Times article Mridul Wadhwa placed on 'leave' in May.

[Mollyollydolly]

Well they kept that quiet.

Archive version of The Times article below.

"The chief executive of a rape crisis support centre has been put on leave pending an investigation into its “Kafkaesque” treatment of staff.

Mridul Wadhwa, a man who identifies as a woman, was sent home in May by the board of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) after being identified as the “invisible hand” behind a “heresy hunt” designed to force out Roz Adams, a counsellor with gender-critical views.

The outcry over Wadhwa’s behaviour intensified following the sentencing this week of Cameron Downing, a coercive and manipulative male sex offender, who identified as non-binary and claimed to have received extensive support from ERCC."

archive.ph/y5f2L#selection-2217.0-2225.235

It's more that if they were claiming to support everyone, why were they making a big deal about not having any men working for them?

Thanks to all posters who have put together the timeline of changes in ERCC.

There's lots of talk in the voluntary and charity sector about mission drift ie that you dont stay alert your organisation can "drift" from it core aims.

What I am not aware of is how earily an organisation can be hijacked or cuckoo-ed. eg the Feminist Library.

Or maybe in the instance of the ERCC that younger women are if not more ruthless, so absolute certain that their politics is better and more just than the politics of the dinasours, that they have no qualms about achieving a victory for "their side". Even if it is at the expense of the actual beneficiaries that the organisation is for.

As an after thought maybe the timeline of changes to the constitution should be compared to when and how much money came via the SNP.

ie not mission drift or hijacking but funders basically undermining the independence of groups by insisting they behave in accordance with the politics of the funders.

iirc, a fair number of posters mentioned the inexperience of the board members and their relative youth with compassion but also some understanding as to why this is a disastrous mix for a board.

When you add in to this mix, the relentless targeting of charities by transactivists... Anything devoted to women or children accused of transphobia if they retain sex based language, fail to centre trans in everything they do and being relentlessly bullied for any independent thinking that centres women or children. Just look at what happened to women's gynae cancer charities.

It's no wonder that women - especially younger women - look at it all and decide to comply.

I only noticed it when you pointed it out, but you are totally right.

And that after all the "people who menstruate" and "pregnant people" when it came to the reports on lead and arsenic in tampons and period underwear.

Never forget the success of the TRAs is that it is built on the far older, and far more wide ranging MRA culture

It's far more insidious and successful, too. It was always fine to criticise or outright mock MRAs, PUAs, incels etc. Governments and institutions weren't captured by them. Women weren't sacked, arrested, banned, for speaking against them.

YY @Catsmere

Women weren't sacked, arrested, banned, for speaking against them.

Not as overtly as used to happen in the past but thinking that women are treated equally is just not what is happening.

The TRAs get away with being so openly hostile against women because to MRAs this is there culture. They are enjoying this younger brasher branch of men's rights going all out to undermine women, but overall it is MRAs that are in charge of the institutions the TRAs are using to attack women. And as such could stop this use of the police etc.. But they dont. Because they see woman as being less worthy of respect.

The TRA culture that is so overtly hostile to women could never have suceeded without the fact that society as a whole is hostile to women.

A society that valued women would never have allowed the attack on women's rights that TRAs promote every day.

So for instance a group that is some attacked the rights of Black communities in the same would never (well apart from a few) have gone unchallenged by the establishment.

It is because the victims of this are women.

The context of this statement was fascinating, wasn't it?

The insistence that 'rape victims need to reframe their trauma' was solely so that they could not escape or refuse consent to men who wished to be in this job and have access to them. It was a statement in fact that women, who had been harmed and abused by men, must in seeking help put the needs and wishes and experiences of other men above themselves, their trauma, their distress, their consent. As the price of being helped. By men who had taken over the women's service and redirected it to primarily serve the needs and feelings of said men.

This by a male who quite intentionally went to get this job that had been specifically reserved for women only, and when this went to court, sent women in to bat for him.

The true horror of it is quite boggling.

