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. 🌟

a monument to hate, for actual fucks sake 🙄

That article is a monument to how lost to reason The Independent is.

Good. Lay it all out there. Masks off.

Let's have the insanity, absolute male serving hatred of women and the bile, rage and total lack of any balance front and centre. The general public need to see it plainly. Let's 'educate' everyone.

I'm actually tempted to share that Indie article widely and repeatedly, because I think it'll make a lot more people think "WTF??" than "Oh yes, this is Righteous!"

The Independent like yahoo news has been a trans mouth piece for years.

That's why I was saying we really need to challenge this deliberate mistruth articles.

Funnily enough (I wonder why) I cant comment on the Independent any more.

Can you imagine a woman being allowed to write an article about some men's beliefs about women eg the like being "choked" using the type of language in this article.

But just going to say again, the problem is so long as other women are saying TWAW men will only report them and ignore GC feminists.

Please do I mean the person who wrote that is a shining example of how little some men care about women.

This is excellent news, and I am especially pleased that she has got Rhona Hotchkiss involved. Rhona is a fierce proponent of keeping womens prisons single-sex, I have a HUGE girl-crush on her 🙂 and I think she will be an asset to this project.

Yes, it's a fantastically useful article from the Independent, and should help a LOT of people see the problems laid out very clearly.

Women are 'irredeemable' and akin to racists for ... asking for a rape survivor centre to be women-only. Failing to include penises in your rape survivor support is transphobic.

That's it. That's where we are. Share and pass it on!

There cannot be even one space for the females who have been excluded from all support for the crime of being too traumatised to put males first.

Not even one .

But be 'kind'. It's your biological curse. You can't have a name for what you are, men don't wish you to have one because it messes with their feelings. But your feelings? Your needs? Your identity?

Is worthless.

Be 'kind'. Enable this absolutely abhorrent behaviour towards women like a good girl.

Being transphobic has come to mean caring about women's equality and access and to be recognised in law, caring about religious tolerance, standing up for safeguarding for children, protecting homosexuals and their rights -

remind me why this word is a bad thing?

It's pure 'what about the men', repackaged and now successfully sold to women who say they are feminists.

The comments are excellent and visible to non-subscribers though

This is one of the times when I think no man has the right to involve himself other than in support.

The reason we need a female-only service to help women and girls recover from sexual violence is because it is male violence. And if women want to set up a service to help women who have suffered male violence, I look askance at any man who criticises such an endeavour and cannot help but wonder why he would do so.

Yep. If he thinks there isn't enough provision for males - trans or otherwise - then why doesn't he put his effort into campaigning and fundraising for them instead of complaining about women supporting women?

ResisterRex - 12/12/22 19:28
remember this from the time. FOVAS and the thread set out why JKR's centre is needed and why allowing males in such spaces is wrong, wrong, wrong:

Letter from FOVAS DAMNING for Stonewall www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3627936-Letter-from-FOVAS-DAMNING-for-Stonewall

[[https://fovas.wordpress.com/response-to-stonewall-2
fovas.wordpress.com/response-to-stonewall-2XV0v

Thank you for posting that Fovas letter to stonewall. It is a good rebuttal to that general statement that transwomen have never been a problem in rape crisis centres and refuges.

In addition to all the various points they made explaining traumatised women and children’s needs for male free spaces, Inthought this was an important point too:

We repeat – for a male to want to access a female only space, however he identifies, is already a risk and even more so once you remove the vetting process that is currently required to get a Gender Recognition certificate

Shocking! It's been archived, so "Could publishing this bilge be the final nail in the coffin for the Independent's reputation"?

JKR is a true hero and if she ever needs a kidney, I'd offer her one of mine as if she were a sister of mine.

She is our champion.

Thank goodness at least one woman with relevant experience is prepared to speak up. Article is so great was going to start a news thread, but I suppose it does belong here:

Rape Crisis founder backs Rowling’s trauma centre

Ros Whyte helped to establish a centre in Glasgow more than 45 years ago that led to the foundation of Rape Crisis Scotland, a charity founded by the Scottish government.

