Open Letter to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Staff and Trustees
With thanks to Jean Hatchet for her feminist documentation and transcription work. This one is for Sally, and all the other women in too vulnerable a position to publicly advocate for single-sex services.
Dear Edinburgh Rape Crisis,
My name is Claire Heuchan. I’m a survivor of men’s sexual violence. And I’m writing this letter to express concerns about the troubling implications of comments made by your CEO, Mridul Wadhwa, at a recent event with SayiT Sheffield. This letter is in no way intended as an attack on Edinburgh Rape Crisis; I have the greatest respect for your organisation, and believe you do lifesaving work. The recorded incidences of rape and attempted rape in Scotland continue to skyrocket, yet the conviction rate is among the lowest for any type of crime – which means that you are, unfortunately, more necessary than ever before. But women who have survived horrific acts of male violence are going without support, self-excluding from your service and others, because these spaces are now mixed-sex.
That’s not an untruth, exaggeration, or story made up to fit a particular agenda. It’s the reality here in Scotland; a reality acknowledged directly by your CEO. Wadhwa admitted that “in Scotland, where you have large groups of survivors, some are not using our services because they see us as trans inclusive and feeling that they may be exposed to an issue that they are not prepared to deal with.” But women aren’t self-excluding because “they may be exposed to an issue.” They’re self-excluding because they may be exposed to males in the aftermath of surviving male violence. Any trauma-informed service – as ERC claims to be – must have the capacity to acknowledge why that is problematic.
Wadhwa recognises that survivors are self-excluding from mixed-sex services. But frames the attitudes of women who have survived male violence, as opposed to the mixed-sex spaces, as the problem. These comments were made by the CEO of ERC – someone with the power to shape the ethos of your organisation and survivors’ experiences within it. Wadhwa’s words have consequences, as does the attitude they embody.
The feminist policy analysists Murray Blackburn MacKenzie “wrote to Scottish Women’s Aid to ask whether they were aware of any work undertaken by any of the violence against women and girls organisations in Scotland that sought to quantify the scale of potential self-exclusion by women from both specialist and mainstream services should they admit transwomen.” They received no response. Transparency and public accountability would both go a long way towards resolving the conflict of interests where self-ID is concerned.
Therefore, I would like to know: has Edinburgh Rape Crisis undertaken a change impact analysis or any other study into the consequences of making your services mixed-sex spaces? And, if so, will the findings be made public? In the absence of data from Rape Crisis or Women’s Aid, Women and Girls Scotland undertook their own research. And this is what they found:
“A majority of women (80.1%) said that female victims of male violence should be able to access female-only survivor support services and refuges, and a majority (71%) said that if they had reason to use survivor support services or a refuge, they would not be comfortable if the service was inclusive of trans-identified males.“
Since 2018, Women and Girls Scotland have pointed out to both Rape Crisis Scotland and Scottish Women’s Aid “that failures to be clear regarding whether or not their network of providers will offer their services on a female-only basis for those who need it, has led to women self-excluding from their services.” I don’t know how many women have self-excluded from Rape Crisis or Women’s Aid services because they are mixed-sex. Apparently, nobody outside of these organisations does. But I would argue that if even one woman self-excludes from these services, that is one woman too many.
No woman is disposable. And it is nothing short of Orwellian that women are now self-excluding from services because of policies made in the name of ‘inclusivity.’ It’s not inclusive if it doesn’t work for women. And ‘women supporting women’ was a banner founding members of Edinburgh Rape Crisis marched under. It was a founding principle of your organisation. Nobody says it better than Caroline Burrell, who led ERC before Wadhwa:
“Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre was founded by a group of women who wanted to create a safe and confidential space for women who had experienced sexual violence.”
Burrell’s successor has deviated from these principles, arguing that “being really radical in our inclusion of those who are marginalised does not discriminate against those who have relative privilege in our society.” But what “privilege” does this mean, when at least 1 in 4 British women will experience male violence? Two women a week are killed by a current or former (male) partner in England and Wales alone; and approx. 85,000 women experience men’s sexual violence every year. Male violence against women and girls happens at a similar rate in Scotland – and, indeed, around the world. No other demographic is assaulted and killed on this scale; not in Scotland. Therefore, I’m concerned that ERC’s CEO seeks to create a hierarchy of survivors by positioning women and girls as an advantaged party.
