I think I've figured out why the Guilty Feminists feel guilty...

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

@Glinner sent this round today:

"(From a thread by @Forwomenscot) The CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis has said "Sexual violence happens to bigoted people too. But if you bring beliefs that are discriminatory, expect to be challenged on your prejudice. Reframe your trauma" Apparently, survivors are to be "educated" in this service."

The CEO is Mridul Wadhwa, a male person who does not have a GRC and who believes that rape victims orgasm.

The podcast twitter account is blocking everyone who says "WTF?" etc

This is a statement from Rape Crisis Scotland:

www.rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/blogs/news/1038/redir/

'The core value that underpins all Rape Crisis support is of being non-judgemental. We meet every survivor who engages with us, whether through a one-off helpline call or continued local support, as an individual and work with them to establish their needs, and how best to work with them to come to terms with what has happened and move forward after sexual violence.

Our services are trauma informed. This means that we work collaboratively and are non-directive – we won’t ever tell someone what to do, or what not to do – to restore a survivor’s sense of control over their own journey. Rape Crisis workers across Scotland understand trauma, the many ways in which it can manifest, and work with compassion and dedication to meet the needs of survivors. This is vital, life-saving work.

We are feminist. Our work is underpinned by a feminist understanding of violence and inequality and our services are committed to being women-led and the provision of women only spaces and services. We are proudly diverse, intergenerational and inclusive and strive to ensure that all survivors in Scotland receive the response and support that they need and deserve.'

That all sounds fine and sensible and proper. The first two points, however, are not in accordance with what Mridhul has said.

So, is it Mridhul or RCS who is out of step with each other?

We are feminist. Our work is underpinned by a feminist understanding of violence and inequality and our services are committed to being women-led and the provision of women only spaces and services. We are proudly diverse, intergenerational and inclusive and strive to ensure that all survivors in Scotland receive the response and support that they need and deserve.

How are they defining ‘women’? I think it may be another example of them saying something which sounds perfectly reasonable but they are using a different definition to the average person.

Yes - reading that all sounds great, but how are they defining "women-led"?

@EndoplasmicReticulum

Yes - reading that all sounds great, but how are they defining "women-led"?

Women only spaces are a core principle of the Rape Crisis movement and upheld through our National Service Standards (read these here). These spaces include women with a diverse range of lived experience and views, including trans women and girls.

So "women with a diverse range of lived experience" apparently means men FFS

re: RCS & 'women-only'

They need to be very clear on what they mean, then. Because if a woman is looking for 'woman-only' service and specifically needs that because she is suffering trauma, perhaps in crisis, then to use 'woman only' as a term that includes men, but isn't very, very clear on it, is the cruellest and most disengenuous statement I've read in a while.

Do they not consider that a woman might turn up and not understand that their 'women only' statement actually means 'mixed sex'?

What do they do if a woman is traumatised by the unexpected presence of a male?

'Educate' her?

Jeeps. Fun.

I don't mean to be goady but what do these rape crisis centres actually do on a day to day, hour by hour basis? Reading the rapecrisisscotland website, under a title "if it's just happened" there is a list of organizations to contact: police, hospital, family planning clinic, friends. But what do the rape crisis centres do that justifies the administrative costs? What does the CEO do? How many women do they help in a given year? Do they just refer people to other services?
The services may be "trauma informed" but what are the services? I am not very familiar with this sector and would appreciate it if someone who has either used or provided these services could shed some light on this.

"FUN"

@littlbrowndog

Jeeps. Fun.

And that they want to promote the acceptance of male born people in the industry.

Have just caught up with all of this - what the fuuuuuuuck?!

@Jackgrealishscurtains

Have just caught up with all of this - what the fuuuuuuuck?!

Precisely.

MW says he doesn’t know if MW would have been hired if they knew they were trans 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Did the job advert not say it was for women under exemptions of the act

So awful. And this person gets to choose which bigot gets allowed to use the rape service for survivors funded by SG

Wonder if service users are quizzed on their beliefs in religion or betting or anything.

Is it just the TWAW is the only belief they would be quizzed on

@littlbrowndog

MW says he doesn’t know if MW would have been hired if they knew they were trans 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Did the job advert not say it was for women under exemptions of the act

It's my understanding that the advert said it was for a woman, and MW did not disclose the fact that they were male.

