JKR opens a new support and advocacy service for women in Edinburgh

[ArabellaScott]

Amazing.

Suzanne Moore reports on the opening of 'Beira's Place':

'Beira’s Place is not a shelter or a drop-in. Rather, women will come, their needs will be assessed and then the appropriate therapy and help will be found for them. For free.

Sex-based crime in Scotland has been rising since 1974. Jo Rowling talks of answering unmet needs “As a survivor of sexual assault myself, I know how important it is that survivors have the option of women-centred and women-delivered care at such a vulnerable time.”

There are clearly so many unmet needs – waiting lists are huge for rape crisis centres all over the UK. Lack of funding is a key issue.

What Rowling has done here is astonishing. She has not only bought the building but is funding the entire service. This is not a charity. It does not depend on the whims of whoever is in power. While Rowling is covering the core costs, if people want to support it, they possibly could do so in future by donating towards extras such as service users’ travel or childcare expenses.'

....

'These women are fighting against male violence, and they really know what they are dealing with. Kerr and Domminney have between them more than three decades’ experience of running Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis. And Rowling has handpicked her dream team of board directors to support them: Rhona Hotchkiss, a former nurse, prison governor and advisor to the Scottish Government; Johann Lamont, Labour and Cooperative MSP, and a lifelong campaigner for the rights for women; Dr Margaret McCartney, a GP, academic and broadcaster; and Susan Smith, co-director of For Women Scotland, the largest grassroots women’s organisation in the country.'

suzannemoore.substack.com/p/an-exclusive-interview-with-jk-rowling?publication_id=22356

JKR gives the women of Edinburgh a wonderful early Christmas present. Thank you, JK. 🌟

It seems they are all going to try and self id into it. And how can the service tell? How can the service tell indeed 🤪

They can tell. And if they cant and a man fraudulently gains access, then let that make the headlines too. Let the public follow the deliberately covert process where males are forcing traumatised women to validate them.

It's interesting how TRAs are asking how they will be kept out tho. As if the word No isn't recognised.

The national organisation said that it had been offering rape crisis services to trans women for 15 years and there had “not been a single incident of anyone abusing this”.

um apart from the head of ERCC who lied his way into a job reserved for females and wants to re-educate them to "reframe their trauma" and has made really inappropriate comments about female orgasmi during rape. 🤮🤮

Imagine being so lost to reason that you would plan to try to insert yourself into a service when it’s been explained to you that the reason that you are excluded is that your presence makes the service unusable for other people to receive help with their trauma.

Imagine being that person.

Grim.

Couldn’t be clearer that the working theory behind that is that trans people can’t be expected to manifest common human decency or respect for others needs. That’s just so messed up. I want to believe better of people, so PLEASE, transactivists, stop telling me how awful you are, because it’s making it really hard.

A woman here had personal experience of that person, not listening to her, checking their watch, etc, all whilst she was relaying intimate details. Another was at a some kind of social gathering and all the guests were asked if they thought the person 'passed'. One big validation exercise.

Of course women are affected.

This is a wonderful piece, and I'm so grateful to Jenni Russell for highlighting the issues so lucidly. It's the first article I've seen in the national press to spell out clearly what's happening.

Did anyone notice on the Jenni Russell piece that she uses the phrase "trans-identifying males"? It's the first time I've seen that in a national newspaper too.

Yes. The gloves are off.

Yes Datun. I remember that poster. It was very clear that this is a male who is more interested in power than the act of supporting others.

Remember the interview where they confessed to enjoying that power over deciding about whether women and their families ate in the USA when they worked at an Indian call centre. And whether or not their American accent ‘passed’….

The more that individual talks in each interview , the clearer it gets.

Yes to that, too. Saying it like it is.

There's nothing stopping people from correctly identifying men as men, other than those men reeely not wanting them to.

And when it's in order that they can re traumatise rape survivors, they can fuck off. Again.

Yes, I remember that. Role playing. They come across as wholly self serving.

"They, on the other hand, are utterly baffled by her why won’t she capitulate? What does she even want, anyway? They have to lie about her because they can’t or won’t face the truth of who she is and what she does: unapologetically woman focussed, a lover of truth, and a force to be reckoned with."

Exactly this. She can not be bullied but they still try and every time they do, her profile ensures that many, many people see it.