When it comes to male violence, women as a sex class are the least ‘privileged’ demographic on the planet. Yes, the vulnerability of some women is heightened by race, class, migration status, disability, faith, or sexuality. And specialised services do vital work, with significantly less funding than mainstream organisations. But sex is the commonality between women’s experiences of male violence, and feminist analysis must reflect that.
Wadhwa also suggests that “organisations might… have open conversations with survivors if they wish and are willing to engage around what equality and diversity means.” But the women’s sector exists to support women through the aftermath of male violence, not do EDI training with survivors.
The SayiT Sheffield event is not the first time Wadhwa has advocated services carry out a form of EDI training with survivors. Speaking on the Guilty Feminist podcast, Wadhwa stated that “sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well. And so, you know, it is not a discerning crime. But these spaces are also for you. But if you bring unacceptable beliefs that are discriminatory in nature, we will begin to work with you on your journey of recovery from trauma. But please also expect to be challenged on your prejudices.”
As Raquel Rosario Sánchez points out, this directly contradicts ERC’s claim that your services are “trauma-informed” and “non-judgemental” through “judging victims by informing them that they had to ‘reframe’ their trauma so they could overcome the entirely natural fear and distrust that male violence induces on victims and survivors.” Somehow, it’s never men that are asked to do the heavy lifting in terms of trans inclusion – even though they perpetrate the violence that put women and trans people both at risk. But, in this case, that work is put upon women who are trying to make sense of perhaps the worst trauma they will ever experience.
I am far from the first feminist to highlight this issue. For Women Scotland described Wadhwa’s Guilty Feminist appearance as “a masterclass of gaslighting”; and they’re not wrong. FWS have also been consistent in championing survivors’ right to access single-sex services in the aftermath of male violence, and – if the content of this letter has not already made it abundantly clear – that’s a cause I will support until my dying breath. Without a trace of shame or regret. But Wadhwa accuses women who want single-sex services of “associating with fascists and those who would want to eliminate anybody who is not cisgendered and white in our society.”
To whom is Wadhwa referring? Such unsubstantiated claims and veiled comments only add to the toxicity of gender discourse in Scotland. Lorde knows I have little time for the single-issue Gender Critical crowd. But, to the best of my knowledge, not a single woman among them has given even tangential support for the genocide of people of colour and/or LGBT people. And Wadhwa’s claim pours gasoline on a public discussion that was already explosive.
I advocate women-only space as a Black lesbian feminist. And in so doing I would much sooner stand beside Women and Girls Scotland (spearheaded by working-class feminists) or For Women Scotland than a Rape Crisis CEO who prioritises their own interests above the needs of survivors. Some may point out that these WGS and FWS are new and relatively untested, to which I would say that grassroots feminist groups emerge from need – in this instance, a need that is not being met by established and government-funded feminist organisations.
In her book Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation, campaigner Julie Bindel warns against the dangers of “femocracy”; the corporatisation of the sort of feminist activism that built the women’s sector from nothing. When feminist organisations “became fearful of offending their stakeholders”, Bindel argues, “the form of feminism they espoused became tamer and less threatening to the establishment.” And as I read these words for the first time, I thought of Edinburgh’s feminist organisations – was this why you stayed unanimously silent when Julie was attacked in your city after giving a talk about male violence against women?
More to the point, I wonder: is it fear of public retribution that led to Edinburgh Rape Crisis shifting towards a mixed-sex team and spaces? Is it fear that you will lose your funding? Or a combination of the two? I am not without sympathy. The cost attached to advocating women-only space is now disproportionate as it is vicious. And generations of feminists fought tooth and nail to build the women’s sector into what it now is – if defunded, that infrastructure is not easily replaced. Especially not while the politics of austerity govern Britain.
That being said, what about the women self-excluding from your service and others? When are we going to have an open discussion about the consequences of making services mixed-sex? Where is the research into the efficacy of mixed-sex services? These are all questions in desperate need of an answer.
Edinburgh’s feminist organisations have demonstrated an unwillingness to engage with women’s concerns about self-ID or the Scottish Government’s proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act. In this, Edinburgh Rape Crisis is certainly not alone. Engender were scheduled to hold a meeting about the GRA and women’s rights. It was postponed… indefinitely. And I still wonder, if they’d held that meeting, how might gender discourse be different in this country? Let’s face it, this conversation can’t get much uglier.