I’m so glad I managed to avoid donating to the ERCC when someone was fundraising at my work. How terrible that such an important charity is in such a mess. This wouldn’t have happened if more people had focused on the women the service is for rather than their own egos.

Thanks for sharing. Agree ERCC have kept MW's suspension quiet, especially given the profile of the tribunal. Hope they are now getting watertight employment law support, I think they will need it.

And isn't that the huge question at the heart of all of this? Why does a man's feelings of gender, which by the very existence of trans women are undenably something that is not driven by sex, qualify him to be treated as if he were the opposite sex?

I wasn't referring to systemic misogyny, but to the specific movements of MRAs, incels etc, which were being openly mocked online a decade ago. We didn't get attacked by corporations or governments for pointing and laughing at those men, but the moment they claim to be women, it's a different story. I'm all too well aware that systemic misogyny has never gone away, that women are not liberated from it, and that it's the basis of this movement, which is busy undoing what gains we've made.

It's serving up women who have been sexually abused to another abuser for his gratification.

Not sure if this has been posted but (again sadly) a very well worded and disected report on the whole sorry situation by a right wing paper.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13664689/EUAN-McCOLM-Vulnerable-women-let-gender-zealots-blame-want-forget-not.html

The facts aren't new, but shows that the press can when it wants perfectly well understanding the basis of women only services, and how political ideologues can totally corrupt services for vulnerable women.

But as always nothing like this from the Guardian.

The insistence that 'rape victims need to reframe their trauma' was solely so that they could not escape or refuse consent to men who wished to be in this job and have access to them. It was a statement in fact that women, who had been harmed and abused by men, must in seeking help put the needs and wishes and experiences of other men above themselves, their trauma, their distress, their consent. As the price of being helped. By men who had taken over the women's service and redirected it to primarily serve the needs and feelings of said men.

This by a male who quite intentionally went to get this job that had been specifically reserved for women only, and when this went to court, sent women in to bat for him.

The true horror of it is quite boggling.

It is, but then you look at the kind of man who laughs at rape survivors in parliament and throws a tantrum and flounces when his party votes for a bill which would give women single sex treatment, rather than by "gender" so including males, after they have been raped. When the same man works in a rape crisis organisation.

But yes, I agree it is still fucking boggling.

Thank you for this. It’s mind boggling, and very chilling.

Let him get one.

He is, and always will be, a man!

Quite. The experience of a woman is not changed in the slightest by whether or not a man is an owner of a piece of paper.

The unfortunate thing is that governments and corporations love to insist that these pieces of paper do make men women, and simultaneously Better and Much More Vulnerable women, at that.

yes. It needs to be repeated a whole lot.

Here is a man who wishes me to get undressed with him, and his agendas are quite various.

Here is a man who wishes me to get undressed with him, and his agendas are quite various AND he has a nice piece of paper.

What is different about my experience of being distressed and unwilling to take my clothes off as both these men would like, for their benefit? The paper makes no difference at all to me in that situation. That piece of paper is about a relationship with the state: it has absolutely no relevancy regarding impact on women, or the morality of permitting men to put women into this position of subordination and distress, or exclusion. And whether or not a piece of paper exists, it is perfectly possible to provide additional spaces for those who are not happy with their sex based space, without harming women and taking their resources.

Are there no checks and balances to this bloody process whatsoever?
Will he really be entitled to one for the asking when his agenda is as clear as the nose on your face? 🤯

It also is when you look at the kind of man who has interest in the orgasms of women during rape too (if I remember correctly). I mean, that really should have been a red flag right there.

Absolutely. Apart from the paperwork, which is changing your name on bills, the only bit open to discretion is to get a doctor to sign it off.

And given gender dysphoria is an entirely self-reported condition, how can they not? The argument being that no amount of dodginess means someone can't have gender dysphoria, I'm guessing.

One of the whistleblowers at the Tavistock said they were pretty certain that the reason a dad wanted their child to be given puberty blockers was to preserve them in a childlike state for predatory purposes.

And yet they were still referred.