Take it away from them
This one had me holding my breath for a bit as I read. A council took funding away from a domestic violence shelter to give it to one “that caters for the needs of people with all the protected characteristics.” Sorry, wimz, you don’t have enough protected characteristics, bye!
Brighton and Hove City Council has defended the decision that cost a Brighton domestic violence charity a £5 million contract.
Senior councillors shared their shock when the situation was raised at a budget meeting.
And they promised to look into the decision that will lead to RISE being replaced by Victim Support and the social housing provider Stonewater.
RISE has run refuge and helpline services in Brighton and Hove for the past 26 years.
But now women escaping domestic violence will just have to live on the pier.
Today (Friday 19 February) councillors were told in a briefing that the bids to run the domestic violence and abuse support services were evaluated by officials from Brighton and Hove City Council as well as representatives of Sussex Police and the Office of the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner.
The briefing said: “The specification for the recommissioning of the services in Brighton and Hove and East Sussex was informed by a comprehensive series of engagement events with multiple community and third sector stakeholders, including RISE and other incumbent providers, between January and October 2019.
“The engagement identified the need for a broader focus on inclusive service provision that caters for the needs of people with all the protected characteristics.
Because women just don’t matter enough on their own, you see. Some of them deserve the violence, and all of them could deserve the violence, so let’s stop funding them and instead fund more glamorous “protected characteristics.”
“Equalities impact assessments (EIAs) were carried out for the redesign of all services and identified the need for a broader focus on inclusive service provision that caters for the needs of people with all the protected characteristics.
“A commissioned report found that currently contracted domestic abuse services are viewed as much more accessible to women and that current onsite provision is women-only.
“The EIAs highlighted the need for more support for both heterosexual and gay male survivors and also highlighted the specific barriers to service experienced by the trans community, with trans survey respondents noting that the type of support they wanted was not available.
“The tender specification for community services was therefore intentionally non-gendered and inclusive to all survivors of domestic and sexual violence and abuse.”
But we were careful to take away the funding from the original group, that serves mostly women, because women don’t get to have funding mostly for women. Women don’t count. Please try to get that through your heads…in fact come over here, you need a slap.
Domestic abuse survivors put together a website and started a petition which has been signed by more than 20,000 people in just six days.
Gotta go, I have a petition to sign.
My god, they’re just openly admitting that a shelter can’t be dedicated to one specific problem experienced by one slice of the population. ‘Women’ is only one characteristic, while ‘trans’ ‘women’ are two at once… therefore the female sex can’t have services to itself.
And now any woman wanting a safe harbour from the male sex in that region just had an option taken from her.
“The specification for the recommissioning of the services in Brighton and Hove and East Sussex was informed by a comprehensive series of engagement events with multiple community and third sector stakeholders”
My god, the language.
I read something which pointed out that the RISE Women’s Shelter had already agreed that TWAW, and so battered TIMs were allowed in. Not good enough.
Makes me wonder if letting in men was the nose of the camel. “Yes, you want to be inclusive. Here’s the next level.” All Lives Matter.
Wait. Did Morgane Oger move to Brighton and Hove?
Sadly, Oger doesn’t have a monopoly on this particular caper.
Ophelia, have you had opportunity to cover the saga of Mridul Wadwha?
My default, ground state, even while sleeping, is seething, toxic, barely-suppressed rage, but this made me particularly angry when I saw it yesterday.
Sastra, you are absolutely right. The shelter already accommodated TIMs, but they weren’t allowed in with the women who had been abused by penis-havers, so that wasn’t good enough.
My rage is mollified very slightly by the fact that senior councillors questioned the funding decision, clearly recognising that it was wrong. But then it is intensified about nineteen-fold by the fact that the decision does appear to have been a proper one, according to the council’s own rules. So not only was a disastrous decision made, the reasons for it are encoded in the rules for decision-making. And never mind who gets hurt as a result.
Yeah, but that probably only holds when it is women who are getting hurt.
Quite.
Seem like a waste of an entire domestic violence shelter, reserving it for Brighton’s small number of black lesbian disabled old muslim unmarried pregnant trans women. (Did I forget a protected characteristic?)
Catwhisperer: Your post reminded me of an old “Mission Residency Permit” from quite a while ago, in which the ability to live in The Mission in San Francisco required membership in various protected classes. Not, of course, any white kids or other privileged people. :)
Brian M – oppression bingo!