Vancouver Rape Relief are coming to FiLiA!

[EmpressaurusWitchDoesntBurn]

For anyone who hasn’t heard of this organisation, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter is run by some of the bravest women in Canada. They’ve insisted on staying women-only despite the withdrawal of funding and some truly horrible intimidation, like a dead rat being nailed to their front door.

Background at www.filia.org.uk/latest-news/2020/4/21/vancouver-rape-relief-and-womens-shelter

Fantastic, they are very brave women.

People always try to make the argument “would you allow a group that was all white women” in response to single sex spaces…and as a woman who isn’t white, yeah, there’s all kinds of contexts I would be fine with that: a group where white women meet together to read and learn about racism and white privilege and unpack that together without expecting WOC to do the educating, a group of white working class women that wanted to discuss those specific experiences and histories, a group, say, of Ukrainian refugees (obviously there are also Ukrainians who aren’t white, but the vast majority are and likelihood of those in a group in, say, the UK would be) to discuss their experiences of that war…there are all kinds of times when white women could need space together and it wouldn’t be offensive. Because the issue wouldn’t be whiteness as if white women could only get together to plot not letting black people use water fountains and rubbing their skin in glee, it would be the shared issue they are organizing around. Like, as if the moment you have 3 white women together in a room it defaults to a Nazi rally. It kind of shows you how they think women must only want space together just to chant “I’m female and you’re not” not to actually address issues.

I mean, if a bunch of Amish women were meeting together to talk about their lives I wouldn’t feel compelled to crash it and tell them all the ways that racism is worse or something. Who cares why other people want space alone? If it’s not for me, it’s not for me; or as they say, “if it don’t apply, let it fly.”