I think that if Scotland’s feminist organisations had facilitated open and mutually respectful public discussion around this subject – instead of leaving two marginalised groups of people to get locked into a cycle of conflict over social media – we might have reached something close to consensus by now.
But instead we are here: where women self-exclude from a Rape Crisis service, and the problem goes unaddressed. Something has clearly gone wrong in the Scottish women’s sector, when the CEO of a Rape Crisis Centre can repeatedly make comments such as Wadhwa’s without reprisal; especially when, as Wadhwa recognises, some women choose to carry trauma alone rather than accessing support via that service. But it is fixable. If I didn’t think this problem could be resolved, I would have spent my Saturday swimming and reading lesbian books instead of wading further into a public discussion that is utterly thankless and, frankly, excruciating.
I’m writing this letter because I believe it is possible for there to be a range of services that meet the specific needs of women and the specific needs transgender people both; and that, one day, we can build a world where neither set of services is needed because patriarchy has been dismantled. And in the short term it is my hope that these words will open up the space for discussion; between Edinburgh Rape Crisis staff and trustees; between Edinburgh Rape Crisis and the women alienated by the actions of their CEO; perhaps even between Rape Crisis centres across Scotland. The herstory of Scotland’s Rape Crisis movement is one that we can all be proud of; that herstory does not need a “wash and clean”, as Wadhwa suggests, but rather a radical reclaiming as women build this movement’s future.
One last point. Several feminist organisations seem to have taken the ostrich approach to public discussions around sex, gender, and women’s spaces. But this approach relies on the assumption that it will all blow over sooner or later; that we women who want single-sex spaces and services will simply give up and decide not to make a fuss. But that’s not going to happen. Too much is at stake. #WomenWontWheesht. And we’re ready to talk when you are.
Yours in sisterhood,
Claire
Further Reading
Shonagh Dillon (2021). A Scottish Sister Speaks.
Karen Ingala Smith (2021). Counting Dead Trans People.
Karen Ingala Smith (2019). Counting Dead Women – and counting people who identify as transgender
Eileen Maitland (2009). Woman to Woman, An Oral History of Rape Crisis in Scotland 1976-1991. Hampden Advertising Limited
Women and Girls Scotland (2019). Female Only Provision: A Women and Girls in Scotland Report
Like the majority of Black feminists, I can never afford to take the solidarity of white women for granted. I think some white women get offended that our shared womanhood doesn’t automatically win them my trust – but those are usually the women best avoided. With every white woman I meet, whether or not she realises it, there is a careful vetting process that takes place inside my head. I watch and listen carefully before opening myself to a connection with her.
The Scottish feminist movement is very white. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given that the majority whiteness is a consequence of Scotland’s population. Still, it can leave women of colour vulnerable within feminist spaces. I cannot take it for granted that there will be another Black woman in the room. When racism happens – which is a case of when rather than if – there is no guarantee that other women will recognise it. And even if white women do understand that what’s happening is racism, they will not necessarily be willing to acknowledge it as such. The final hurdle: those white women who recognise and acknowledge racism aren’t always willing to challenge it.
Black women’s access to the ‘sisterhood’ is so often dependent on our willingness to stay silent about racism and ignore the hierarchy of race. One white woman recently had the gall to say she was “disappointed” I had called her racist. It was the same old story: a white woman’s comfort prioritised above a Black woman’s wellbeing. We are accused of dividing the movement when we challenge racism. But white women’s racism is what divides feminists. Many of them prefer clinging on to the power they hold through racial inequalities over finding out what the world looks like when we are all free.
In this context it is a rare but wonderful thing for a white-led feminist organisation to condemn racism, so I wholly support A Woman’s Place UK in their 
about sex in the Women’s Library”, results in a degree of backlash. But none of my feminist badges have ever attracted the same level of anger as the one depicting three women of colour posed like 
analysis balances out. Last week I was part of Glasgow International for After Dark, a creative conversation between LGBT artists of colour. I’d never been called an artist before, and still don’t see myself as one. Writer, yes – I feel that in my bones, and have external validation from the publishing industry. But, artist? Funnily enough, another participant questioned his own right to the label of writer because of the way Black people go largely unrecognised as ‘legitimate’ cultural critics. Or not so funny. A recurring theme, whatever the medium we worked with, was that none of us had been encouraged to think of ourselves, our work, our voices as having authority. But it was satisfying to connect, to talk about our work and the lives that inform it. Opportunities to meet other creatives who are both LGBT and people of colour are a rare, exquisite thing.
like so many of the city’s architectural wonders, the building was funded by the labour of enslaved Black people. Growing up amidst the tensions created by that repressed history, it was impossible for me to develop a sense of belonging. When Blackness and Scottishness are often treated as two mutually exclusive identities (a seemingly endless number of white Scots can’t get their head around Black people being born ‘here’, raised ‘here’, from ‘here’), how could it be otherwise? It felt powerful to sit and talk and eat and drink in the Gallery, to claim a space that was never meant for us.
