Mridul Wadwha and the thought police

[IamSarah]

Great article in Spiked Online about Mridul Wadwha's latest shenanigans:

www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/01/the-thought-police-are-here/

To briefly summarise:

• Mridul was born male

• Mridul is legally male with no GRC

• Mridul is the CEO of Edinburgh Rape crisis

• Mridul claims women who want female only rape crisis services are bigoted and should 'reframe their trauma'

• The CEO of a domestic violence charity Nicola Murray stopped referring women to Mridul's rape crisis service due to Mridul's misogyny

• Mridul reported Nicola Murray to the police for committing a hate crime

• The police actually visited Nicola Murray to question her thinking

@barleybadminton

So fundraise for your own trans organisations to help transgender people. Then when the women's organisations are contacted by such a person they can be directed to a specific trans organisation which will be able to help transgender people who have been raped. Wadwha could help to set this up.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis worked with just over 650 women in their most recent recorded period. Even if we take the highest possible estimate of trans people in the population that would translate to 6/7 trans women a year - in reality it's probably one or two. It would be impossible to set up a project with such small numbers and ludicrous to divert funding, resources and skilled workers away from the VAWG sector to do so when those women can be accommodated within the existing sector and this is not causing any problems according to staff on the ground.

So for the sake of one or two 'transwomen' a year who might want to use these services you are making them unusable for large numbers of women.

One or two males are more important than hundreds of women in your view.

The truly transformative, radical belief is not that women should cease to be “confined to our sex class” by pretending that our sex doesn’t matter.

It’s to truly, profoundly believe and understand that women are entirely worthy and fully human as we are - the ones who give birth, have periods, are smaller etc. It’s not to say “we’re all the same, really” because that just perpetuates the eternal masculine dominant. It’s cringeworthy that someone who calls themself a feminist has not given this more thought 😬

Women are important. That’s the radical view.

Actually Barley, now I am pissed off. You have spent quite some time here on these boards. Either you are disingenuous or you do not read our posts. Nobody has suggested that male violence is inevitable. Ever.

We have said that safeguarding means planning so that the worst is avoided. This is crucial to protect children and vulnerable women.

We have also said that traumatised women may be triggered by someone they perceive to be male.

You keep arguing that avoiding the hurt feelings of biological males (transwomen) is more important than the danger to children and the trauma to women. And whilst doing so, you call us bigots. It is appalling.

It would be impossible to set up a project with such small numbers and ludicrous to divert funding, resources and skilled workers away from the VAWG sector to do so when those women can be accommodated within the existing sector and this is not causing any problems according to staff on the ground.

Why can't 'transwomen' be accommodated within men's services?

@Sophoclesthefox

The truly transformative, radical belief is not that women should cease to be “confined to our sex class” by pretending that our sex doesn’t matter.

It’s to truly, profoundly believe and understand that women are entirely worthy and fully human as we are - the ones who give birth, have periods, are smaller etc. It’s not to say “we’re all the same, really” because that just perpetuates the eternal masculine dominant. It’s cringeworthy that someone who calls themself a feminist has not given this more thought 😬

Women are important. That’s the radical view.

As we know there's an awful lot of "self identifying" and appropriation of others around at the moment

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre provide support to all sort of groups, including transgender people. Brilliant.

What they do not do is provide a single sex service for the women who need it. It is stated on their website that their 'women's only groups' are for anyone who identifies as a woman. It wouldn't be hard for them to provide a single sex service in addition to that for those who need it (and they do need it - there's plenty of anecdotal evidence to show that women are currently self excluding from the service).

So why @barleybadminton are this group of women being denied services? It's not taking services away from anyone, it's adding additional services for those who need it.

At this point, it looks like for the sake of an ideology, you and captured organisations are looking to deny women services which are perfectly legally allowable in the EQA 2010 as a punishment for not following your belief system - this was demonstrated by MW's 'reframe your trauma'' statement. And that is deplorable.

And yet, despite this clear and obvious precedent, we are supposed to believe that we can trust trans rights activists when they say that because there are currently no biologically male people who “identify as” female working as medical examiners, that means there never will be at some point in the future?

It is sadly evident that there are men who will go to extreme lengths to get off. Predators for whom transgressing boundaries is a hugely strong drive. This means that wherever there is an opportunity to exploit vulnerable victims, these men will seek it out.

