Rape Crisis - staff consultation on women only/single sex spaces/services

[ArabeIIaScott]

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/about-us/women-only-spaces/

Good, clear questions, here.

'Many of our member organisations have asked RCEW to articulate a position on women-only services and trans inclusion. We seek to start that here.'

'We intend to design a consultation that enables us to hear many voices across our network on this issue. Early in 2024, we will launch a consultation to hear from staff and volunteers (including trustees) working at RCEW and our member Rape Crisis centres to understand whether they think RCEW can remain an organisation that welcomes multiple approaches on the delivery of services that are sex-based or gender-based, or whether they wish to see us adopt and promote a particular view.'

I wonder if they're going to ask for the views of rape survivors/service users, at any point.

I wonder if they're going to ask for the views of rape survivors/service users, at any point

This was exactly my thought when I read the first paragraph.

It looks like it's RCEW only. I hope they somehow restrict it to actual RCEW staff and trustees, so it can't be subverted.

I guess if they have pockets that want it all gender ie no boundaries, and others that know sex is key to rape trauma, they'll have to break up.

As someone on Twitter noted, what is crucial is that they are open and honest and clear with service users.

If a service is mixed sex, that needs to be very much understood.

Again notable that service users are not being consulted.

It's not difficult: you simply designate a proportional amount of spaces in the service as mixed sex within an umbrella term of 'woman' and others that are female only based on the general numbers of service users who are female and those who are male.

Women have a choice. As do the male people who have chosen to use the women's service. And women get to consent. And women are not excluded and left in dangerous, life threatening situations without help because everyone is more worried about miffed men than women's lives.

Will the consultation be anonymous, or will it be “who would like to volunteer to be burnt at the stake”?

This was my first thought too, along with wondering if they assume it will all go the way they want.

If they are genuinely wishing to know and do it anonymously, it will be very interesting to see the results.

In Scotland, the volunteers and workers who disagree with the trans-inclusive policy have left. I expect because they were made to feel unwelcome.

So I expect the result will be a ringing endorsement that a service set up for women by women will be excluding women by allowing men.

I was an early volunteer with Rape Crisis. The shite they come out with makes me weep.

I wouldn't expect anything less from organisations that are operating on very much a 'top down' basis. Bigoted victims need to be re-educated, as we all know.

Admittedly, that was RC Scotland.

if they don't plan on focusing on asking the women who've used their service rather than the staff and volunteers who've not been driven out by bigotry anti woman contexts then they are not fit to run rape crisis centres IMHO

Women literally built Rape Crisis centres - fund raised, found the accommodation, converted and decorated it on a shoe string, trained as counsellors and supported women.
Only to see this toxic ideology destroy what should be a woman centred service. No initiative in creating services for men - just (as with so much else) appropriation and destruction.

This is the tragedy.

They will have chased out anyone not of the One True Man Centred Faith, and there will be no diversity left of views or life experiences or perspectives. And we know several of the organisations now have men with direct skin in the game in positions of power and influence, very invested in forcing women's services to revolve around men without the faintest ethics, conscience or interest as to what happens to the vulnerable women they're paid to provide services to.

And where service users are not in hoc to captured funding groups and captured LA policies, and will speak directly about their needs and experiences, the service providers are.

Can anyone also see the useful hypocrisy going on? This political movement howls its head off about decisions and services should only be led and decided on by service users with the need in question, who should be regarded as the only experts. Until it's women who may come up with unhelpful lived experiences that present boundaries to the sexual freedoms of men.

I saw some comments about this of RCEW facebook page pointing out that as each service is autonomous and are self created, what they say or do will reflect that small group.

And like it or not, we are no longer in 1970s feminism when feminism was about women's sex based rights.

So given the passage of time and the massive inroads queer politics (the chief promoter of trans ideology) has made in suceeding generations, in some way its quite an achievement that there are any women only services. And where there are I suspect some staff, not forgetting that a lot of helplines are run by volunteers, probably have little understanding of the prinicple of women only services.

It was suggested that the only way change or rather revertion to orginal principles of Rape Crisis if more women who say they are gender critical got of twitter (and FWR?!) and joined their local rape crisis service.

From what I read of the RCEW brief it was hard to make out whether the association was responding to individuals who have felt unable to speak up in their local service and hope that by making it a centralised policy for groups that want to continue to be member so RCEW. This will put RCEW in a very different position to the one it has now ie a sort of top down service requiring members / associates to sign up to their policies, rather than now which is about best practice.