We get to know each other over pizza (which should be mandatory in every green room), sharing bits of our lives without glossing over trauma. So much is possible when women come together and talk openly about violence. When you have the support of feminist women, and are free from the worry of whether your disclosure will be shamed or disbelieved, it is much easier to get to the root of how and why violence against women happens. There is also a lot of joy in those connections.
Winnie reveals that she loved writing as a child, but never anticipated that her first book – Dark Chapter – would be based on the story of her own rape. The perpetrator left her with 39 separate injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Winnie quit her job, went about the business of putting herself back together, and rebuilt her life. Her writing perfectly captures the reality of experiencing sexual violence. In an 
room.” A procedure that took 45 minutes would have repercussions for the rest of her life. Hibo underwent type three FGM, which she wrote about in her memoir Cut. Of this experience, Hibo says “you don’t heal from it, you learn to cope with it.” During her work in schools, Hibo was compelled to start challenging FGM when she realised young girls were at risk. Explaining her advocacy, Hibo says “I used my trauma as a tool for education.” Her work has changed how the education system, the British government, and even the FBI approach the issue of FGM. Hibo is proud of how attitudes have begun to shift against FGM in recent years, a change to which her work has greatly contributed, but is adamant there’s still a long way to go before this particular battle is won. Every 11 seconds a girl is cut. FGM has been illegal in Britain since 1985, but nobody has yet been prosecuted for carrying the procedure out on a girl.
Next it’s my turn to speak. I have boundless respect for the other women on this panel and feel honoured to sit alongside them. Yet there are no pangs of imposter syndrome, which is another recent positive step. I tell the audience about the context that shaped my work, the isolation of growing up Black in Scotland, the ways in which gas-lighting is used to cover up racism – which the country has long since struggled to acknowledge as a social, political reality. It’s easy enough: there’s no scarcity of women of colour in the room. I talk about the importance of having found feminist community in digital spaces; that it felt natural to raise a dissenting voice online in a way that it didn’t in person, offline. I share my motivation in creating a learning resource for women trying to engage with feminist politics, how it’s done with the goal of helping build a truly anti-racist feminist movement that really is committed to the liberation of all women. And then I turn to Vanessa.
sphere.” Before having children she was a barrister, which shows in how she forms an argument. As a new mother, no longer practicing her profession, she was conscious that “my political power was gone, my economic power was gone, my body had changed.” She struggled against the idea mothers are not political, a misconception “which Mumsnet prove wrong.” To Vanessa there is no doubt that women’s bodies exist as the site of oppression in patriarchal society. She calls for an embodied feminist politics that recognise the significance of sex in determining how we experience the world. Vanessa points out that boys begin assaulting girls from a young age, highlighting the patterns of violence that emerge through gendered socialisation.
I walk to the International Slavery Museum, taking in Liverpool as I go. The architecture is striking against the blue sky, and cherry blossoms line a walkway towards the dock. It’s a beautiful city in spring. There are a number of art spaces and cafés I could happily delve into but this mission, I feel, is important. So many of Scotland’s ongoing problems with racism are rooted in an unwillingness to examine the country’s history with race, a refusal to acknowledge how that past shaped the present reality. Earlier this year I visited Berlin, and there are public monuments to the victims of World War 2 placed throughout the city. Each monument included explanations of how and why these people died, giving history to provide context. It was deeply emotional, but there was something healing in giving public space over to recognising those atrocities. Repressing a history only adds to the trauma – which is why I am determined to visit the Slavery Museum.
and its legacies”, exploring not only the past but how it has informed life in modern day Britain. Beside the entrance is an invitation for people to write about the thoughts and feelings evoked, and stick their postcard on a wall. I like that people are given the space and encouragement needed to try and grapple with the painful knowledge held here. The realities of the slave trade were horrifying. Black people were beaten and raped and killed and worked to death for the profit of white people. Denying it doesn’t help the African people who were forcibly removed from their homes, and it doesn’t help anybody now either.
