THREAD
We are glad to see many now saying that women must be listened to when they speak out about abuse or trauma. Sadly, for the past 2 years many of those same people, some in important positions, have treated with suspicion, hostility and disgust women with the most extreme /

forms of PTSD who have begged and pleaded with them to believe them when they say that they find male bodies triggering and terrifying. /

Rape crisis services promoted docs saying they shld be re-educated as bigots, health services circulated patient letters asking for female providers as evidence of "transphobia", MPs claimed that fearful women should "ask" to be moved as tho paralysis of trauma is passing phase./

Some truth is hard to arrive at. It is, obviously, possible for people to see situations differently, it is also possible for others (for a myriad of reasons) to be selective in how they see those truths. /

However, to say some must be afforded sympathy & investigation while others dismissed out of hand is reprehensible.

Especially reprehensible when no evidence has ever been presented as to why women's services recently & unilaterally rejected these women./

A huge threat to #metoo is not just that sleazy males continue to behave as they have since time immemorial. Some of these acts, if they take advantage of the uncritical approach to self ID, promoted by these powerful voices, and claim (as police permit) it as that of a "woman",/

may never make it to court &, if it does, they may in future be housed in the prison estate with other vulnerable women. Is that really what women’s sector want?

Moreover, we are constantly told, a naked penis belonging to a "woman" in a private space is OK, it's different. /

Yet, it isn’t different for a woman paralysed by fear: terrified, sickened by memories of abuse. Is she to read the “soul” of the person? Why is nakedness a gross infringement on her rights & safety if the penis belongs to a “man” but a prudish “genital obsession” if a “woman”?/

The traumatised, abused woman isn't a bigot for speaking her truth. Certain politicians and services need to start to have some consistency, compassion and decency. /

Some need to do their jobs as defined by law, and not by their prejudices (often about old feminists & working class women) or their friends’ politics, and they need to start to abide fully by EqA2010 and not misrepresent it in internal policy or government consultations. /

They need to believe women. Truth is not only only truth when it is politically expedient, otherwise we concede that women are only to be listened to when it serves another goal. And that is bad for us all.