Nixon has not, to this day, paid a cent
Julie Bindel on why abused women need women-only shelters:
My first ever volunteer post was back in 1980, at a Women’s Aid refuge for victims of domestic violence. I will never forget the sight of those women coming in through the doors, crying with desperate relief at having escaped abusive husbands; finding comfort in the company of other women who had experienced the same.
Those services saved many lives, Julie says, but now, between the Right defunding them and the Left forcing them to serve trans women, they’re in peril.
This is not actually [a] new problem. It may be a new front in the transgender turf wars in the UK. But Vancouver Rape Relief (VRR) a women’s support and campaigning NGO in Canada, has been victimised by transgender activists since the mid 1990s. Now after their long struggle, this small, grassroots, volunteer-led organisation is under threat of losing its funding.
I first heard of VRR in December 2003 when I saw a news report about a long-running legal battle that the organisation had with a transgender person, Kimberly Nixon.
In 1995 Nixon, a former airline pilot who had lived as a man until the age of 33, applied to VRR to train as a counsellor for women who had experienced sexual violence. Nixon was rejected because, since she had not had the experience of growing up as a girl, she would not understand the impact of male violence and misogyny on the lives of the women who sought support from VRR.
So she filed a formal Human Rights Complaint supported by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. VRR tried to appease her, to no avail.
Nixon rejected the offers, and pursued the group through various stressful and expensive legal proceedings until it was finally resolved in 2007. In 2009, the Supreme Court awarded VRR costs, but Nixon has not, to this day, paid a cent.
I didn’t know that.
What’s the difference between that and common or garden misogyny? I can’t see any, myself.
There’s another reason shelters need to be for women (adult human female people) only which I rarely see acknowledged.
Women escaping domestic violence* are especially vulnerable, because abusive men cannot bear to lose control. A woman is at greatest risk of murder after she leaves or when she has announced her intention to leave a violent man.
Men attempting to harm or coerce women who’ve left them are not at all above tracking them down and entering shelters.
This is one reason why dv shelters were sex segregated to begin with. Not because men are never victims of dv, or because women don’t care about them, but because it’s a well-known fact about abusers that they will stop at nothing to keep power over their victims.
* I realize the VRRWS focuses on rape relief, but as most rapists know their victims, this is relevant.
Jesusfuckingchristonascooter – what sort of Man wants to be employed counseling abused women? An abuser? One who couldn’t abuse, but can have vicarious hard on?
FFS sake, I spent a number of years forming and helping Men’s Groups NOT MRA’s), helping men better understand their emotions, helping them become better lovers, husbands, fathers, friends. Many of those men were hurting and needed a safe space were they could vent, heal and learn, and I am proud of some of the men we turned out.
And women need their places to do the same, to vent, to heal, and to progress. I think that I am a good man, but some days, just some days, I feel like burning it all down and leaving it to the women.
Odd, I thought there were legal repercussions for nonpayment of court mandated penalties. Worse, this is a man trying to wedge himself into a job wherein he counsels women that are specifically trying to escape the male sex for a while. This very fact not only proves his unfitness for the job, it also outs him as a man willing to harm women, and all so that he can feel validated in his choice to wear dresses.
Nixon wants to be an abuser of women.
FFS ROJ HOW DARE YOU PIP ME!