though what one group values about my feminism is a point of contention for the other. In the eyes of a number of straight Black women in my life, I am too radical – my unwillingness to divorce gendered aspects of the personal from the political creates a rift. With some of the white lesbians in my life, I am insufficiently radical – too invested in exploring grey areas and the pesky politics of race to fit with their understanding of lesbian feminism.
unhindered by the tensions of today. Where there’s common ground, there would be room for coalition. Where there’s 
sexuality and “TERF” politics, including such dubious pearls of wisdom such as this: “repeated use of the word ‘lesbian’ is also a dog whistle for TERFs.” If even saying lesbian can be taken as proof of transphobia, something has clearly gone wrong in this conversation. As Black feminist theory has long held (Hill Collins, 1990), self-definition is an essential step in the liberation of any oppressed group – including lesbians. And yet straight feminists are often willing to be complicit in lesbian erasure or, worse still, deny that erasure is happening even as lesbians challenge it.
No practice which upholds the hierarchies of race and class can be described as radical, let alone feminist. Feminism is a political movement aiming to bring about the liberation of all women and all girls, not merely the white and middle class. However, there is a persistent strain of what masquerades as radical feminism – led by women who are predominantly white, middle class, and heterosexual – which aims to dismantle the gendered inequalities experienced by certain women whilst clinging to the privileges brought to them by hierarchies of race and class. It ought to go without saying that weaponising racism and classism against women who hold less social power than you do is a fundamental contradiction of feminist principles, yet this pattern of behaviour is rife within the British feminist movement.
inherent sense of belonging has ultimately served me well; it is for this reason that I am usually open to the possibility of connection with women who are different to me, whether this difference means that they hold more power than I do, less power than I do, or something close to parity. As is often the case when one is visibly Other, learning to use difference creatively has been essential to my survival. Being positioned on the fringes of groups in which I have some level of belonging also gives me a handy vantage point – my eyes are drawn to common causes, sites where coalitions may be built between people marginalised in various ways. The authenticity of my ways of knowing the world gets challenged in pretty much every setting, meaning that it’s virtually impossible to sink into complacency and ever make the assumption that I know everything. If I had grown up taking my own belonging for granted, I very much doubt that I’d be a woman who writes or thinks in this way. Not bad, as silver linings go.
making mental illness invisible contributes to a culture of shame – it’s what leads people to conceal their problems rather than seeking help. But something shifted. My mental health declined. Twitter is all about communication, sharing thoughts and ideas. And there were nights when all I could think of, the only idea that presented itself, was suicide. Which, even in that state, I realised Tweeting about probably wasn’t the best plan. I’d retweet the @SoSadToday Twitter account in the hope of conveying no more than a socially acceptable level of despair.
half scarves and crocheted just under half of a blanket. One week I went walking in the highlands, which was beautiful. Periodically I visit the local library for more books. Most days I try to fit in a walk by the river, because the writer’s lifestyle runs the risk of being sedentary. I’ve also been cooking proper meals as a form of self-care, trying to look after my body and mind both. And I’ve been present in all of those things, giving them my full focus.
There’s something insidious about how we use scrolling through social media as a way of numbing, distracting from emotions we’d rather not experience. It’s easy to do, but sooner or later we need to pay the debt on everything that’s repressed – with interest. So instead of looking for a diversion in any of the devices I own, I’ve been sitting with those difficult things and trying to resolve or make peace with them. Mostly that’s going well. So, to answer your questions, I’m not exactly alright but I’m doing the things that are necessary to become alright.
Recently I’ve fallen in love with Bojack Horseman. I’m currently watching it again for the third time. It’s this zany black comedy about a horse/man (there are anthropomorphised animals living alongside people – don’t ask) who was in the most popular family sitcom of the ‘90s. He skyrocketed to fame. Fast forward to the present day, and it’s immediately clear that hyper-visibility has crushed every functional aspect of Bojack’s life. The series starts with him having been out of work for seventeen years, immobilised by the twin spectres of success and failure. Bojack clings to unhealthy coping mechanisms, which makes for amusing but poignant viewing, in order to escape the pervasive sense of existential dread that follows him everywhere. The 
class/lesbian). If only a middle class woman weaponising racism and classism against her fellow feminists generated the same outrage as a working class woman using the word cunt in anger… I don’t want Facebook pressuring me to reply to messages on my Sister Outrider page at 11pm, when I’m trying to chill out and knit with my grandmother, in order to maintain an “excellent response rate.” The idea of being permanently publicly available is, frankly, horrifying. Facebook is so much needless stress. Facebook makes me feel tired and unhappy. Facebook is cancelled. The only things I’m going to miss are the depression memes and all the photos of my friends’ adorable brown babies.
