{"id":22428,"date":"2022-10-21T19:45:54","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T19:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=22428"},"modified":"2022-10-21T21:21:40","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T21:21:40","slug":"how-anti-trans-activists-forced-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-into-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2022\/10\/21\/how-anti-trans-activists-forced-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-into-lockdown\/","title":{"rendered":"How anti-trans activists forced Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre into lockdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>The following article by Adam Ramsay of openDemocracy describes the vicious campaign mounted by transphobes in Scotland, directed against Mridul Wadhwa, the director of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>HOW ANTI-TRANS ACTIVISTS FORCED EDINBURGH RAPE CRISIS CENTRE INTO LOCKDOWN<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_22430\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-22430\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/UpdatedImage.max-1520x1008-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22430\" src=\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/UpdatedImage.max-1520x1008-1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/UpdatedImage.max-1520x1008-1-300x200.jpg 300w, http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/UpdatedImage.max-1520x1008-1.jpg 756w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-22430\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mridui Wadhwa, director of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: var(--color-hex-black); font-size: 1.2rem;\">Edinburgh\u2019s Rape Crisis Centre had always kept its front door open so survivors could walk in whenever they needed help.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But last autumn, after staff at the centre took advice from the police, the door was shut and locked. And after they consulted with security experts, a new, stronger inner door was added.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When openDemocracy went to interview them, access was through a buzzer system.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt&#8217;s only recently that I&#8217;ve really stopped looking over my shoulder or not thinking actively that I could be harmed,\u201d Mridul Wadhwa, the centre\u2019s director, told us. \u201cBut that doesn&#8217;t mean that I don&#8217;t think I will be harmed. Even now, I do believe that I will be harmed. I believe it is almost inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wadhwa has dedicated the last 14 years of her professional life to supporting women who are victims of sexual violence. But for the last three years, she\u2019s faced torrential abuse including unfounded smears that she\u2019s a sexual predator and numerous threats of violence \u2013 all because she is trans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The abuse began in 2019, when Wadhwa was director of the Forth Valley rape crisis centre in Stirling. It intensified in October 2020, when she\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pinknews.co.uk\/2020\/10\/24\/mridul-wadhwa-snp-scottish-election-forth-valley-rape-crisis-manager\/\">launched a bid<\/a>\u00a0to be an SNP candidate in the 2021 Holyrood elections, and again when she was appointed director of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) in April last year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt just kicked off that very first day,\u201d she said. \u201cEmails, complaint letters to the board. I think one of them\u2026 was signed by quite a few hundred people. So, pretty much from the first day, we began to deal with this onslaught.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She added: \u201cIt was mostly on social media. And it was relentless and endless. And all kinds of people were then retweeting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ERCC has shown openDemocracy 55 pages of emails it received at the time, with senders\u2019 details redacted. Almost all misgender Wadhwa and many accuse her baselessly of predatory behaviour. Some are racist.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The letters include numerous threats of vigilante violence. One seems to call for a genocide of trans women. Another chillingly presents the board with a choice of sacking Wadhwa, or seeing transphobes \u201ctake matters into their own hands\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The campaign against Wadhwa was amplified by the press as the abuse spread. \u201cSome of the stuff staff had to deal with was pretty horrific,\u201d says Maggie Chapman, who was chief operating officer of ERCC when Wadhwa was appointed, and is now a Green MSP.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Employees faced \u201cverbal abuse, hate speech on social media and in phone calls\u201d, she told openDemocracy. This took \u201ctime out of their day, when they could have been focused on doing the actual work of the organisation, which is supporting survivors of sexual and other abuse\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chapman added: \u201cAt times, it felt like a flood. Every time the phone rings, you think: is this going to be more abuse?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blogger Graham Linehan obsessed over Wadhwa. (Linehan told openDemocracy last year he was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/en\/5050\/trans-uk-green-party-kathryn-bristow\/\">not transphobic<\/a>.) The website Wings Over Scotland attacked her appointment. The Christian Institute website ran a series of articles about her, and the US-based\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.christiantoday.com\/article\/transgender.ideology.and.the.rise.of.the.thought.police\/138136.htm\">Christian Today<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lifesitenews.com\/blogs\/trans-activist-tells-female-rape-victims-to-reframe-their-trauma-and-allow-transgenders-in-female-rape-crisis-centers\/\">Life Site News<\/a>\u00a0picked them up.