#AskRapeCrisisScotland still trending.

this is a good Q:

Adele@AdeleMcVayHV
I’d like to #AskRapeCrisisScotland why their Male CEO thinks it’s okay to announce the services plan to discriminate against rape victims who hold gender critical beliefs, when it has been established that those beliefs are protected in law. #EA2010

GOOD GRIEF. The scenario that DFW imagines, where the “very structurally violent flicks of eyes” lead inevitably to physical violence - that scenario is completely made up. It’s not a real story, it’s not based on statistics, it came out of her own head. It may well resonate with trans women and express something they feel about an ongoing threat of violence, which would would make me empathic if it came from a trans woman’s own real experience. But DFW uses this imaginary scenario to tell women to subjugate what they feel about their experience of violence. It is a fiction to give a back story to her narrative of herself as an ally, and to justify a stance that belittles women’s experience.

It’s a bit like the academic’s phantom pile-on (see the Maya / Index on Censorship thread). If Maya is correct, then the academic felt awful about a pile-on that apparently did not actually happen.

Policy making by zombie (misleading or badly researched) statistics was bad enough, but policy making by sharing fearful fictions is something else.

Just seen this on Twitter, which the poster has attributed to Lisa Muggeridge in 2018

@toomanytrees

I don't mean to be goady but what do these rape crisis centres actually do on a day to day, hour by hour basis? Reading the rapecrisisscotland website, under a title "if it's just happened" there is a list of organizations to contact: police, hospital, family planning clinic, friends. But what do the rape crisis centres do that justifies the administrative costs? What does the CEO do? How many women do they help in a given year? Do they just refer people to other services? The services may be "trauma informed" but what are the services? I am not very familiar with this sector and would appreciate it if someone who has either used or provided these services could shed some light on this.

The one I worked for was all-female, all-volunteer & run on a shoestring. We raised some money for ourselves in various ways & got miniscule grants off local councils who, without us, would've had to set up their own service, so they got a bargain. We had no central government funding though we had to collect statistics & present them to the Home Office/MoJ every year.

Our services were mainly phone-based, with a very few F2F appointments. Phone lines were open limited hours because of the difficulty of getting, training & retaining enough volunteers, so the hours were all over the place in order to offer help to as many women as possible, e.g. a couple of days mornings only, others afternoons only, others evenings only, the same arrangement each week.

Other than that, we had a meeting for staff once a month, interviewed potential volunteers & ran training courses. I think some more experienced staff gave talks.

We didn't officially refer anyone anywhere. When I left, changes were starting to happen. With austerity & compassion fatigue, charities began to offload anyone they could onto other charities - including onto ours which was already fully stretched. The government mooted changes which could've meant us needing to make records available to the police or the courts.

Later on my old organisation was given money to recruit a paid manager. I lost touch with it, so I don't know how that works.

@PlayYouLikeAShark

I'll tell you what/who isn't 'discerning'. The migrant women with no recourse to public funds who were the group targeted by MW when MW knowingly applied for a female specific role in the women's aid org & failed to declare that MW was male. And when the obvious was questioned, MW didn't have the decency to walk away & that org was either terrified to take action or decided that it didn't matter that the women imposed with MW's involvement had no say. Those women are/were about as vulnerable & desperate as it's possible to be (often with difficult immigration status & terrified that seeking help could see them deported & with no safety net from state support). They are/were in no position to be 'discerning' over who they turned to when they needed help to escape abusive situations they found themselves in.

MW is lauded often in dispatches for MW's work for this particularly vulnerable group of women, who are absolutely desperate, and who have no other options for help to escape abuse. Think about that. MW chose to work with women who couldn't say no and who were uniquely vulnerable to MW's imposed presence within what should be a female only space/service.

MW talking about how sexual violence isn't 'discerning' is rich coming from an individual who was very discerning which route was best to infiltrate a female only org supporting the most vulnerable women & children fleeing male abuse & violence.

The red flags here go back a long, long way.

Sorry, late to this thread, but just wanted to say that this is really important point that has probably not been explored enough by those looking at Wadhwa.

It makes the comments about migrant women at the end of this transcript seem even more nauseating and cynical.

I'm sure lots of you have already lauded PlayYou, but I'm starting at the beginning of the thread!
forwomen.scot/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Mridul-Wadhwa-Guilty-Feminist-transcript.pdf

Lisa is very right.

It's here:

guiltyfeminist.com/episode/?episode=323

Go to 1hr 14m for the quote.

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

"FUN"

Oh, it's all shits and giggles.