because I believe they are actually inexperienced for the role which begs the question why were they hired? When MW did “counselling” with me, she had no qualifications for this. And not only that, but she was poor at it anyway, she regularly yawned and looked at her phone. She is not a professional person. She has a huge following and support base but when you scratch the surface there is little substance to her knowledge or experience. How she got a job as a manager when she has never been a manager is bizarre."

Rape crisis centres and all women shortlists... and MW doesn't qualify for either of these.

Trans people need rape counselling, I am sure, as do male victims, but provision for them should not come at a cost to female provision (and how I hate that I have to put female, not women's)

There are more comments under the article now. Mostly they agree that putting a wolf in charge of the sheepfold is a bad mistake.

@CharlieParley
While agree there is no reason why a male could not do the job, this job was infact advertised as for females only

See the CEO job advertisement at rapecrisis.org.uk/media/2311/rcew-ceo-appointment-brief-1120.pdf

Other requirements:
• Willingness and ability to work flexibly, including on weekends and outside ordinary office hours from time to time, in order to accommodate the needs of the organisation and its Trustees (who are volunteers)
• Willingness and ability to travel when needed, in particular to London and Leeds
• Willingness to complete a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check (or up-to-date DBS certificate)
• Female – this is a Genuine Occupational Requirement (GOR) under Schedule 9 (Work; Exceptions), Part 1 (Occupational Requirements) of the Equality Act (2010)

From that job ad, it seems to me that they are in clear breach of the law. If you state that it is open to females only, then you can't appoint a male because you will have excluded all other males who might have been able to apply. If they'd simply advertised it as open to anybody they'd have been within the law.

At the very least it is vague in a legal sense, how many TW reading that would think the were excluded and not apply? At the very least there are candidates who would have applied but did not due to the verbiage. If the job truly was open to all women (male and female), then why put in the exclusion?

“Feminist campaigners claim she has no gender recognition certificate and has not undergone gender reassignment surgery and so is not legally entitled to be considered a woman."

I am puzzled as I am not aware of any feminist campaigners claiming this. Rather, there was the rather unedifying story of Wadhwa's 6/7 year old child telling their teacher about their mother's decapitated penis.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1297441056003444738.html

This is a misreading of the feminist position, surely? A woman is not any person with a decapitated penis.

Women are adult human females.

Women who have had mastectomies or breast implants are still adult human females.
Women who have had hysterectomies are still adult human females.
Women with PCOS or producing too much testosterone are still adult human females.

Men are adult human males.

Men who have gynecomastia or breast implants are still adult human males.
Men who have had an orchiectomy to remove testicles due to testicular cancer are still adult human males.
Men producing too much oestrogen and experiencing ED are still adult human males.
Men who have had an incident in which their penis is decapitated eg John Bobbitt, David Reimer are still adult human males.

It’s highly offensive to say otherwise.

The only way in the UK for a person to move to the opposite sex class in law is to apply for a GRC. Surgery/hormones are not a requirement for the process. A diagnosis of gender dysphoria is.

A male with a GRC is a 'woman' in law for most (but not all) purposes. They will get a new 'birth certificate' with the sex marker changed from M to F. A female with a GRC is a 'man' in law for most (but not all) purposes. They will get a new 'birth certificate' with the sex marker changed from F to M.

There are exceptions in the GRA and in the Equality Act which mean they will still sometimes be treated as members of their birth sex class: inheriting titles, becoming Catholic priests, single-sex rape crisis and refuges, hospitals, prisons, sport etc.

A person with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment but without a GRC therefore in UK law remains a male/man or a female/woman like any other person of their birth sex, regardless of any body modification.

If MW does not have a Gender Recognition Certificate, on what basis then did they a) apply for and b) get a job that was using the Equality Act exemptions to ask for a female/a woman?
Why were ERCC looking to employ a female for the role in the first place?
What does this say about MW's personal integrity and that of the employing organisation?

I agree with Barracker . Culture eats strategy for breakfast and transformation for lunch as the cliché has it.

Whatever has happened to the Nolan principles of public life?

The consequences of facilitating barriers to integrity, honesty, transparency, and accountability are profound. Women will be collateral damage at a time when they're living with extreme distress and enhanced vulnerability.

@PlanDeRaccordement

At the very least it is vague in a legal sense, how many TW reading that would think the were excluded and not apply? At the very least there are candidates who would have applied but did not due to the verbiage. If the job truly was open to all women (male and female), then why put in the exclusion?

This is the main issue IMO. It is possible that a male CEO at a Rape Crisis organisation may be great at the job if not around the female service users.

However this job advert specifically cited that it was a female only post. This excludes all males regardless of how they identify and regardless if they have a GRC.

The fact they then employed a male who had applied for this female only post is a misuse of this exclusion, and discriminating against those men who felt they should not ignore the female only requirement.

AFAIK this is not the first time this individual has been employed in a specifically female only post. They were also on a women only shortlist of candidates for election.

Does anybody know what is possible in terms of legal action to challenge the appointment? Does it have to come from one of the losing candidates or can someone else challenge it?

@iguanadonna

This is the person who tweeted in support of J Yaniv, right? And made the very peculiar comments about orgasm during rape in a press interview.

The very same.

Actually I am not overly worried by this one, someone who manages 17 crisis centres is very unlikely to actually be working directly with women who have been raped

Makes me more worried because this individual will be in a position of considerable power to influence policy, decision making and organisational culture.

Yes, I understood that, PlanDeRaccordement, I'm simply telling you that RCS are so far gone, they absolutely think their understanding of the law is the correct one.

That person is guilty of deception. The “ don’t ask, don’t tell” take doesn’t hold water in this situation.

I have not read the full thread so don’t know if someone has posted a link to a paper called the Student where I found she had said this:

“Most importantly, rape crisis centres are spaces for those affected by sexual violence, most of whom are women. The Student asked Wadhwa if she believes a man could be a successful rape crisis centre manager. She does not: “I don’t think men are ready to go out and set up services of this nature. Women’s aid organisations and rape crisis centres have been set up with the blood, sweat, and tears of women. It’s about the women’s experience of sexual violence. Our workforce is reserved for women only.”

This is a link to that article
studentnewspaper.orgarticle/an-insight-with-mridul-wadhwa-into-working-in-a-rape-crisis-centre

Another article in the Sun

www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/scottish-news/7133029/trans-mridul-wadhwa-edinburgh-rape-crisis-snp/

Those articles have Posie saying the position should have been explicitly women only. The thing is it was. And yet somehow Wadhwa successfully applied

Here is another article about Mridal and the Yaniv comments. Maybe in future, Mridal should take time to research a subject before brandishing the "transphobia" trump card.

www.womenarehuman.com/rape-crisis-centre-selects-male-as-ceo-despite-position-being-open-to-women-only/