Posie putting her money where her mouth is. Lets do this.

[Fallingirl]

Posie is planning to re-build the women’s sector, starting with crowd funding for a women-only refuge.

I'm puzzled. I see thread after thread on here about how existing women only services have either chosen or been forced to admit and employ men. A woman stands up and declares she intends to do something about it. Post after post about how she's wrong.

Still we're 4 pages in and I haven't seen the words 'Trump supporter' yet so there's that.

I'm in.

It's absolutely worth a few quid to me as a punt.

Posie is both a catalyst & a lightning rod. She draws support from plenty of people who, like her, would not call themselves feminists but see the fundamental good sense of her position, whilst simultaneously winding up TRAs to a noisy froth which garners publicity & sunlight.

I almost certainly wouldn't see her as a suitable person to run a refuge or a charity day to day - she's undoubtedly abrasive & will piss people off right left & centre. But I'll support her fund- & awareness- raising very happily.

It takes all sorts of women & all sorts of approaches.

We need the work posters like howtocomplain do, & I can also see a need for the work Posie does.

@Sillydoggy

Women's rights campaigners expect attacks from MRA's and TRA's but I hate the way that Posie Parker is attacked by feminists.

She is raising money for women's services that will be ringfenced for women. We all know that many of the big women's orgs are being pressured to be inclusive or have been completely captured. Services for women are under threat and this campaign raises both money and the profile of the issue. She also reaches women that other feminists don't reach.

I will happily donate and be confident that if my money does not end up in the aimed for women's shelter it will end up either in a different women only shelter or in campaigning for women's rights and that is fine with me.

Agree wholeheartedly with this.

@Floisme

I'm puzzled. I see thread after thread on here about how existing women only services have either chosen or been forced to admit and employ men. A woman stands up and declares she intends to do something about it. Post after post about how she's wrong.

Still we're 4 pages in and I haven't seen the words 'Trump supporter' yet so there's that.

It's entirely predictable. There's something about Posie that makes certain self confessed feminists lose their minds and go on and on about how heinous she is. They never stop with one comment on a thread but challenge any woman with a different view. It's tedious and self defeating. It's as if they haven't noticed what's going on out in the wider world with women's rights.

Off to donate some of my hard earned cash.

I love her. This is wonderful.

I think we can all agree that Posie has a genius for generating publicity.

This will bring much-needed sunlight to the fact that so many women's shelters are now having to accept men. That alone is worth a few quid!

If this is to be a long term force for good it will need serious and long term support and funding.
It would be nice to think of it growing in a similar way to the Hospice Movement or Mencap when Brian Rix became a public voice.
Both those organisations were totally independent of Politics and politicking.

@heathspeedwell

I think we can all agree that Posie has a genius for generating publicity.

This will bring much-needed sunlight to the fact that so many women's shelters are now having to accept men. That alone is worth a few quid!

There you go. This is it exactly.

Posie has a certain skill set, which in this situation, is going to shine a blinding spotlight on what's happening, why it's happening, and how it's been allowed to happen.

How many people really understand that rape refuges are losing money and closing, because they want to remain women only. The fact that it is at exactly the same time that the media and government are doing a spot of handwringing over the amount of violence against women and girls, just makes it more outrageous.

Let's have it. Let's have the publicity.

Whenever anyone attacks Posie I think about this quote

Like I said, I would love to be proved wrong, but unless Posie gets some women on board who know what they are doing, this makes no sense.

And Posie is doing exactly that. She has identified a need and is working together with women who have experience in the field to meet that need. I'm sure she has no plans to be delivering recovery and support services herself.

I've recently retired after managing a women's refuge for 23 years. The 'for women by women' ethos of the UK refuge movement was backed into a corner by legislation and the subsequent requirements of Local Authority Commissioners that opened the refuge doors to males. If our service was to survive and remain for women by women we needed to be creative in our approach to referrals, risk assessments and admissions as well as recruitment. We operated under continual threat. It's exhausting.

The commissioning model of funding is also responsible for non specialist providers taking over much of refuge provision. I would argue that this is more dangerous for women who need specialist services than the creation of an independent, women only refuge spearheaded by a woman with Posie's vision and commitment to action. Posie has my support in this.

Howtocomplain is living up to the name huh?

The first word on the crowdfunder is "we". It's not actually presented as a solo project. So that's wrong for a start.

There's something in the view that women entrepreneurs are always criticised as imperfect isn't there?

What a load of unnecessary whining.

Haha that's funny DeeJayLippy.

I can hear the seagulls squawking.

It looks like there is a TRA campaign to get the crowdfunder taken down. I'm sure KJ didn't expect that for one second.

The commissioning model of funding is also responsible for non specialist providers taking over much of refuge provision.

This is what I was trying to get at before.

If this becomes an independent funding model to help not only strengthen existing providers (who obviously don't want to be in the limelight due to the pressure that move would cause) but to create new facilities in areas where there is none, this is a good idea in my eyes.

Create a fund that is out in the open, that shows exactly how serious women are that these spaces need to be kept and maintained. Along the way, start collecting stories from woman anonymously in the comments sections if that works.

It looks like there is a TRA campaign to get the crowdfunder taken down. I'm sure KJ didn't expect that for one second.

Exactly.

And... lo and behold... there is currently no actual other organisation or site attached to the fundraiser so privacy where needed is continued.

She is putting everyone else's money where her mouth is. That is a very different thing.

But it's still a thing. I remember a story at school about "stone soup".

Ah, here it is:

www.bedtimeshortstories.com/stone-soup-story

I see Posie a bit like that.

Thank you Posie!

