Surely Mridul Wadhwa has to go now? Report into ERCC out.

[GargoylesofBeelzebub]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13842189/Edinburgh-Crisis-Centre-designed-protect-women-suffered-sexual-violence-condemned-failing-damning-report.html

Pretty scathing. Wadhwa cannot stay surely?

This competitive edginess is about money and about trying to stay relevant to keep getting funding and about being the "coolest" kid in the room.

And the reason why certain disciplines in academia are full of this "queering" bollocks is because it results in grants for old rope, prestige amongst other academics in the discipline for "progressive" thinking, and relative freedom from being challenged because of the ability to brand as "bigots" anyone who objects and "not intelligent (or learned) enough" anyone who says that it doesn't make sense. There's a huge amount of "emperor's new clothes" gaslighting of dissenters going on.

The terrifying thing is that this has seeped into some pretty major scientific journals.

I wanted to say this somewhere and I don't particularly want to start a new thread so this will do.

I'm away at a conference for work and last night I got talking to a colleague from a different office. She's a lesbian in her 40s. After a few drinks we were talking about politics and she told me she had "strong views about women's rights", which sounded like a bat signal to me. I asked her what those views were and she said, "Basically I think JK Rowling has got a point."

We then had a very interesting discussion. She hadn't heard of the LGB Alliance, she thought mermaids were just mythical creatures and she didn't know what peaking means.

I'm very hungover this morning but feeling reassured that the whole world hasn't gone completely insane.

So the dilemma of "queer theory" is exactly the same dilemma as that of trans-identified males of the autogynephilic variety: The second you get what you want it becomes undesirable because it can no longer be experienced as trespass into a receding territory of "really" being a woman.

Both groups have an unadmitted hunger for "the real", and for real boundaries that give flavour to their violation of socially constructed (and allegedly socially constructed) boundaries

Basically they're getting a boner from being a cock in a henhouse.

So the dilemma of "queer theory" is exactly the same dilemma as that of trans-identified males of the autogynephilic variety: The second you get what you want it becomes undesirable because it can no longer be experienced as trespass into a receding territory of "really" being a woman.

Yes, and that's what the bekinders don't yet understand. There will never be any concessions that satisfy these people. No amount of pandering will ever be enough. They're also in competition with each other to go further and be more shocking and outrageous and get more attention.

They talk about AGP and Porn and how men need more and more in the film Trans Widows through the looking glass,

Looking at this film and seeing the rapists in France and how this was all linked and facilitated by social media along with the Incell, Andrew Tate, increasing mysogonistic and appalling reporting in main stream press, together Im glad I wont be on this earth in 30 years time, until then Ill be fighting back tooth and nail.

https://x.com/JournalistJill/status/1838544394103775301/photo/1

Rape survivor's open letter to Brindley. Heartbreaking. I hope she is okay and has decent support around her.

That is a hard read. I hope that she gets that support that she needs.

That's a hard letter to read. It's also on wings over Scotland's website too. What a shit show this whole thing has been.

Oh my god that poor woman. What a fucking mess.

If SB barnacles on and holds her position after this, I don't know when RCS will recover from this reputational damage.

If she won't go voluntarily, it's time for the trustees and NEDs to oust her to restore confidence in the entire sector, never mind RCS.

I don't think this article from the Scotsman as been linked yet

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/rape-crisis-scotland-chief-sandy-brindley-victims-phone-numbers-lost-moral-compass-4792958

Thank you for posting that.

Another good article.

Although...

"Ms Brindley leads an organisation which allowed a trans woman without a gender recognition certificate, Mridul Wadhwa, to be appointed as chief executive of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC)"

... this repetition of 'no GRC' is getting worrying.

it's nothing to do with a bloody piece of paper.

Yes, that piece of paper does not make any fucking difference. Especially worrying as getting one is going to.be made easier and whether a TW had one or not has to be keeped a secret anyway. If MW had kept their mouth shut instead of bragging about not having one to bask in his duppers delight would that have made what he did all Ok?

