I would love this site to be a place for discussions between survivors, workers and former workers to find ways to resist the cuts and all forms of abuse.
I would also love to hear from women who helped to set up gendered violence services, or who worked in them in earlier decades (I am in my 20s).
Please join in by commenting, or better still by writing something that I can post on the main page – you can email it to a (-) leigh (at) live (dot) co (dot) uk .
I ask all contributers to consider the needs of people experiencing gendered violence who may have been excluded from ‘traditional’ / existing services. Comments and articles containing racism, transphobia and other offensive and exclusionary language will not be published. Articles that centre marginalised people’s experiences of violence are especially welcome.
Below are some of my questions…
What were our critiques of New Labour’s criminal justice remedies to gendered violence?
What are our critiques of Theresa May’s ‘vision to end violence against women’?
Does racism still pervade domestic and sexual violence services?
Does trans* exclusion still pervade domestic and sexual violence services?
Are disabled people still excluded from domestic and sexual violence services?
How do the discourses around “no recourse to public funds” and trafficking interact with government immigration policy?
What are our critiques of MARACs?
How can we respond to the new move towards apparently ‘gender neutral’ and ‘race-neutral’ service provision – i.e. the razing of existing specialist women’s and specialist BME provision into large, ‘streamlined’ organisations? For example, are these new, ‘more efficient’ organisations using screening tools to ensure they are not colluding with perpetrators who present as victims? Do these screening tools work?
What happened to Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis’s critiques of the police and Social Care? Can we come up with an updated critique of statutory organisations’ social control and how voluntary sector orgs may be colluding? How do funding structures fit in to this?
Did early groups / services support women who were additionally marginalised? What were the successes and the failings of services in previous decades, in this respect? How does this compare to services under New Labour, and now?
What effect have changing funding structures had on politicised gendered violence support?
If you left the work, why did you leave?
What do you think we should do now?