Have we also mentioned this is the male who resigned from the SNP because of the extra words added to allow women to request and feel confident that they get a female not a ‘woman’ medical examiner for intimate examinations.

What person does that as a CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis??

None of this person’s actions have ever indicated they even have empathy for females. It is a power trip. This is this person’s route to their own version of power, pure and simple.

Yes, I remember that. Role playing. They come across as wholly self serving.

What else could they be like? As per Chomsky in that Andrew Marr interview:

If you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting

The only sort of male that would accept such a position is an utterly self-serving, amoral one.

By selecting a male, you guarantee that's the sort of person you'll get.

It's a context where clarity is needed, and 'transwoman' still isn't always correctly understood. It's the male part which (legitimately) excludes them from a women's service, not the trans part.

Jenni Russell's article is absolutely excellent. Short, pithy, and pulls no punches.

It certainly says a lo

It says a lot that with so many other services available anyone would attempt to deceive their way into the ONE service that isnt for them.

let’s hope the TRAs are wrong and no one would be so low as to try.

I mean, it’s not the first time I’ve said it, but we’ve all heard it all before.

“Oh yeah, how are you going to stop me?”

it’s not as vulnerable sounding as they think.

Yes, exactly this. It's just so important because newspapers have been tiptoeing around this issue and using the phrase "trans women" which is confusing because a lot of people still imagine it means women who identify as trans.

I hope Russell's use of "trans-identifying males" inspires other journalists and newspapers to adopt clear terminology too. It's not a phrase we're allowed to use on Mumsnet, so it would be very welcome to see it becoming widely adopted elsewhere.

Exactly. TRAs always say "How can they tell? Are they going to be checking genitals at the door?"

We can tell. 99.9% of the time it's absolutely obvious that the person is not a biological woman.

But TRAs spend so much in their echo chambers being validated by others telling them that they "100% pass" that they think they do.

They don't. It's very easy to spot a TW. Same with the butch female lesbian argument.

I think this is a little unrealistic. I once met someone who told me they could always tell who was Jewish. I am pretty sure that they were only picking out men in black hats and women with covered hair and 12 children, because I am Jewish and they had no idea.

I work in research. All binary classification systems (e.g. trans or not) have four possible outcomes:

1. True negatives (person is not trans and is assessed as not trans).
2. True positives (person is trans and is assessed as trans).
3. False negatives (person is trans and is assessed as not trans).
4. False positives (person is not trans and is assessed as trans).

In all but the most trivial tasks, you always have false positives and false negatives. How you design the test depends on the importance of such an error. For example, you might prefer that a non-invasive diagnostic test for a serious illness has some false positives, rather than tell people with the illness they are in the clear.

On the other hand, if you are designing a classification system for Netflix recommendations, you might prefer to stick to those titles you are confident about, rather than flood people's lists with stuff they're not interested in. If you miss the occasional program they would have enjoyed, it's not a big deal.

The consequences of incorrect classification in either direction would be presumably be considered significant by the people who run Beira's place. Either:

1. You incorrectly refuse service provision to a survivor of abuse because you think she's trans.
2. You allow a trans person into a project that does not allow them.

This is a very difficult type of classification problem. It's a little like criminal justice - both an innocent person being incorrectly locked up, or a guilty person going free, are disastrous. For that reason there is a process with evidentiary standards etc.

It seems to me that it's a reasonable to ask what the process is here, and how they are going to consider the trade-offs between the consequences of false positives and false negatives.

Sorry, it's just not that difficult to spot a male person, no matter what work they've had done. I don't think it's a worry for Beira's Place staff whatsoever.

Why is it an issue if anyone can or can't tell if someone's male?
No male is going to pretend to be female when they're not, to access rape support, are they?

And if they are, then isn't this exactly why female-only provision is needed?

You incorrectly refuse service provision to a survivor of abuse because you think she's trans.

Trans status has nothing to do with someone's sex. Plenty of women who are female may also be classified as 'trans', as the definition is so loose as to be essentially meaningless.

All binary classification systems (e.g. trans or not)

@ireadbooks Specifically what criteria are you using to assess whether someone is trans? Am I trans if I 'reject gender identification completely' as per Bristol City Council's definition (of a gender identity that falls under the trans umbrella)?