Had the amendment failed, had the wording been kept to 'gender', this would have been a little flag waving for these men. A way to access women at their most vulnerable. It would be a matter of time.

I am fucking sick of reading about these men. They are in the papers daily - raping, murdering, terrorising, abducting, hurting and harming women and children. I wish they didn't fucking exist. I wish we didn't have to consider their presence.

But we do. They exist. They will seek loopholes and exploit them gleefully.

We have created this monstrous situation where a woman in a spa who complains to the management that a male with an erection is leering at women and girls is called a dick by men on the sidelines.

This is where the 'gender' and all the rainbow bullshit has got us. This is where we are. Women were physically attacked by stupid anarchist idiots for trying to protect children. Women are being arrested for talking about the problems. We are here talking about the problems and being berated and insulted and attacked for even doing so on a website called 'Mumsnet', in the subsection of the 'feminist' section that is specially been hidden away to hide it from those who don't wish to see it!

I care about children and women. That's it. Other problems can be dealt with by other people.

I cannot believe someone is willing to stand up and call all the women who work in the sector, who are rape survivors, who are mothers, who are women with eyes and brains in their heads who can see exactly what is happening 'bigots'.

Well, I can. It's still hard for women to grasp just how much they are hated. Despite all the evidence, it's hard to understand why males would do this. Would attack, undermine, threaten, abuse, dismiss, mock, belittle and sneer and impugn. But we are learning. I am learning. And I will not wheesht.

@Waitwhat23

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre provide support to all sort of groups, including transgender people. Brilliant.

What they do not do is provide a single sex service for the women who need it. It is stated on their website that their 'women's only groups' are for anyone who identifies as a woman. It wouldn't be hard for them to provide a single sex service in addition to that for those who need it (and they do need it - there's plenty of anecdotal evidence to show that women are currently self excluding from the service).

So why @barleybadminton are this group of women being denied services? It's not taking services away from anyone, it's adding additional services for those who need it.

At this point, it looks like for the sake of an ideology, you and captured organisations are looking to deny women services which are perfectly legally allowable in the EQA 2010 as a punishment for not following your belief system - this was demonstrated by MW's 'reframe your trauma'' statement. And that is deplorable.

It is deplorable as are those who support it.

Many people's vision of feminism is not to accept that male violence is inevitable and as such feminism should be reduced to establishing single sex spaces for safety and ruthlessly policing the borders of them but a radical transformation of society and the end of women being confined to a sex class - genital differences would no longer matter socially as Shulamith Firestone said.

This is complete nonsense. I can have a utopian vision of a society in which nobody steals anything because everyone is able to meet their own needs by honest means, and nobody is greedy. That does not mean I should be campaigning right now for everyone to leave their doors unlocked, and if I don't it's because I'm a defeatist proclaiming that 'robbery is inevitable' and we shouldn't try to improve social conditions.

I'd love a society without male violence. So would we all. Until and unless we get there, women's spaces need protection. (And in that utopia, people would still have a biological sex! It would be gender roles that were abandoned.)

I'm simply here giving you the debate you so often claim to want.

The debate we want is robust debate, backed up by evidence and well argued. Taking down your half-truths on the other hand is like shooting fish in a barrel. Easy, and not very satisfying.

MP who argued that amendment - just a bigot.
Women who self exclude from rape services run by males - just a bigot
Rape survivors who couldn't accept a male counsellor - just a bigot
DV survivors who couldn't accept a male in their accommodation - just a bigot
Women who work in the sector who don't wish to counsel males - just a bigot
Women who ask questions - just a bigot
Women who don't believe transwomen are women - just a bigot
Women who don't believe it's possible to change sex - just a bigot
Women who say no - just a bigot

Mridul Wadhwa - who:

took a job reserved for a woman, has personally led to at least two women not receiving support, provided substandard counselling to one woman on here, called women 'bigots' if they don't accept transwomen are women and said rape victims should be 're educated'.

• someone you are willing to defend above the word of all of these women on here?

On this thread alone barley you've stated that "it's not causing any problems" and that it's the trans status of people that anyone cares about.

