Women's Aid Swansea being pressured to cater to men

[BlessedKali]

I have a young female friend who works for Women's Aid in Swansea. They support the prostitutes in Swansea - highly vulnerable young women.

I have been watching this (previously woke/social justice / friend of the 'queer' community) peak, as she is understanding the material reality of womanhood.

The other day she told me that Women's Aid are being offered extra funding by the Welsh Government, but they must accept male volunteers/workers and also cater to men.

She told me she was so worried as the vulnerable and traumatised service users consider women's aid a safe space, and the dynamic will change if men are around, even in the offices.

She then told me that the Women's Aid in Port Talbot (now called THRIVE) has accepted men and is now in a swanky modern building and has loads of money.

Meanwhile Women's Aid in Swansea is in a run down house and struggling for funding.

WHY THE FUCK ARE THE WELSH GOVERNMENT BRIBING ORGANISATIONS THAT WORK WITH VULNERABLE WOMEN, TO ACCEPT MEN???!!!!!

What in the hell is happening to safeguarding??

This could be identifying for your friend. Swansea is small. I would rewrite thread but not mention any individuals.

Difficult situation that too many women's groups are having to face.

Have they contacted or are they affiliated to Welsh Women's Aid?

From skim reading their web site they do seem to refer to women throughout
welshwomensaid.org.uk/what-we-do/live-fear-free-helpline/

And without going into all the details of the EA etc., there is nothing to stop the Welsh Government putting out to tender a proportional amount of money for a service to support men.

There is no way an existing service for women should be held to ransom like this. As the funder has an obligation to fund according to need, and also if (as per the EA which uses DV as an example of a need for single sex services) they consider their service to women is best in a women only environment, they shouldn't be undermining them.

I am not in Wales but it would be good to think that their local MP would stand up for them or if necessary write to Kemi Badenoch. Not sure of the Members of the Senedd. Aren't they pushing for trans inclusion?

I think the blame lies firmly with the Labour Party just as in Scotland it lies with the SNP (supported by Labour and LibDems and Greens and opposed only by the vast majority of the Scottish Conservatives).

David T Davies Conservative MP for Monmouth may be willing to raise issues on behalf of all women in Wales if your friend writes to him.

I wonder how many women's refuges were lost to this type of "what about the men?".

Contacting the MP does seem to be a very constructive way forward.

Curious to know how many women the new Port Talbot facility is supporting compared to numbers before its face lift. Could be a really useful case study as the impacts on women who no longer come forward to use a service after it being opened to men are generally dismissed

Would the Port Talbot facility be a charity or a public body?

An FOI could be interesting but these only apply to public bodies.

This has been going on for well over a decade. Women's Aid groups in lots of Welsh local authority areas were being put in a position where they needed to provide some services to men to get funding.

There was a bit of a push back from the DV sector when the Welsh domestic abuse Bill was changed to focus on women and girls after originally being titled a 'gender-based violence' Bill by Welsh Government. Since then the sector has become almost totally captured. Swansea Women's Aid hasn't been a genuinely women-only service for years since they don't put women's needs for a single sex refuge and services before their allegiance to the TWAW mantra.

It's probably arguable that they aren't even feminists. It would be interesting to know how many prostituted women they are helping to leave sex work. Word is they mainly hand out condoms these days, although I hope that's a harsh characterisation. It seemed to be a ground-breaking project originally.

I know this stuff is happening to women's services across the UK, but it seems sad and really sickening that many of the Welsh feminists who knew what a woman is 25 years ago are now enabling this. Are they worn down or do they have no backbone? Can't understand how real feminists could do this and also be so disparaging about other women who believe that biological sex is more significant than how you dress and self-identify.

Welsh Women’s Aid has been ‘trans inclusive’’ for some time - accepting ‘self identified women’. It’s in their policies. There are zero female-only dv or rape facilities in Wales.

I’m guessing this hasn’t been realised in reality until now though and it’s clearly come as a shock to your friend. It’s really sad for any females who need the service and all Welsh Govt funded organisations have gone down the same path. They are even more gender befuddled than their Scottish counterparts.

Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour MP for Gower, is a great defender of women's single-sex spaces, so she might be interested, though Swansea is outside her constituency. The Welsh government is fully captured, unfortunately.

Sadly the project around prostitution in Swansea doesn’t exit a single woman either.

@EnfysPreseli is right - the focus is on handing out condoms. I’ve seen this myself

Although with more money and funding/staff comes the ability to meet the needs of more service users, so there might be a misrepresnetation of how many women are being supported after the new funding that could imply that because men are included, more women are happy to be supported.

I'll never find it, probably about a year ago, but someone tweeted a picture of the queue for a women's shelter somewhere in Canada, possibly Vancouver. There was a long queue of obvious men and one confused looking elderly Chinese lady. 🤷‍♀️

An eye opening picture.

It would be very hard to establish how many women are not approaching services because they now aren't women only. I think the general public would just assume that Women's Aid is single-sex anyway. If women aren't coming forward you'd perhaps get a picture from women who end up in hospital or from friends and family of women who don't survive. There's plenty of evidence of the value of keeping services women-only though - from service users and the services themselves.

@bellac11's point about more staff and funding (and publicity) making it difficult to isolate the impact is a very good one. I think until now there haven't been many transwomen who would be accessing services like this anyway, so it was mainly low-risk virtue signalling to get the money. That's now almost impossible to roll back from, not least because many younger staff are indoctrinated and have little or no real life experience or understanding of second wave feminism.

I think what has happened in Wales has happened across the UK.

The big difference, and this isn't always made clear, is whether services to men are a separate service. ie women seeking support or a refuge space would not have any contact with men.

Similarly RCCs have been offering services to men, which some make clear are separate.

It is never clear why men aren't expected to set up and run their own services. The presumption that women should be service providers and men the beneficiaries.

But this all still comes back to the behaviour of the funders. If the local authority has as part of its budget providing support to victims of domestic violence and sexual violence, they are obligated to fund proportionally. So even if one service has said they will work with men, they shouldn't get better funding.

Surely if this is happening then shouldn't they be reported to the EHRC for failing to act equitably?