J.K. Rowling Funds Sex Abuse Crisis Center That Excludes Trans Women
J.K. Rowling is being slammed for launching a crisis center for survivors of rape and sexual assault in Scotland that refuses services to trans women and excludes trans workers from the center.
Named Beira’s Place, after the Scottish goddess of winter, the center sits in a former townhouse and calls itself “Edinburgh women’s sexual assault support centre.” The outlet reports that Rowling was interviewed by anti-trans journalist, Suzanne Moore, about the opening of Beira’s Place, and its position in the landscape — centered by Rowling's anti-transgender rights views, PinkNews reports.The area the center provides to is underserved and therefore necessary, so another crisis center is helpful, however as hinted at by Moore, the creation of the trans-exclusive space seems to be driven by the inclusion the existing Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERRC) extends to all women and LGBTQ+ people by having gender-neutral bathrooms.As they later stated in a now-protected Tweet, “For those enquiring about the toilet facilities at ERCC, we have one individual disabled access bathroom on our ground floor, and two individual bathrooms on our 2nd floor.“The signs on each of these 3 bathrooms are all gender neutral in line with our commitment to being LGBT+ inclusive.”As reported by PinkNews, during Trans Awareness Week, the center sent a letter to its transgender users, “Because of our work to make Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre more trans-inclusive, the transphobia directed at our centre has been very loud lately.
Though the threats are mainly online, the impact has been felt by both our staff and our clients. Sadly, we’re hearing from some of you that you’re afraid to come to the centre in person.”The letter continued, “We want you to know.