You must be incredibly dishonest to post those things when you have been told repeatedly they are false.
If you can't debate honestly it's hardly a debate.
On another thread it took you three or four posts to even answer a straightforward question honestly- about you stating that the Times had said a story was untrue then quoting lots of irrelevant things that didn't answer the question that had actually been asked to you.

It's at very best incredibly rude and at worst it seems like it breaks Talk guidelines to constantly state stuff so disingenuously.

You have proved that you think rape victims and HCPs are lying when they say male staff are traumatising, so you're not really on a very good footing tbh.

I'm simply here giving you the debate you so often claim to want.

No you are not. From your very first posts under barelybadminton you have sneered, you have denigrated, you have admonished, you have name called.

Your standard of debate is not to provide evidence. I don't recall you ever providing evidenced links since way back when. You have provided some pretty dodgy links like to try to prove that the majority of women are into kink that was a fucking ludicrous piece of work.

You have kept up the sneering, the undermining, the constant barrage of denigration that comes from your own prejudice.

Your declaration of 'simply here giving you the debate you so often claim you want' is another delightful sleight of hand based on falsity.

Just like a wonderful bit of DARVO. Well you hateful women, if you did not do things to deserve being called prudes, liars, pearl-clutchers, 1950's housewives, anti-trans, and on and on and on, barely wouldn't call you that in the name of 'debate'.

You must be incredibly dishonest to post those things when you have been told repeatedly they are false.

yes. On this thread in the last few pages we have had someone who works directly in the role AND a service user both stating that barelys claims are absolutely false.

I keep coming back to it, but this is exactly like barely stating they 'know' what working class women want based on knowing a few of them. Despite the working class women of MN FWR telling barley they have NO FUCKING idea what working class women actually want or need.

And still it goes around and around and around.

Once you see the tactics being used, there is no way that any of this can be declare 'debate'.

When we are forced to counsel men we resent it. All of us do, we do our best. Yes, I know that because we talk about it. Is a male bodied client getting the best service from us? Maybe not!

Who's actually benifiting here?

@Sophoclesthefox

The truly transformative, radical belief is not that women should cease to be “confined to our sex class” by pretending that our sex doesn’t matter.

It’s to truly, profoundly believe and understand that women are entirely worthy and fully human as we are - the ones who give birth, have periods, are smaller etc. It’s not to say “we’re all the same, really” because that just perpetuates the eternal masculine dominant. It’s cringeworthy that someone who calls themself a feminist has not given this more thought 😬

Women are important. That’s the radical view.

THIS.

This cannot be said enough.

There is a fundamental physiological difference between the sexes, and there always will be. And that inevitably impacts our experiences.

It is as misogynistic and male supremacist to deny this difference, and to deny that women consequently have, and always will have, different needs to men, as it is to claim that this difference makes us an inferior class of human, as has been done in virtually every culture throughout history.

Both attitudes take away from women’s humanity.

We are indeed claiming the right to be seen as being fully human just as we are, female biology acknowledged and included.

And any biologically male person who fights against this is demonstrating for all to see that they don’t, in fact, see women as fully/equally human; don’t respect us; don’t care for us; don’t want us to be able to lead fully actualised lives.

Just like the old sort of bigots who have always tried to control and exploit us.

Isn’t it lucky that we can see this, no matter what arrangement of smoke and mirrors is laid out to try and cloud the issue.

We are indeed claiming the right to be seen as being fully human just as we are, female biology acknowledged and included.

And any biologically male person who fights against this is demonstrating for all to see that they don’t, in fact, see women as fully/equally human; don’t respect us; don’t care for us; don’t want us to be able to lead fully actualised lives.

Yes. And yes to Soph's post. Yes to all the women here.

@Helleofabore

I suspect many second wave feminists would be horrified at what is being pursued in their name and of those those that are still alive many are

Tell you what. Please back this claim up with evidence from original sources from the actual second wave feminist themselves. And more than just 'one' barely.

Or is this another of your 'rhetorical' statements?

