Women's refuges have been including trans women for years, because trans women, like cis women, can be victims of domestic violence.

Yeah, my work stuff involves some stuff with organizations supporting survivors of IPV and/or sexual violence, including refuges.

So I know that in the actual field, this is a non-issue. The laws as currently written would potentially allow refuges to exclude trans women, I believe, but they're generally not choosing to do that and it's fucking FINE.

There are a tonne of major issues deeply concerning the people running refuges right now (many of which involve the fact that the sector's been GUTTED by austerity); inclusion of trans women really isn't one of them.

Also: people who have survived violence are not thereby made into perfect pure passive saintly victims. So all of these organizations have to have mechanisms and processes for handling it if a servicer user's behaviour is potentially risky or harmful to other services users.

It's not that everything is perfect and safe and harmonious just as long as you don't have any of those Eeeevil trans women in the space, nor is anybody's safety preserved in any way by excluding trans women.

FUCK. This is such a non-issue on the ground, for the people who are actually running the refuges and fighting for the rights of survivors.

Which is evidence that the people trying to weaponize it don't really give a shit about protecting survivors.