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October 16, 2024 - 7:00am
Pity Sandy Brindley, chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS). Since October last year, she has been wrestling with the problem of defining “woman” within the context of providing support for survivors of sexual violence. That is despite a tribunal judge ordered Scotland’s national rape crisis service to enforce a clear definition of “woman” across all its centres.
This might not seem very difficult. I’m certain, for instance, that the stranger who assaulted me wasn’t a woman, despite never having had the chance to ask him his gender identity. Then again, I’m probably not as much of an “intersectional feminist” as Brindley — that’s “intersectional” not in the helpful sense of recognising that women experience intersecting oppressions, but in the off-the-wall one of deciding that “being a woman” can intersect with “not being one”.
Earlier this year, there was reason to hope that ideological capture of rape crisis services by trans activists might have been coming to an end in Scotland. In May Roz Adams won her claim for constructive dismissal against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC), having endured a “heresy hunt” after requesting clarity for abuse survivors regarding the sex of support workers. Last month, a damning report into ERCC led to the resignation of Mridul Wadhwa, the male CEO who told female rape survivors requiring single-sex support to “please expect to be challenged on your prejudices”.
This week Adams was awarded £35,000 in damages, a substantial amount in recognition of the hounding she suffered. By this point, one might hope to have seen plenty of fulsome, unqualified apologies, starting with those at the very top of RCS. Yet, as Adams has noted, there has been no real taking of responsibility, let alone any attempt to question the ideology which led to this crisis. On the contrary, statements offered by RCS perpetuate the very obfuscation that Adams identified. Even now, RCS and Brindley simply do not get it.
“It is important,” RCS’s website states, “that survivors can make informed choices about the services they access”, before adding that “at present, how women only spaces are defined is decided by individual rape crisis centres.” They might as well add “Ha! Gotcha! Don’t go thinking that when we say ‘woman only spaces’ we mean anything at all.”
If there has been any movement at all within RCS, it has been from total denial to performative ignorance. We all know what a woman is, and we all know why many women seek single-sex spaces in the aftermath of sexual assault. It should not be remotely difficult for someone such as Brindley to defend their boundaries and choices. Yet instead she makes meaningless statements about “recognising different women have different needs”, as if everyone will forget that if the need is for a woman-only space, you must still be clear about what a woman is.
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SubscribeObfuscation has been such a successful strategy for trans activism that they will never give it up willingly.
So long as they continue to receive funding from government to support their activist-careers, they will continue to destroy women’s rights and services in pursuit of their ideology.
In regard to another story on Unherd about a foetus and abortion, calling the killing of a foetus/baby murder, I received this response;
Nope. No more so than removing an appendix is “murder”.
So good luck with defining a woman. And good luck with anything having a definition from here on.
Yes – it is an ideological fight between groups of people who seem more concerned with the rightness of their own dodgy ideas than about either truth or practicality. And perhaps that’s not a bad thing if it keeps them occupied.
Is it really any surprise to anyone that these organisations are filled with strange people from the fringes of society who get involved in ideological bun fights?
The side defending women-only services for rape victims is not engaging in an “ideological bun fight”.
The article above is full of ideological set phrases which reveal an unthinking commitment to a now rather dated ideology. I’m not taking sides. I’d like to see less ideology and more professionalism. And yes – filtering out of people who just have an ideological axe to grind.
I took the time to look at the crisis scotland website. Some of the educational materials are a little too ideological, but by and large the approach is pretty sane. Specifically it does not foreground the politics of …, male power and female subjugation etc etc – but focussed on offering a support service to people who have had a terrible experience.
And perhaps that’s the real issue for the author: just not enough old style feminist politics.
Hmmm… and one might wonder what your ‘real’ issue is. It’s perfectly clear what the author has written, except to those with some other agenda, whatever it might be…
I’m surprised that during an attempted rape the victim’s first reaction is not to ask the attacker’s identity! Who would have imagined this?
You joke but we are not a million miles away from a world where a rape victim is more likely to be punished for misgendering their assailant than a rapist is for assaulting their victim.
You’ve got to hand it to them, trans activists do a grand job of repurposing the feminism slogans of yesteryear. “Biology is not destiny” indeed.