Emma Allen For decades being gay or lesbian or an uppity female was considered a mental illness, yet some feminists think it’s ok to apply that pathology to transgender people. It really doesn’t matter whether being gay, lesbian, or transgender is a choice or inborn. It should be up to the individual to determine their sexual identity or gender. These self-definitions should not be assigned or institutionalized by the capitalistic patriarchal system and certainly not by so-called feminists.

www.transadvocate.com/unpacking-transphobia-in-feminism_n_9964.htm

Angela Davies
So if we want to develop an intersectional perspective, the trans community is showing us the way. And we can't only point to, and we need to point, to cases such as the murder of Tony McDade, for example. But we need to go beyond that and recognize that we support the trans community precisely because this community has taught us how to challenge that which is totally accepted as normal. And I don't think we would be where we are today—encouraging ever larger numbers of people to think within an abolitionist frame—had not the trans community taught us that it is possible to effectively challenge that which is considered the very foundation of our sense of normalcy.

libcom.org/library/dr-angela-davis-role-trans-non-binary-communities-fight-feminist-abolition-she-advocates

Catharine A. MacKinnon
Many transwomen just go around being women, who knew, and suddenly, we are supposed to care that they are using the women’s bathroom. There they are in the next stall with the door shut, and we’re supposed to feel threatened. I don’t. I don’t care. By now, I aggressively don’t care.

I always thought I don’t care how someone becomes a woman or a man; it does not matter to me. It is just part of their specificity, their uniqueness, like everyone else’s. Anybody who identifies as a woman, wants to be a woman, is going around being a woman, as far as I’m concerned, is a woman.

radfem.transadvocate.com/sex-gender-and-sexuality-an-interview-with-catharine-a-mackinnon/

Rebecca Solnit
Despite this, people – many of whom are supposed to be feminists – keep coming up with lurid “what ifs”. My response to them is: trans women do not pose a threat to cis-gender women, and feminism is a subcategory of human rights advocacy, which means, sorry, you can’t be a feminist if you’re not for everyone’s human rights, notably other women’s rights.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/10/trans-rights-feminist-letter-rebecca-solnit

Gloria Steinman
I am proud to sign this letter because we all must fight against the unnecessary barriers placed on trans women and girls by lawmakers and those who co-opt the feminist label in the name of division and hatred.

twitter.com/gloriasteinem/status/1377279648204210178?lang=en

Radical lesbian feminist Robin Tyler
"Yes, Harrison & Tyler were performers and we defended Beth Eliot. Robin Morgan came up with this horrible speech and when Beth went on stage to play her guitar and sing, [sex essentialist women] started threatening her. Patty [Harrison] and I jumped on stage and we got hit, because they came onto the stage to physically beat her.

We stepped up and defended Beth. When Robin Morgan came out against Beth, I said to her, look, you’re bisexual and you’re up here determining who should belong to this movement and who shouldn’t? Both Patty and I thought it was just terrible. It wasn’t like we totally understood transgender people at the time, because we didn’t, but how are you going to beat someone? It was just disgusting."

radfem.transadvocate.com/sex-essentialist-violence-and-radical-inclusion-an-interview-with-robin-tyler-jan-osborn-and-michele-kammerer/

Andrea Dworkin
The discovery is, of course, that “man” and “woman” are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for male and female both. The discovery is inescapable: We are, clearly, a multisexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete.

and

There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency . . . as a transsexual. There are three crucial points here. One, every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means that every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition. Two, by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing, and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised. Three, community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it. Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androgyny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear and that energy will be transformed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.

bostonreview.net/articles/john-stoltenberg-andrew-dworkin-was-trans-ally/

How much digging did Angela Davis do into the "murder of Tony McDade"?

McDade murdered the son of an ex-girlfriend as revenge for the break-up.

extract

'

'Somebody failed somewhere': Family of slain Malik Jackson warned Tony McDade was dangerous

JEFF BURLEW|TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT|11:30 am EDT September 2, 2020

Antonio Bowman grew to love Malik Jackson working with him for two years at Five Guys. "I wish he was my child," Bowman said.

JEFF BURLEW, DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER

Tallahassee police were called twice to the home of Tony McDade and his neighbors in a triplex on Saxon Street the night before he allegedly stabbed Malik Jackson to death as part of a personal vendetta against the young man’s mom.

But officers left both times without making an arrest, despite the fact that McDade — a Black transgender man whose troubled life included numerous arrests and stints behind bars — was on federal supervision. He hadfinisheda 10-year prison sentence in New York and was on pretrial release from a felonyassault arrest in Tallahassee just weeks before.

