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. 🌟

This is freaking amazing.

Depressing in a way though - just think of how all the money rape crisis centres in general could be used if only men could just stop with the raping.

The more I think about it, the more brilliant I think it is.

Firstly, it’s going to provide a much needed service for women and girls, guaranteed male free. It’s going to do that whatever happens, and free from political interference. If this were all it achieved, it would be laudable, credible and enough.

Secondly, she has put her money where her mouth is and cemented and underlined what she has said she has being doing all along- standing up for the rights of women and girls where she perceived there to have been a need. You cannot now say that her motives are other than what she says they are, because she has sunk her money and her time into this, put her name to it, and made it happen. If she were merely motivated by spite or bigotry, this wouldn’t be what she would do. This is the stuff her legacy will be built from, it really is.

Thridly, by creating the service, she’s underlined the urgent need for such a service, which is inevitably going to lead to people saying “but doesn’t this exist already?”, which indeed it damn well should, and used to, but is far from guaranteed anywhere in the UK, having been substantially eroded by the drive to “open up” womens services to people who aren’t women. This realisation may well embolden other womens services to return to core purpose. Let’s face it, we’re unlikely ever to reach oversupply of support combatting VAWG

Fourthly, she’s inviting a legal challenge from bad faith actors. Let them try!

Just phenomenal. I admire her more than words can say.

Great post @Sophoclesthefox 👏

Absolutely Soph!

I can envisage other centres linked to it popping up here and there in the future.

Trans rights activists need to put their own money where their mouth is.

Yes, quite apart from it standing alone as a place for women, it's also going to demonstrate to all the other previously women only spaces, exactly how you can exclude man, however they identify.

There will be a lot of public information about 'a proportionate means to a legitimate aim', and all the single sex exemptions in the equality act. It's just going to highlight every single other women's space that they can, indeed, be women only.

One of the responses to that Twitter thread, 'why are you all such creeps?', is another bit of sunlight that is going to be bouncing around, now.

They do need to do that.

They don’t, though.

I find that very interesting. The order of play is always- take something over, and if you can’t do that, destroy it. It’s never “build it yourself”.

In the future, when reality returns, there will be JKR statues celebrating the great author and advocate for women

I find that very interesting. The order of play is always- take something over, and if you can’t do that, destroy it. It’s never “build it yourself”.

Bloody toddlers.

I think that's unfair on toddlers, tbh.

Actually, that's being quite mean to toddlers.

Oh, cross post!

They don't want these centres. They want the validation of using women's centres.

Willoughby said it them self. Perfectly acceptable mixed sex toilet at the airport, but they walked miles out of their way to use the women's, for validation. Then boasted about it on Twitter.

And they wonder why she's done it 🙄

Yes cross post!

But it's tantrum behaviour.

Quite datun.

When's that narcissism trans test out?

(Ref: Groundbreaking news: hold onto your hsts www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4696294-groundbreaking-news-hold-onto-your-hsts)

Thank you for sharing this. I've just listened.

Absolutely appalled by that statement from Scottish rape charities. So pointed, so unnecessary, so disingenuous and almost chilling. Made me feel horrible while listening to it.

Willoughby said it them self. Perfectly acceptable mixed sex toilet at the airport, but they walked miles out of their way to use the women's, for validation. Then boasted about it on Twitter.

Gawd, really? Pathetic. There’s the issue in a nutshell though.

A beacon in the darkness.

"So shines a good deed in a naughty world," as Shakespeare said.

This.

Amazing, amazing woman ❤️

A great piece by Susan Dalgety in The Scotsman (apologies if it has already been posted here): archive.ph/XH1b4

Coming up on LBC now...

I'm not even going to bother getting my hat out.

For a start, if there is a test that definitively proves there's a biological 'thing' causing trans feelings, there'll be Rage because there's a process, it's invasive, it's humiliating, and most of all risks that someone who feels trans may not actually prove to be on testing which is not where self ID wants to go at all. Gatekeeping and boundaries, huge thumbs down. As on twitter yesterday, it's all about feelings and being trans cos you want to, end of story.

Which is all fine.

Even with a biological marker however, that biological marker will not equal any right to be an absolute arse to female humans and remove their equality and access.

Ten biological markers still wouldn't justify being an arse to females.

Let females have their needs equally met to TQ+ male people and the problem's all over. But as JKR has proven today, even if TQ+ male people have 99.9999% of all the resources they will still throw themselves on the floor and scream if one dares to exist that they can't have too .

As is now being proven, there are those on Twitter, quite open about it, who think it's much better for raped women to go uncared for and without services, and women to die in abusive relationships than to ever indulge a female, in the worst days of her life, daring not to revolve around the inner life of less than 1% of male people.

That is a perfect quote for this!