This is fucking insane! Surely an activist with a genuine cause would rejoice that their efforts had been ‘accommodated’, not be frustrated that makes it ‘difficult to remain radical and transgressive’! It’s so topsy-turvy. Surely the raison d’etre should be the goal, not the process of transgressing. My gob could not be smacked much further.

Depends whether your cause is 'improving things' or 'fucking things up'.

This transgressive aspiration of queer theory seems to be the allegedly leftist mirror image of the 'disruptive' aspirations of populist right-wing thinkers such as Dominic Cummings.

In both cases there is this idea that it is intrinsically progressive to challenge and upset some perceived set of received wisdom. On the alleged-left the received wisdom is conceived as socially constructed boundaries; on the right it is conceived as the product of a political establishment composed of elites.

In both cases, there is a mistrust of expertise. On the right Gove spoke that literally ("this country is sick of experts") and Cummings performed it in his politicised challenge to the civil service. On the alleged-left of queer theory it is expressed (for example) in the idea that you can critique biology not on the basis of biological research but on the basis of ideology.

Of course there is something to be said for shaking up received wisdom, but it isn't productive of new knowledge unless it is done from a position of sensitivity to evidence and reason. This is lacking in both right-wing 'disruptors' and allegedly left-wing queer theorists, who both rely on the populist assumption that expertise as such is suspect and that every alleged application of evidence and reason is distorted by some version of establishment bias.

What's needed, to advance knowledge, is a disciplined challenge to received wisdom, ie one that respects evidence. Where do we actually find that disciplined "queering"? We find it in the scientific method, which above everything involves challenging every hypothesis at every stage, subjecting then to interrogation, seeking to falsify them with new research and only then accepting them.

But the scientific method (Gove's expertise and the queer theorist's pre-post-modernism) is exactly what the populist disruptors of left and right want to undermine. Not surprisingly because it has the gratifying effect that from day one of your undergraduate class in gender studies or whatever you have greater insight than people with a huge, hard-won hinterland of knowledge.

What's needed, to advance knowledge, is a disciplined challenge to received wisdom, ie one that respects evidence. Where do we actually find that disciplined "queering"? We find it in the scientific method, which above everything involves challenging every hypothesis at every stage, subjecting then to interrogation, seeking to falsify them with new research and only then accepting them.

Yes!

What amazes me is that the left think they are immune to the rise of online jelly brained nonsense.

I very much like the expression “online jelly brained nonsense” and intend to use it myself at every opportunity.

Another good article, this time from For Women Scotland, who have been excellent at highlighting the issues surrounding ERCC and RCS overall.

https://forwomen.scot/24/09/2024/edinburgh-rape-crisis-rape-crisis-scotland-mridul-wadhwa-and-sandy-brindley/

There is a bit of an overlap with the collective crisis of faith the left had after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

So instead of pining for the collectives they took to desperately analysing episodes of Teletubbies to deconstruct class relations and declaring that Crossroads was in fact deeply subversive etc.

If anyone remembers Laurie Penny, very much the right side of history, pal of Owen Jones at the guardian and Queer ally par excellence, she was All About Foucault (father of post modernism and ultimately name checked a lot by Queer theorists) and didn't take kindly to ppl pointing out he went to north Africa mainly to molest the local kids

https://lauriepenny.substack.com/p/what-foucault-got-right

Thank you for the link. As ever, FWS have carefully researched the history and backed it up with links to evidence.

I do not see how Sandy Brindley's position - meaning both her arguments and her position at Rape Crisis Scotland - is tenable now that the mainstream press is taking an interest.

In the Times interview she specially praised the survivors who supported Rape Crisis Scotland over the survivors who needed something that Rape Crisis Scotland couldn't and wouldn't offer and who weren't going to say otherwise. Ouch.

When is she going to resign?