No doubt it will end up with 2 associations, one women only on principle (RCEW?) and another that will be formed that is trans inclusive, not doubt headed by Survivors Network.

And get which association will bet more funding?

Sorry couldn't correct type as edit function didn't appear:

And get which association will bet more funding?

And guess which association will bet more funding?

I think it's really disrespectful to trans people to include them in their aspirational sex group in this specific situation.

A transwoman is likely to experience rape in a very different way (especially if it's a heterosexual man reacting violently on discovering he's been "deceived") to women. And won't be offered a pregnancy test- that's a specific hell reserved for raped women.

I can't imagine a support group for men who've been anally raped would be helpful for a transman who's been vaginally raped (who will have had to take a pregnancy test) and is coming to terms with the fact that a man still saw her as a rapeable woman; the pronoun badge was no defence.

It just seems massively impractical to me not to provide specialist trans-specific services.

@IwantToRetire I share your concerns about funding. I don't share your thoughts about how to word this though "No doubt it will end up with 2 associations, one women only on principle (RCEW?) and another that will be formed that is trans inclusive, not doubt headed by Survivors Network."

I think we need to challenge the wording of 'trans inclusive' because this feeds into the propaganda which men's rights activists are trying to use which suggests that the other organisation is 'trans excluding'. In reality I don't give a stuff about the identity of people who use women's services provided they are actually real women.

I just don't want men in my spaces.

We want men excluded spaces, not trans excluded spaces.

My very first thought. As I recently did an online thing for my workplace that was "anonymous" yet I was asked to go further. So I wondered how they managed to single me out of an anonymous consultation. Turns out it wasnt anonymous at all. You could hear me from space. I was and still am very bloody angry about it.
I can imagine this consultation being of similar quality and respondents being too scared to put their real answers in. which makes it a mockery and waste of time.

That is true Winnading, unless your aim is to secure compliance with GI thinking, while looking open and consultative. Call me a cynic…

Unless they consult the service users ,this consultation will not give a true picture…more for the employees/ volunteers , many of whom are thoroughly captured

Or too frightened to speak their minds.

The 'inclusive' word really is being sent out in a negligee to walk the streets for men in this form of usage.

If your 'inclusion' just excluded a lot of the most vulnerable women from the women's provision, it won't matter how many fingers you cross behind your back. What you're doing is not inclusion. It's something a whole lot nastier, and you know it, because you're hiding behind a pretense of doing something 'righteous' and 'nice' to disguise the very ugly reality. You don't have the guts to be honest about your own beliefs or actions because you know they are wrong.

Hint: it's called Male Supremacism. There's probably a flag. There usually is.

What happens to a TW who has been vaginally raped? I can see a need for a TW RC service whether vagina/anus used in the attack, also gay men, but not at the expense of women.

Do you mean TM? A TM is female.

Anyone who has suffered a rape, of either sex or any choice of identity should have a quality service that is accessible to them, and provides support in the way that they need. .

Can the TQ+ political movement please extend the same generosity.

I think the problem is that most are posting in the belief that other women share your view point, and that rape crisis centres are some how a franchise, and that local women enter an agreement with RCEW to be a franchise member. They dont. Each service is a creation of those who do the work.

So like Survivors Network they offer services they believe are right ie trans inclusive. And if nobody else sets up a service in the area that is women only, then there isn't a women only service.

Added to which many Rape Crisis services have been offering services to men for years if not decades. As usual men couldn't be bothered to set up their own centres, but expected women to do the ground work. That is a different issue.

So quite honestly unless everyone on FWR, and those who follow WPUK, Sex Matters, etc., etc., start volunteering, and there are no local women who are gender critical and believe in women's sex based rights, nothing will change.

And, with the exception of IamSarah, I doubt many survivors would speak out or want to identify themselves as being victims of rape of sexual assault.

You can post as much as you like on a virtual forum that this or that is how things should be, but I'm afraid you will have to accept nobody is going to take any notice.

I started a thread about a VAWG manifesto because of the wording used https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4900356-vawg-is-a-gendered-issue-which-is-deeply-rooted-in-societal-inequality-it-is-violence-that-is-directed-against-a-woman-because-she-is-a-woman-or-that-affects-women-disproportionately as it fails to identify male violence as the core problem.

And no amount of saying they are captured, concerned about funding, will alter the fact that many women who work and volunteer in these organisations do believe this revisionist nonsense.

This is because the back lash against Women's Liberation has been sucessful.

Services can and will have funding withdrawn if they fail to provide for males.