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By August 2021, thousands of tweets had been sent with the hashtag #AskRapeCrisisScotland as so-called \u2018gender critical\u2019 activists denounced the charity for hiring Wadhwa, often repeating myths promoted by these websites and videos. Yet analysis by the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/transsafety.network\/posts\/ask-rape-crisis-scotland\/\">Trans Safety Network<\/a>\u00a0showed the tweets came from fewer than 250 accounts, and just 30 accounts tweeted almost half of them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Times has run seven stories about Wadhwa since May last year, often based on complaints from small groups opposed to trans rights, and the Herald joined the pile-on, while the anti-trans YouTuber Kelly-Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker, produced a video \u2013 viewed by thousands \u2013 in which she made a series of unfounded and unevidenced accusations about Wadhwa and her work.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the first time Wadhwa says she truly feared for her life was when Linehan published part of her home address.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI spent most of my career working on issues of so-called honour based violence, where you don&#8217;t know who is going to harm you,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s exactly how it felt. Because it wasn&#8217;t going to be Graham Linehan that was going to show up at my home and cause me harm, but some person who I\u2019m not even looking out for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wadhwa and her family were encouraged by Rape Crisis Scotland to move out of their house for a while, but decided to stay.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think that would have caused more damage to my children,\u201d she said. \u201cHow long was I going to go and stay somewhere? These folks aren&#8217;t going to show up while our attention is on them. They&#8217;re probably going to show up months, weeks, years later, because the story&#8217;s out there. This mythology about me, which is so dangerous, is out there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Wadhwa, though, blame doesn\u2019t just lie with those threatening violence. \u201cI put it down to parliamentarians,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And it\u2019s not just her who\u2019s suffering.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Stirring up hate <\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s more frequent now, I\u2019ve noticed,\u201d says Athol.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They are talking about recent experiences of transphobic violence while out in Paisley, in the west of Scotland, including attempted physical attacks \u2013 \u201cseven or eight\u201d incidents in total.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIn the last couple of years, it\u2019s got dramatically worse for trans folk,\u201d they add. Athol is non-binary and describes themselves as \u201cvery visibly queer\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s something you can\u2019t really escape. My [queer] friends around Paisley have all experienced it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe media has played a very, very antagonising role. It\u2019s creating a very dangerous time for trans people to exist in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beth Douglas, who is trans, also told openDemocracy about times she\u2019s been assaulted for being trans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIn the past,\u201d she said, \u201cpeople would have said something under their breath. Now, they\u2019re more confident to shout, to push you around.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These experiences aren\u2019t unusual. A recent\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lgbtyouth.org.uk\/news\/2022\/launch-life-in-scotland-for-lgbt-young-people-2022\/\">survey of young Scottish trans people<\/a>\u00a0showed 49% had been targets of hate crime.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, every major party had committed to making it easier for trans people to get legal acknowledgement of their gender through a document known as a gender recognition certificate. When the proposals were consulted on in 2017,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/consult.gov.scot\/family-law\/review-of-the-gender-recognition-act-2004\/\">60% of respondents were in favour<\/a>, including all major LGBTQ+ and women\u2019s groups. The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.opendemocracy.net\/en\/5050\/christian-right-feminists-uk-trans-rights\/\">objections<\/a>\u00a0came primarily from Christian conservative groups both in the UK and overseas \u2013 in the US, Canada and Australia \u2013 and also from a small number of fringe women\u2019s groups.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2018, the Scottish government proposed asking new, voluntary questions about sexuality and gender identity in the upcoming 2021 census. Joan McAlpine, an SNP MSP, convened the committee overseeing the changes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>A recent survey of young Scottish trans people showed 49% had been targets of hate crime<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Redacted correspondence released to openDemocracy under Freedom of Information laws shows someone \u2013 their name redacted, but likely to be McAlpine given her role \u2013 pushing for civil servants to ask anti-trans voices to give evidence, while mainstream women\u2019s rights organisations go unmentioned. In the correspondence, someone involved in the committee proposes seeking the opinion of \u2018Scottish Women\u2019, a blog run by one anti-trans activist. (Eventually, representatives of four groups gave evidence: two who supported the changes and two who didn\u2019t. McAlpine declined to comment when approached by openDemocracy.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After the committee meeting, a coalition of Scotland\u2019s main women\u2019s sector organisations\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.engender.org.uk\/news\/blog\/letter-to-joan-mcalpine-msp\/\">wrote to<\/a>\u00a0McAlpine describing the evidence given by one of the groups, For Women Scotland, as \u201cmisleading\u201d, pointing out that many of the group\u2019s concerns were based on misunderstandings of what census data is used for. \u201cIt is not used to generate information on the pay gap, or in the design of violence against women or health services,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But many of the myths the group promoted stuck, and popped up again and again as the Scottish government tried to pass equality legislation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In January 2018, after significant campaigning from the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/women5050.