He remains in post
Victoria Smith on trans activism versus anti-rape activism:
Roz Adams, a former ERCC caseworker, won her tribunal against the organisation for unfair dismissal, having been accused of transphobia for wanting to reassure clients about the sex of a colleague. The judgement was damning in its description of the “deeply flawed” way in which Wadhwa conducted the internal investigation. Nonetheless, at the time of writing, he remains in post. This is inexcusable.
Even now, there will be some who characterise the situation as one of balancing competing rights (so difficult!) or well-meaning activists going a little too far (so easy to do!). I would argue that it is far worse than that. While claiming to stand for the marginalised, Wadhwa has used his position to display an extraordinary level of callousness towards female victims of sexual violence. Traumatised women have been smeared as racists; they have been told to “rethink [their] relationship with prejudice”; they have been lectured on their “privilege”. This behaviour is too consistent to be accidental.
Calling it callousness is actually generous. It is callous but it’s also sadistic. Wadhwa isn’t just indifferent to women; he hates them.
This is a feature, not a bug, of modern-day trans activism. Trans-identified males such as Wadhwa and Morgane Oger, who waged war on Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter, are committed to controlling sexual violence support services in ways which allow their perceptions to dominate at all times…What Wadhwa, Oger and others — such as those opposing a current campaign for just one single-sex service in Brighton — are trying to do is control the feminist analysis of sex, power and female trauma. It would be bad enough if their sole concern was validation, but it is not. This is about shaping the political narrative of rape itself.
Look at it from their point of view. If you’re a man who somehow convinces people that he’s a woman trapped in a male body, you’d be a fool to waste the opportunity. “People think I’m a woman! What a golden opportunity to make it ok to rape women!!”
Anyone can be a victim of rape (though most victims are female, and under English law all perpetrators are male). I don’t doubt that some trans-identified males have been victims themselves, and as such require support and care. Shared victimhood is not, however, the same as a shared understanding of the politics of sexual violence.
It wouldn’t be, would it. The politics of sexual violence are different depending on what sex you are.
Trans activism is incompatible with feminism in general, but it is especially incompatible with anti-rape activism. In the aftermath of trauma, we need to be reminded who we are and that we matter. To be a woman is not to exist to be objectified, redefined, placed in question. It is simply to be a female human, whole, complete. Traumatised women need help to remember that. Anyone who finds such a thing offensive might well need help themselves, but of a different kind. What they should never be doing is presuming to offer it to others.
Let alone bullying them for rejecting the offer.
MRAs have long been arguing that men are raped more than women, and suffer more domestic violence. While men suffer more actual violence, the evidence doesn’t support the superlative claims. While believing this, at no point were they out there setting up clinics or self-help for men who suffered from such trauma. Now the TRAs are actively forcing women’s shelters to accept these men, quite a few of whom are violent themselves. Some of the violence men suffer is reciprocal violence, which adds a layer of problems to putting men in women’s facilities just because they’ve suffered violence.
Well, you see, if traumatized girls got that kind of help and support, they wouldn’t run away from their sex and into trans identification. Such help could be seen through the Genderist lens as being conversion therapy, meaning that single-sex facilities are literally anti-trans genocide.
I totally agree that transwomen who’ve been raped need access to good, competent and compassionate crisis services. And if the trans movement ever starts a push to actually give them such, I’ll be on board. After all, a transwoman who has been raped will have a serious case of cognitive dissonance, as, having finally acquired status of being seen as a woman under the law, they now suffer a massive trauma, one that comes often as part of the package of being seen as a woman in a patriarchal society. Had Madwha pushed to open a string of trans-friendly crisis centers in major population centers, he’d be rightly lauded for acting in his constituency’s best interest.
Instead, he has become part of a push meant to deprive women of safe spaces. Getting him out of that position won’t just be good for women (though that’s more than enough reason to do it), but it’d also be good for transwomen who actually need some crisis support.