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 the first instance I've seen of a gender critical organisation explicitly using the "legitimate and proportionate" exclusion in the EA2010. I suspect it would stick if there was a court case, though being more specific in the FAQ might help. It is certainly an example of someone putting money where there mouth is instead of just undermining existing provision.

As a positive outcome, I look forward to gender critical women leaving alone the vast majority of providers which include transgender people.

If women have equity of provision, believe me we'd be fucking thrilled 🙄

It's the 'including female people currently excluded for the crime of not being able to use mixed sex spaces' that providers are failing at. Inclusion not exclusively meaning TQ+ males.

As a positive outcome, I look forward to gender critical women leaving alone the vast majority of providers which include transgender people.

And let's hope the extremists in the T movement refrain from scrawling misogynistic graffiti on the building, nailing dead rats to the door, and dressing up like thugs in balaclavas to protest raped and abused women finally having a women-only space to use.

undermining existing provision.

Two of the women setting up this service have decades of experience of exactly that 'existing provision'. Women made services for rape survivors ourselves, fighting for funding and safety and the right to carve out spaces where women were safe from males. Because 98% of rapes and sexual assaults are carried out by males, and the huge majority of victims are women.

It's not women that's undermined survivor provision.

We don't actually need that advice. The Explanatory Notes to the Equality Act 2010 include a support group for female survivors of male sexual violence as one example where it is legitimate and proportionate to exclude a man with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment from the group, because otherwise the women might not attend.

IOW self-exclusion is a) directly mentioned here as b) an expected (and so common) reaction of survivors and c) so their discomfort at the presence of such a man matters enough to justify his exclusion.

Sadly it's not the first instance where women have watched born males appropriate and colonise provision created and fundraised by women for women. Rape Crisis and other services for women were developed by women back in the 80s. Little did we think that getting government funding would result in these women centred services being handed over to men to 'reframe" women's trauma to serve their own financial and "other" interests.

Great to see an organisation that will remain truly women centred.

As a positive outcome, I look forward to gender critical women leaving alone the vast majority of providers which include transgender people.

We won't. The other services are government funded. The Scottish Government has an obligation to provide services that meet the needs of female survivors for a female-only therapeutic environment.

This can be provided by making minor adjustments to existing services without denying men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment who have experienced sexual violence the support they themselves need.

This is done by offering parallel services, not one mixed one.

Costs no money, denies no one service, meets the therapeutic needs of all survivors.

It's just not done because the umbrella services have put their ideology over and above the women they are paid to support.

And I for one won't stop working until these services remember their obligations to the women who make up more than 95% of their clients.

Why would we do that? You think that one provision in one part of the UK should cover the whole of the UK? Not a chance sunshine.

This is so JKR.
She sees the problem and takes the time to put together a real solution.
We all know what a massive fuck you this is . No need for women to reframe their trauma now.
Thank you Jo!

When there’s a women only provision in every area then we can leave the others for Trans and non Binary people

Did Dad just say “stop moaning, you’ve got one”?

I am struggling to understand the anger at this announcement.

This is taking no services away from anyone, but providing an option for those who may already be self excluding because of a male presence.

You start to question why it seems so critical for some that they get access to this resource.

Not validation surely ?

I really hope there is a legal challenge to this.

GC cases are great, but we need a tranwoman to claim discrimination here I think.

Even if they win, it will escalate the issue to those woman who don't really give it any thought at the minute.

He did 🤣🤣🤣🤦‍♀️

I don't, particularly. Can't they just be left alone to support the victims?

Can't men just stop raping? I know it's a big ask.

There shouldn't be a requirement for thus centre.

But there is.

They are not going to be left alone.

You only have to look at twitter.

Yes, Scotland is covered by the EA, but unfortunately the Scottish Government are not too fussed about listening to the EHRC.

Thanks, just wanted to be sure.

So that means not just funders, but those running support services have made a choice not to use that provision.

And this started to happen long before the more recent high profile statements, getting women blocked on twitter etc..

It shows that the decades when trans / queer ideology colonised women's services has been sucessful ie that providers themselves dont understand that there is an issue.

Were it any other provision of service that government grants were not funding and an individual stepped in, the questions being asked would be why has an individual had to pay for what the state should be supplying?

And hard as it is to swallow, the SNP are in fact playing catch up in their pursuit of ammending the GRA. I doubt they really care, but they genuinely think it is a vote winner and will make them look more progressive than Westminster. And of course signifies that women as a class are just not a concern of politicians.

What we need to be doing, but maybe not on a public forum, is how women who support basic women's rights can take back women's services from the trans cuckoos who have occupied women's spaces.

Quite.

The male issues with coercive control and entitlement is writ large. Sex based issue.

Dammit looks like I did too good a job on shining the twatsignal. Sorry girls.

.

Does anyone know what Beira means?

I am sure JKR didn't choose it at random.

Arabella To be fair I think that any one of the feminists here could have analysed and made the links on WH better, and explained the situation for those who somehow have missed what is going on.

Celtic mythology.

Mam to all gods and goddesses.

You're having one of them days aren't you!

In Gaelic (Irish, Scottish and Manx) myth, the Cailleach (Irish: [ˈkal̠ʲəx, kəˈl̠ʲax], Scottish Gaelic: [ˈkʰaʎəx]) is a divine hag and ancestor, associated with the creation of the landscape and with the weather, especially storms and winter. The word literally means 'old woman, hag', and is found with this meaning in modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic,[1] and has been applied to numerous mythological and folkloric figures in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man.[2] In modern Irish folklore studies she is sometimes known as The Hag of Beara, while in Scotland she is known as Beira, Queen of Winter.

Here here