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/whatwomenwant.pdf\">trans-inclusive<\/a>campaign group Women 50.50, a new law came into force that required all public bodies in Scotland to aim for 50% of their board members to be women. For Women Scotland launched a court case complaining that trans women could theoretically be included in the target. In 2020, the group managed to raise nearly \u00a3200,000 to challenge the government\u2019s trans-inclusive definition of \u2018woman\u2019 in court, with crowd-funded donations from all over the world. It was one of the biggest fundraisers for a court case in Scottish legal history.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scotland has 129 public bodies, with a total of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.scot\/publications\/full-list-of-public-appointments-by-public-body\/\">788 board members<\/a>. Trans women make up an estimated 0.3% of the population. If they were proportionally represented, they would have around two of those seats. A Freedom of Information request to Scotland\u2019s ethical standards commissioner reveals no evidence that there are any trans members of public boards in Scotland.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This wasn\u2019t For Women Scotland\u2019s only legal intervention. A review of Scottish hate crime legislation in the same year had proposed the banning of stirring up hatred against protected groups, including trans people. In a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/archive2021.parliament.scot\/S5_JusticeCommittee\/Inquiries\/JS520HC406_For_Women_Scotland.pdf\">submission<\/a>\u00a0that denied non-binary identities were real and suggested that being trans was a \u2018fetish\u2019, For Women Scotland admitted it was \u201chighly likely that our organisation will be legislated out of existence if this bill is to become law\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Proposed legal amendment<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A new Scottish law was proposed in December 2020 to give survivors of sexual assault the right to request a medical examiner of a particular gender.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Former Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont proposed an amendment replacing the word \u2018gender\u2019 with \u2018sex\u2019 \u2013 a distinction that one mainstream women\u2019s organisation told openDemocracy was \u201clegally meaningless\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rape Crisis Scotland opposed the amendment \u2013 \u201cbecause we said this will not make any difference,\u201d says Sandy Brindley, its chief executive, \u201cbut also, as with many of the arguments of the gender critical movement, it created a solution to a problem that didn&#8217;t exist. As far as we know, there is not a single trans woman forensic examiner, which is what they were trying to exclude. The issue was male examiners. Women are still routinely examined by male examiners post-rape.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Green MSP Andy Wightman ended up resigning from his party in order to support the amendment, and The Scotsman newspaper published false claims about Rape Crisis Scotland, which it was forced by the press regulator to retract, in correspondence seen by openDemocracy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These attacks on Rape Crisis Scotland risk causing real damage, says Brindley.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cSurvivors are being fed deliberate misinformation to make them fearful about accessing our services and that really, really worries me,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause what we know is that survivors describe our services as lifesaving. And to think that people are being put off accessing them because of a misrepresentation of what those services are \u2013 that really worries me and that really upsets me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>As with many of the arguments of the gender critical movement, it created a solution to a problem that didn&#8217;t exist<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Sandy Brindley, chief executive, Rape Crisis Scotland<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the main groups leading these attacks is For Women Scotland, whose Twitter account has repeatedly promoted the hashtag #AskRapeCrisisScotland, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=mridul%20wadhwa%20(from%3Aforwomenscot)&amp;src=typed_query&amp;f=live\">stories<\/a>\u00a0about Mridul Wadhwa.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In recent years, the organisation\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ads\/library\/?active_status=all&amp;ad_type=all&amp;country=GB&amp;view_all_page_id=311654993038848&amp;search_type=page&amp;media_type=all\">Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and Twitter adverts describing trans-inclusive policies as a \u201csafeguarding catastrophe\u201d have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/archive2021.parliament.scot\/S5_JusticeCommittee\/Inquiries\/JS520HC406_For_Women_Scotland.pdf\">claim<\/a>\u00a0to have distributed 60,000 leaflets arguing against trans women being legally recognised as women, which they have been since 2005. The leaflets make claims such as: \u201cServices which you may wish to be performed by a woman\u2026 could be delivered by a \u2018woman\u2019 who is actually male.\u201d One of the four such services they list is rape counselling. (When approached by openDemocracy for comment, the group posted a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/forwomen.scot\/07\/08\/2022\/open-democracy\/\">sarcastic public blog<\/a>\u00a0in response, implying that our questioning was a \u2018witch hunt\u2019.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI find this misinformation painful to read,\u201d said Mridul Wadhwa. \u201cI see it as the erasure of my womanhood, denying my existence, my privacy and my ability to contribute to society. I say my, but really I mean all trans women. Their dangerous messaging makes all women who provide services in these settings suspect; their messages seek to reinforce stereotypes of what women must look and behave like, and also suggest that employers must share the personal histories of their female staff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The damage to feminist organisations in Scotland extends beyond the rape crisis movement. All of Scotland\u2019s main feminist organisations are trans-inclusive, and all have received significant abuse in recent years as a result.