Necessaryscene1 love that story & I agree

She is putting everyone else's money where her mouth is.

Feel free to step up! Domestic violence costs the UK some £66 billion a year and yet women are despised so much that DV is tolerated.

The government won't step up.
Rape Crisis won't step up.
Refuge won't step up.
The WEP wont step up.
The Fawcett Society won't step up.
Womens Aid won't step up.
The Labour Party won't step up.
The Liberal Democrats won't step up.
The Conservative Party won't step up.

The first shelters for women were in other women's homes.

We're down to the option of the specialist stuff having been taken, owned and redirected to be male centric, and as that appalling quote earlier in the thread shows, any female not able to be male centric even in the midst of their own worst nightmares happening to them, is to be isolated, excluded and left without services.

We're back to female people in desperate circumstances with nowhere to go, staying in awful situations, or in the case of one MNetter, living rough. I'd rather those female people had somewhere safe to go than worry right now about trying to convince those male people and their allies that female people have needs and human rights too. Because I think we're onto a loser there.

When you're starving, bread and water will do. The tea and cake and posh foods would be lovely, but the basic not starving part matters first and foremost.

@Moondust001

Then dont give your money? It's as simple as that.

I won't be, don't worry. But the title of the thread is very misleading. It isn't her money. It is everyone else's money. So those asking for better information before making an informed decision about where they put their are being entirely reasonable. This isn't about whether you agree with her or not, and it isn't about her. £150,000 - or even double that - is entirely unrealistic as an amount of money to set up and run a refuge. Where is the business plan and project outline? How will the money be managed and by whom? What happens to the money if they are (very likely) not able to spend it on the purpose for which it is given? There are many questions about all of this, and simply labelling a thing or a person as "great" doesn't answer any of them or protect people and their money. If anyone simply set up a crowdfunding page to set up what is, in effect, a charitable endeavour, wouldn't you ask questions about what they were going to do? And how the planned to do it? Don't you ever ask those questions of anything you fund? Because anyone who doesn't is simply proving that a fool and their money are easily parted.

It's a tenner or twenty quid, I won't be giving thousands, i simply dont care if in this instance it was all spent on irrelevancies. I want this to become mainstream news, if I give a tenner and it blows up in the press then itll be a tenner well spent, if it doesn't make the news but actually starts a women only shelter then fabulous because they are sorely needed. If you dont want to or can't afford to give anything that's fine too. No one is holding a gun to your head to give money. So dont.

In a war, you need people like Posie, and there aren’t many of them.

Can’t think of a good excuse for women who attack her although they’re supposed to be on our side.

I’ve donated.

Donated this morning, she’s always been transparent on where funding goes & her hearts in the right place.

When you're starving, bread and water will do. The tea and cake and posh foods would be lovely, but the basic not starving part matters first and foremost.

This, absolutely.

And just to refresh our collective memory, have a look at this 1974 film about Chiswick Women's Refuge Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear

Erin Pizzey was a figurehead of the refuge movement in those days but she didn't do it all on her own - just as Posie isn't. Women supported women as well as lobbying for changes in law that would enable women and children to stay safe and doing all the other work needed to keep the place going. Then, as now, they encountered hostility and obstacles but other groups of women all over the country recognised the need in their own communities and started setting up refuges.

The movement started in 1971 and in 1974 a Select Committee recommended that for every 10,000 of the population there should be refuge provision for a family. This has never been achieved but not for want of trying.

The herstory of the both the refuge and rape crisis movements is fascinating and something I think we could refer to and continue to learn from.
However, the violence and abuse women (and children) are subjected to and their need to be safe, cared for by women and away from men in order to begin their recovery hasn't changed

@howtocomplain

Sorry, no way am I supporting this.

I just had a look at the crowdfunder and a little listen to the talk, where Posie charges, bull in a china shop as usual, into a sector she knows fuck all about.

If she seriously wants to move into women's services, is insulting the women who've spend fucking decades working in the sector really a good place to start?

Her ignorance & ego is dangerous. What a shame.

current sector isn't all so fantastic. I had very bad experiences trying to get help and ended up back with my violent partner. I've tried to leave again but again stuck. I just wrote a long post with details of some of my experiences but deleted it because I'm too scared of making the organisations supposed to help angry. I get told to complain if problems as if vulnerable women being abused can do that safely. I didn't complain but tried to diplomatically get the help I wasn't getting. They closed ranks, told me I shouldn't speak about what happened, and left me with nowhere to turn. It's happening again the issues and I feel so trapped with no safe way out. I'll be told a letter will be done and it never gets done, weeks go by, phone calls not answered, messages ignored, appointments not kept to, and I feel so frightened with nowhere at all to turn to. I can't even describe how shattering it is to to what I was too scared to do, ask for help, to trust people, to then have those experiences. I totally understand how busy and underfunded they are and would get it if they told me they couldn't help or too busy but there was no honestly and I feel tricked into putting myself into a more vulnerable position by trying to leave.

I know one hundred percent there are really lovely amazing wonderful kind people working in the sector doing so much to help and under so much pressure but there's also some not good ones and some are just incompetent and not admitting that but some are actually not very nice. The big problem is there is no real accountability or transparency because they aren't public sector really and are charities but also because vulnerable victims of violence and abuse we can't make a fuss and complain. Noone checks properly to see if it's all working and how to stop things going wrong and to make sure all women are getting help needed.

Sorry to post about this but I don't think it's ok to pretend everything is ok with the set up at moment and what I experienced was really awful and I can't be the only woman it happens to and it shouldn't happen but if will keep happening if people think all ok.