instances last year when I could have met with feminist friends from other countries and had to cancel at the last minute because I’d shifted from passively to actively suicidal. Both times I was honest about being ill, if not the exact nature of the problem. Is there a polite shorthand for “sorry to flake on you, but I’m trying really hard not to kill myself and need to remain in a safe, controlled environment until this feeling passes”, or is that wishful thinking? Sometimes literally all of my energy has to go on not self-harming. Last summer I made a series of desperate calls to suicide prevention hotlines. Things got bad. Each time the person on the other end would talk me down, explaining that my family and friends would not, in fact, be better off if I died. At the time I’d thought it was just a natural dip in my mental health, which has been completely destabilised since my grandfather died in 2016, but one factor behind these oscillations is caused by being hyper-visible in digital space.
Black lesbian feminism – through the lens of mental illness and self-care. Moon is basically a genius. The idea stayed with me, as all ideas that demand to be written into being do. I’ve put together a little playlist to go with it, songs that I’ve had on loop through this digital detox.
Recently I delivered a 
but each time I think, ‘uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’” As was often the case, her words lit upon a truth – one which I find highly relatable. Part of me suspects that sooner or later it will emerge that my ideas are worthless – all writing opportunities withdrawn, prizes and nominations revoked, and so on. Even being invited to give a keynote by the FiLiA organising team, I did not have a sense that it was legitimate for me to occupy that space and worried that my thoughts on feminist movement building would immediately be discredited. The things I wonder ‘is it legitimate for me to say this?’ are often the things that most desperately need saying. And yet…
Gender is a hierarchy that enables men to be dominant and conditions women into subservience. As gender is a fundamental element of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks, 1984) it is particularly disconcerting to see elements of queer discourse argue that gender is not only innately held but sacrosanct. Far from being a radical alternative to the status quo, the project of “queering” gender only serves to replicate the standards set by patriarchy through its essentialism. A queer understanding of gender does not challenge patriarchy in any meaningful way – rather than encouraging people to resist the standards set by patriarchy, it offers them a way to embrace it. Queer politics have not challenged traditional gender roles so much as breathed fresh life into them – therein lies the danger.
gendered even before birth, serves to divide the sexes into a dominant and subservient class. Feminism recognises that biological sex exists while opposing essentialism, opposing the idea that sex dictate who or what we are capable of being as humans. Feminism asserts that our character, qualities, and personality are not defined by whether we are male or female. Conversely, queer theory argues that one set of traits is inherently masculine and another set of traits is inherently feminine, and our 
Despite talk of queer community, an alliance between members of the LGBT+ alphabet soup, homophobia has always been at the root of queer politics. Queer ideology emerged as backlash to lesbian feminist principles, which advocated radical social change through the transformation of personal lives (Jeffreys, 2003). The political interests of lesbian women and marginalised gay men – primarily the abolition of gender roles – were dismissed within queer spheres. Individualism precluding any concentrated focus on feminist and gay liberation politics, which queer discourse began to describe as old-fashioned, dull, or anti-sex.
Feminist theory is meaningless without the ability to put it into practice. And life, though it can at times be daunting, requires living. So I am on a plane to Brussels for Loud and United, an event which marks twenty years of the 
Road. Steinem’s reflections are thoughtful, and something about the way she connects physical movement through the world with a development of ideas strikes a chord. What I like most about Steinem’s writing is that from her early essays to recent reflections delivered in her eighties, she doesn’t pretend to know everything and is therefore always open to learning and improving her own feminist praxis. If there were such a thing as total and definitive understanding of the feminist movement, Gloria Steinem would have more right to claim it than most. But there isn’t. Feminism is a socio-political movement propelled by women’s actions and ideas – it’s a continuously ongoing process, not a destination. Its progress is best marked not only in the accordance of women’s rights, but in the development of surrounding ideas and attitudes.