“I don’t feel like they cared,” said Abigail Jackson, a close aunt of Malik, 21. “I watched them actually stand across the street and laugh. With (McDade)being a convicted felon in the state of Florida and (armed with) a gun or a knife — that’s serious.

"And I don’t even know if they ran her name, because if they had, they would have seen she's a violent offender," said Abigail, who knew McDade from years ago as a woman.

McDade, who had a history of mental illness, had been terrorizing neighbors for days before finally making good on threats of bloodshed, said Abigail, as well as attorneys for the family and friends of both the Jacksons and McDades, who lived side by side in the triplex.

On the morning of May 27, McDade snuck up behind Malik as he sat in his Hyundai SUV in his mother’s parking lot and stabbed him repeatedly, Abigail Jackson said. Malik’s friends in the SUV fought off McDade, who fled injured to apartment complexes on Holton Street.

On the way, McDade contacted an acquaintance who was best friends with both Abigail Jackson and her sister, Jennifer Jackson, Malik’s mom. McDade had a message to pass along to Jennifer.

“Tell her to go pick her f-- son off the ground,” said the friend, recounting McDade’s words. “One down and some more to go.”

McDade, who threatened a “standoff” with police in a live Facebook rant before the stabbing, was shot and killed by a Tallahassee police officer who spotted him outside a Holton Street apartment building.

But when McDade allegedly pointed a gun at the officer, he opened fire, striking him down near a tree outside an apartment building. McDade still fumbled for the gun in the last moments of life, according to court filings.

McDade’s death happened just two days after the life of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was snuffed out by Minneapolis police officers. That incident, caught on video, sparked mass nationwide protests, unprecedented clashes between police and citizens,and renewed focus on police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement.

In the days since, McDade’s name has been invoked by protesters in Tallahassee and elsewhere. His face was featured along with those of other Black lives taken by police on the recent cover of The New Yorker magazine. Gay and trans rights groups have decried McDade’s death.

Even former President Barack Obama mentioned McDade in the same breath as Floyd, Breonna Taylor, killed in her own home by police in Louisville, Kentucky, and Ahmaud Arbery, shot and killed in what’s been described as a “lynching” by white men.

“You can’t compare herto George Floyd,” Abigail said of McDade. “George Floyd was murdered. She should be compared to the cop that murdered George Floyd. This right here is not a black and white thing. It’s not an LGBTQ hate thing. It’s nothing like that. She's a murderer and she murdered Malik.”

The Tallahassee Police Department was asked to comment Thursday but did not. However, investigators have pointed to McDade as the prime — and only — suspect inMalik’s murder

On the night of May 25, two days before the fatal stabbing and shooting, McDade barged into Jennifer’s place in a rage.

“(McDade) came into the house and actually hit Jen in the temple with a gun,” Abigail said. The knock left a knot on Jennifer’s head. But Jenniferdecided not to call the police.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.tallahassee.com/amp/5341454002

Rebecca Solnit
Despite this, people – many of whom are supposed to be feminists – keep coming up with lurid “what ifs”. My response to them is: trans women do not pose a threat to cis-gender women, and feminism is a subcategory of human rights advocacy, which means, sorry, you can’t be a feminist if you’re not for everyone’s human rights, notably other women’s rights.

The what ifs have been proven true time and time again, or are you going to pretend, yet again, that there are NO TW in prison for sexual offences against women?

Feminism is NOT their to fight for everyone's human rights, what a ridiculous notion that as stupid as saying patriarchy is for the benefit of everyone. The clue is in the name FEMINISIM it's for females. Females are not on this earth to fight for and advocate for everyone else's rights at the detriment of or above their own.

What a pile of utter tosh that person speaks.

We are, clearly, a multisexed species

Well that's clearly bullshit.

Oh. Solnit. Yes. She thinks writing a book is entirely equivalent to having a child. Nonsense-monger.

@purgatoryofpotholes was it Laverne Cox who was publically supportive of a transwoman in jail without looking into what they has actually been jailed for and only later found out that that prisoner was guilty of the horrific rape and murder of a young girl?

I’m still waiting for a answer to my simple question on how it benefits women to give up their single sex spaces and allow men in