In Great Britain, despite the increase in domestic violence during the lockdown -one feminicide every 3 days, an average equal to the Italian one- two shelters for battered women were dismantled because they were not sufficiently "gender-neutral".
Brighton City Council declared to the body Rise which despite 25 years of reception and despite being trans-inclusive, still remains "much more accessible to women". To include 'both heterosexual and gay male survivors' municipal services will have to become 'non-gender'. Meanwhile in North Lanarkshire after 40 years of service Monklands Women's Aid lost public fundsdiverted to a body that also supports men.
A 2010 law only authorised shelters for women: a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that 95 per cent of the guests said they preferred separate spaces where they felt safe, supported and free to speak openly. Yet whatever women need Today, many refuges are afraid to openly declare themselves single-sex. They know that transactivists will denounce them as transphobic and attack them on social media. In Vancouver, Canada, the anti-violence centre was persecuted for its separatism, even a mouse nailed to the door. "It is like being in an abusive relationship"says the president of a shelter "you are constantly under threat".
In a debate in the House of Lords In recent days, former Labour Minister Philip Hunt denounced the fact that women-only anti-violence centres "fear the loss of funds and commissions'. Public and local authorities are heavily influenced by Stonewall fighting to abolish single-sex spacesTherefore, a shelter will lose points in a tender if it prioritises the needs of women.
Stonewall promotes 'gender-neutral' services because it denies the reality of biological sex. In this trans activists find allies in misogynist men who accuse feminists of exaggerating their denunciation of domestic abuse.
Anti-violence homes for women have accumulated decades of experience and expertise, but today they are object of iconoclastic fury. Those whose idea of activism is hashtags and Twitter pile-ons don't build services, they just destroy things, including places where women flee to save their lives. Places they will probably never need.
Janice Turner
(the original article here)