letting us inside. The EWL are nowhere to be seen, so we explore the building and marvel over the opulence of Brussels. The room is extraordinary. Wooden walls panelled with richly painted murals, a high ceiling supported by ornately carved beams, and even pews lining the back – it looks more like a church than a feminist meeting space. There is something delicious about repurposing places that symbolise male wealth and power for women’s liberation. The meeting space in Glasgow Women’s Library, where we recently held an all-female literary festival, used to be a gentlemen’s reading room.
is addressed. Biljana Nastovska is exactly right in her assessment of patriarchy: “violence against women is a manifestation of unequal power relations between women and men. Violence against women is not accidental, but structural and political.” There is something profoundly moving about witnessing the women of the Observatory’s commitment to ending violence against women and girls, the passion of their belief in this cause. Vanja Macanovic explains why she works for the Observatory: “As long as one woman is raped or beaten, prostituted or trafficked, the European Women’s Lobby Observatory will be there to fight it.” Her words, so resolutely spoken, have a superhero quality about them.
feminist practice involves sharing ideas and making information as widely accessible as possible. Radical feminism can challenge ownership and institutional power as following patterns of male dominance. But there is something inherently radical about acknowledging women’s work, the development of women’s ideas over time and who made it possible. As Virginia Woolf observed, “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” Making women’s ideas invisible, treating them as common knowledge rather than giving credit, only serves to further the erasure of women in public life. The continuum is a widely known concept. Upon seeing the pamphlet, I thought immediately of Liz’s work. But if I hadn’t read Surviving Sexual Violence (Kelly), hadn’t known where the continuum came from, making that connection would be impossible. Other women could read the pamphlet without being able to trace the idea back to its source.
Wielding an impressive megaphone, Joanna takes the stage to introduce Gloria. Perhaps it is my imagination, but Gloria seems more at ease in the midst of a protest than behind a lectern. She observes a truth that is obvious to women of colour yet often disregarded within mainstream feminist spaces: “Sexism and racism go together. You can’t fight one without the other.” The Black women beside me cheer, and I do too. It feels good to have the connection between racism and misogyny acknowledged, highlighted by a woman who is arguably the world’s most recognisable living feminist. There is always that danger in feminist space that white will be treated as the standard unit of womanhood.
admire. We get drinks and snacks from a nearby supermarket and listen to a salsa band play live music. It feels good to simply be in that moment. Michela joins us when she finishes work, and I finally get to chat to Pauline in person. We talk about the power of radical feminist Twitter, how online misogyny works to silence women, and anonymity on social media. Wary of threats and violence, Pauline doesn’t share her name or location on Twitter. This layer of privacy enables her to maintain a distance between life online and offline. Men tend to exploit anonymity, use it as a shield from consequence when sending abuse, whereas women often use anonymity as a way of protecting ourselves from abuse. To an extent I regret not creating a separate Twitter account for Sister Outrider and remaining anonymous, but at first it never occurred to me that more than a dozen people would actually bother to read this blog.
art around the area. For Pride, a crossing is made into a rainbow. In the alley beside Rainbow House, there are gorgeous protest murals as tall as the surrounding buildings. It’s touching to witness this art as resistance, touching that Ilaria and Michela thought to show it to me. There is a popular saying in radical lesbian circles: “A day without lesbians is like a day without sunshine.” Ilaria and Michela remind me of the truth in those words. We discuss lesbian culture over cocktails, including mounting tension between lesbian and queer politics. Like every lesbian I know back home, Ilaria is frustrated that LGBT spaces are dominated by gay men. Still, there is something undeniably wholesome about seeing men sharing tender gestures – holding hands, cuddling on benches, and kissing one another on the mouth in greeting. It’s a refreshing change from the brutality of conventional masculinity.
A narrative of “choice” is often used to whitewash the structural power imbalances upon which the sex industry depends. According to research, “poverty, family loss, homelessness, drug addiction and a history of physical and sexual abuse combine to make young women vulnerable to entering prostitution.” Consideration of choice without analysis of context is meaningless when discussing the realities of women – and they are overwhelmingly women – prostituted as part of the sex industry. When we talk about choice in relation to prostitution, it is important to scrutinise the choice of the men who buy sex. We must question why so many men feel entitled to sex with women, why they consider sexual access to our bodies an inalienable right. This meeting is one of those rare occasions in life when I am truly happy to see that men are part of the group, giving wholehearted opposition to the sex industry. After all, demand will not end until men’s attitudes towards women change.
Sister Outrider 