Is Posie going to create an extra man-free refuge place where there was previously none? That's my question.
First of all I'd like to quote from an advice post made by one trans activist for other activists. I think it illustrates what our international women's sector has been up against.
Parallel Institutions
A solid first step is to create organizations that are inclusive to all that are redundant with whatever function the TERF’s run. Sometimes it’s enough to simply beat the TERF’s at their own game. People like less discrimination, not more. Our trend as a society is toward greater understanding of one another. For this to happen, you have to provide a viable alternative to whatever function the TERF’s are currently offering so people can choose to avoid them.
For example, in Vancouver, you have several great rape crisis centers, such as the WAVAW, that serve all women. That stands in contrast to centers who abuse the notion of “women only spaces” to ban women from aid. All of these centers are universally superior in safety, size, and quality to centers that are not inclusive.
In Austin, we have Central Texas Femdoms (CTFD), a kink group for dominant females that is trans inclusive. They formed due to the transphobic comments of the founder of another pro-Domme organization. As a result, the TERF run group is nowhere to be found, as CTFD is the one with access to local play spaces and clubs.
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Leadership Reform
You make a group that does everything the TERF group does, but without the unnecessary hate. Yet the TERF group finds a way to persist. Now what?
A gradual strategy that can succeed is infiltration and replacement. Entryism is a century old non-violent tactic that works in any group that uses voting to determine leadership. Gather a group of like-minded allies, join the group, and then vote one another into key positions. Attract more via outreach and over time the group will be geared toward promoting social justice and human rights.
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With TERF groups, many will likely try to ban trans women from membership. This can be worked around. Cis women allies can easily enter a given organization. If they work as a collective, it’s a matter of figuring out the number needed to achieve a simple majority (or whatever number is needed to overrule attempts to stop the bloc). For example, if a collective has about 25 members, then a group as small as 30 could wrest control from the bigots.
Then, when it comes time to select leaders, remove the old bigoted guard and install rational leadership. Done correctly, this is a wonderful bloodless democratic coup. It’s enabled since TERF’s are a tiny — if loud — minority of all women. Finding women willing to help replace their hate with love and inclusiveness is therefore not an impossible task.
This tactic is especially sound when trying to take over a group that has resources and performs functions that are important to the broader community, but happen to be biased against women. For example, discriminatory rape crisis centers on one hand perform an important function for the segment of women they do serve, even as they impose misogynist exclusionary definitions of who they’ll treat. Maintaining continuity for the delivery of this kind of service is important — no one wins if they’re shut down or disappear. A gradual internal take over simply allows the organization to stop being a hate group while still caring for women in need.
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Notify contacts if a TERF has snuck onto their friends list. I’ve personally caught a couple TERF’s trying to worm their way into feminist groups and gotten them banned. Report their blogs to WordPress and others to try and get them taken down. You may not shut down every TERF account you see, but every one that is suspended is a victory. Likewise, the more you can promote the isolation and containment of TERF’s on social media by denying them the ability to associate with moderate feminist elements, the weaker their influence on the community will be.
Regular readers of this forum will appreciate that this increased inclusion comes at the expense of excluding women who cannot heal in a space with any kind of male.
We are now in the situation where I have read of multiple women on mumsnet being unable to access refuges because of the males in them. Is this a universal issue? No- I can name shelters that remain women-only! (And I donate to them!) Do the female-only shelters have capacity to cover the whole UK? Also no!
As it happens, I myself spent a couple of years in a female-only housing as a teenager. That shelter no longer exists, and it makes me sick to think that this generation of girls don't have recourse to it.
I am not going to argue about whether PP would be the best woman out of all the women in the world for this. Nor will I donate more than I can afford. But I will donate, and hope that it leads to a woman being able to LTB where otherwise she would not have. If my tenner is wasted, so be it. As said, I only donate what I can afford.
We can argue all day about who would be the perfect founder of a new refuge, but someone has to actually do it. Looks like she might. I've been here for over ten years and I have a good feeling that I disagree with her on all kinds of things. But screw feminist purity tests and whether she might score lower than me! What use would it be to fundraising efforts if I have read more feminist literature than she has, when I have all the charisma and articulacy of Matt Hancock after he's fallen into the river Thames, eh?
Now, Posie Parker does have charisma so she could do this! I am guessing that she isn't planning to staff it 24/7 by herself, so presumably she's going to be partnering with women in the sector already.