“I was delighted to hear of JK Rowling’s generosity in relation to Beira’s Place, which offers support and advocacy for women who have experienced sexual violence,” Whyte told the Daily Mail. “The new centre will be run by women for women.

“It is disgraceful that a service has been used by the Scottish government for ideological reasons by making funding conditional on men being included in the service. In reality, this means men were to be included in a service set up by women to help women who had been raped or sexually abused by men.”

Article doesn't seem to be behind a paywall so can read it in full here www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rape-crisis-founder-backs-rowlings-trauma-centre-d80bzn60n

Janice Turner mentions both Beira's place and the Scottish cour ruling in her column today
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0caeb050-7bed-11ed-bcd8-855e06175970?shareToken=7b020b0920b4aac11f8629466675afa6

Early reports had indicated that the service may still be open to trans people despite suggestions to the contrary, but that no longer seems to be the case.

Only if you forget that female people can also be trans I presume.

I suspect it won't be useful to people TQ+ of either sex, since a female who does not wish to identify as female or name herself as such would not wish to use a service exclusively for biological females.

However a well known approach is to send in a TM on the grounds of stupid, soft women being manipulated this way, and once one TQ+ person is in then use them as a lever to force males into the space. It's this calculatedly grim.

ALL the services are gagging to prioritise TQ+ people of any and all sexes and agree there are as many sexes as the listener wishes them to say, to deny reality and biology and make up law to their hearts' content. This one single frigging space can be left alone by them.

There is no reason for all this ugly behaviour save for sheer dog in the manger, 'I don't want those females to have anything at all unless they bow down to males'

I'd also quote the wise words of the leader of the lesbian group the other day where the group told a TM that they were a group focused on identifying by female biology and were therefore not the right place for someone who by being TQ+ does not share that belief. And kindly signposted them to a local group that offered them the exact same service based on the belief that gender trumps sex.

Many of them will grow up.

Hopefully they will never need the service, but it will be there for them.

No matter how much hate they through at others now, women will be there for them if they need it.

It's what we do.

It may be useful to look at Tinsel 's thread on the whole fatted calf thing. I found that a very useful dig to my thinking.

Yes, absolutely, there is a big fear amongst sane women with a grip that we are about to see a generation of highly distressed women who identified for a while as TQ+ and may regret the harm they did their bodies. They will absolutely need services, and it will be the race formerly known as female before hostile colonialism and cultural genocide, who will pick up the pieces. Because no one else will, and it seems to be only us left with the capacity to 'care for others' and not just mean ourselves and our personal mates/anyone who usefully advances our personal agenda.

However those women have nothing to do with the group of women JKR's service is for, and those women should not be yet again relegated to second place behind the ever important first priority of transitioners.

This one, single service is for female people. Female people are enough all by themselves. Their needs are as valid as anyone else's. They are important enough to have a service that focuses entirely on them and their need and keep them as the core brief.

They do not and should not have to budge up and broaden the brief away from them and their needs in order to be permitted to exist.

There will be other services needed for other people. Those services should be created and supported. But not this service. This service already has a clientele in desperate need because of them being always so very very much less important than transitioners.

On reflection - and again thank you Tinsel - I'll add that I mean that I have a lot of compassion for a female person who may come to feel, as for example Keira Bell does - that they were let down by adults and services such on an ideology, and who are trying to find a way to live with a body that has been harmed or changed in a way they are distressed by. Fertility loss and motherhood is likely also to be a source of pain and distress, and God knows women here would understand and are familiar with supporting other women.

But this is not a 'saviour' thing, and from growing experience I'm quite prepared that such an offer may well be angrily rejected. This may turn out to be a group of people with a very clear idea of what they want and who they want it from. It'll be a case of seeing whether or not that particular group of women wish to ask for help from other women like me. And if not, that's nothing to do with me, I have plenty to be going on with with women who are clear about their birth sex and biology, and who have all the whacking great need you find all over this site that is specifically rooted in the biological reality of living in a female body.

Those females and caring about them is the priority.

Wtf just happened to the font? I'm over posting aren't I? I've broken the thread....