Daily Archive

I’ve had yet another battle this week with the NA Gods about a women’s meeting I run being female only, & trans exclusive.

I’ve been “asked” to unaffiliated our Women’s Recovery Meeting from NA after another complaint that my rule of female only attendees is “transphobic”. Here’s the issue:

Many women in recovery have experienced severe sexual abuse. They have traumas I couldn’t repeat as to do so would be to describe horrific acts of child exploitation & sexual abuse. When the women who come in to recovery do so, they must be able to talk about what happened to them. We have a triage team who know how to help. We’ve been running for almost 4 years now & are one of the only guaranteed female only meetings that exists.

We need to be trans exclusive because of men – the male kind – who take advantage of the meetings online format to put on a wig & some lipstick & sneak in to specifically listen to the descriptions of sexual trauma that women have endured. Some men (not all men, not even most men, but some) sexually enjoy watching devastated women recount the details of what has been done to them at the hands of men. I’ve been in other meetings where men are clearly recording the testimonies of women & seen men clearly openly masturbating on camera. It’s vile, it’s well known to happen & no one on the front lines would ever doubt that this is a recurring issue.

What shocks me is that it is not men who are making complaints about our meeting. If a man is so perverted that he seeks out ways to watch women talk about what they call “trauma porn”, he may try subtly to come in but will not risk exposing himself by drawing attention to what he is trying to do. Instead, he will tell women in other groups that a trans friend of his has recently overdosed & died & name my Women’s Only meeting as the culprit, then the women will become outraged & team up to make complaints or even infiltrate the meeting themselves & cause trouble.

Women who have found recovery have already beaten so many odds against them. The vulnerable young women who find us have found a supportive, strong group of sisters who will be able to protect their safe space & help them through recovery. Without the meeting, which is once a week, many wouldn’t have made it.

People say this never happens. It does. Men are posing as trans women online to go on to Zoom meetings set up for women in recovery & preying on us. That needs to stop, or at the very least women who are further in to recovery need to be able to firmly set boundaries & keep our meetings running without endless pressure for trans inclusion. The trans women I know could never & would never object to a female only recovery meeting.

We must be allowed to retain female only spaces & services for the most vulnerable women in our communities & cannot afford to have any loophole which nullifies our already strained resources.

I’ve been threatened by a woman this week who will be “outing me on Twitter” as a “transphobe” for retaining the female only boundary for our women’s only meeting. So there – I’ve outed myself. I do not believe it is “transphobic” to keep perverted men away from traumatised, vulnerable women in early recovery.

I will not bow to the handmaidens of predatory men over protecting vulnerable women. It is not trans women I wish to keep away from our meeting – they are a casualty of the perverted actions of pornsick men. Please kindly stop enabling them to abuse women.

Women deserve single sex services. There is no time to be politically correct when it comes to the recovery of abuse survivors: they are likely to talk about what has happened to them for the first time in a meeting like ours, surrounded by only women. Men did that damage & women are trying to undo what we can & help the healing begin.

I cannot believe it is women who object & can’t see that to include *males in women’s only services is to nullify them.

I will not compromise or be bullied in to putting women at risk. No.