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Catherine Murphy, executive director of Scotland\u2019s feminist policy and advocacy organisation, Engender, said attacks from transphobes in recent years have included \u201cgraffiti to our office, vexatious enquiries, online abuse, and confrontation towards staff at events\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThis has implications for the wellbeing of our staff and has led to certain changes in how we operate,\u201d she said, \u201cbut the main concern we have about anti-trans attacks on feminist organisations is the impact it has on our work for equality.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhether we are talking about the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women, disabled women\u2019s reproductive rights, feminist city planning, or the racism and sexism faced by Black and minority ethnic women, we know that there will likely be individuals that will attempt to misdirect the discussion towards rhetoric against self-identification for trans people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This, she added, wastes \u201cvital time, energy and resources\u201d. Murphy describes it as \u201cheartbreaking\u201d to think of the progress that could have been made on issues like abortion, women\u2019s workplace equality, political representation \u201cif conversations weren\u2019t derailed and energy and resources drained in this way\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Karen Adam, an SNP MSP and vocal feminist who has spoken openly about her experiences of male violence and abuse, and also in support of trans rights, says her office has been graffitied by anti-trans activists, and that shortly afterwards its glass door was smashed, which she believes was likely connected.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cSome people seem to have been radicalised into hatred for trans people,\u201d she told openDemocracy. \u201cIt started out as \u2018concerns\u2019; it\u2019s ended up being this very vehement position that trans people are the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Signs of hope<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the anti-trans movement does seem to have been successful in stirring up hate against this already marginalised minority, it looks otherwise like it will be more of a failure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the 2021 Scottish parliament election, the Alba Party, founded by former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond after he fell out with the SNP over allegations of sexual assault, made opposition to trans rights a central feature of its campaign. Local elections the following year saw the Scottish Conservatives follow suit, with leader Douglas Ross\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pressandjournal.co.uk\/fp\/news\/highlands-islands\/4220261\/douglas-ross-calls-for-three-or-more-toilets-available-in-public-buildings\/\">saying cis women should complain<\/a>\u00a0if they saw trans women in women\u2019s toilets.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alba achieved just 1.7% of the vote in 2021, while the Scottish Conservatives\u2019 share fell from 25% in 2017 to 20%. Meanwhile, the Scottish Green Party\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsandstar.co.uk\/news\/national\/23053318.scottish-greens-vote-suspend-ties-english-party-transphobia\/\">voted on Sunday<\/a>\u00a0to cut ties with the Green Party of England and Wales over alleged failings on tackling transphobia in its ranks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are signs of hope, too, in the expected passage of Scotland\u2019s long-awaited Gender Recognition Act through the country\u2019s parliament later this month. The 2021 SNP\/Scottish Green Party co-operation agreement, which defines the agenda of the Scottish government, included a commitment to make it easier for trans people to gain legal recognition for their gender through the legislation, and in early October the committee that scrutinised the proposed bill overwhelmingly endorsed it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAnti-trans actors have emboldened a minority who have always opposed LGBTQ rights to openly attack LGBTQ inclusive education, marriage equality and even events like Pride,\u201d said Scott Cuthbertson, a leading Scottish activist for LGBTQ+ rights.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAs a campaigner for nearly two decades I\u2019ve never seen an atmosphere like this in Scotland. We regularly get posts on social media using tropes from decades ago. While I still feel we\u2019re moving forward legislatively in Scotland it does feel we are moving back socially.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<li style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>17.10.22<\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: center;\">____________<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">also see:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2021\/12\/13\/a-terf-far-right-alliance-has-launched-a-new-transphobic-onslaught\/\">A TERF Far Right alliance has launched a new transphobic onslaught \u2013 Adrien Belarc, Left Voice (USA)<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2021\/05\/26\/no-more-delays-in-trans-rights-reform-the-gra-now\/\">No delays in trans rights: reform the GRA now! \u2013 Leslie Cunningham, rs21<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: center;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following article by Adam Ramsay of openDemocracy describes the vicious campaign mounted by transphobes in Scotland, directed against Mridul Wadhwa, the director of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. HOW ANTI-TRANS ACTIVISTS FORCED EDINBURGH RAPE CRISIS CENTRE INTO LOCKDOWN Edinburgh\u2019s Rape Crisis Centre had always kept its front door open so survivors could walk in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1858,1859,8833,1875],"tags":[4587],"class_list":["post-22428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oppression-liberation","category-womens-liberation","category-queer-liberation","category-scotland-against-unionism","tag-author-adam-ramsay"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":7302,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22428"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22438,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22428\/revisions\/22438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}