Generally about our shelter: it works as a sort of collective. The women cook together, but that’s about it. If they want to spend their time in their room, that’s perfectly fine, or if they want to go out for the day – fine, too. And it’s not a long way from the rooms to the meeting room, where they might have meetings with social workers, psychologists or child carers.

It’s also a fairly big and slightly confusing house, you can actually get lost there. It’s an old town house built around the corner of a street, so there are some funny angles and such. I quite like it. But anyway, the point is, you can actually keep to yourself a lot during your stay. Some women are sociable, some are not, some have children, some don’t, some are over 50, some are below 25. There is such a variety of women coming through. And from what I’ve observed, several of the women who’ve been there in the short period of time I have, could have been trans, and we’re none-the-wiser. Some of them talk about themselves and their lives, others are very, very quiet and don’t divulge much – and that’s perfectly okay and no one finds that strange.

I see no reason whatsoever to bar trans women from entering this shelter. Especially as there are no restrictions regarding male authority persons, male social workers, police officers, fire fighters, relatives are allowed access, so to use the excuse ‘fear of men’ to bar trans women from entering would make life harder for all the women as they’d suddenly be barred from seeing their social workers, and we’d be fucked when the house needs a new roof, ’cause I doubt you can find a company with only female masons…

Regardless – I’ll keep working on this one.

And, frankly, what makes most women in shelters uncomfortable is the knowledge that someone in that shelter has or had a penis. Because many of them have literally had a penis used as a weapon against them. The *idea* is more intimidating than the reality, I believe.

Which is the same thing as what Kristen said, essentially — the intimidated women see trans women as perpetrators of violence. I mean, I can only conclude, at least in a vast majority of cases, that the fear is not of the penis itself, it’s of the perceived threat that it will be used to enact violence. Because frankly, a lot of women have also been attacked with various object, like belts, or with fists or fingers, kicked with feet, and so on. To the best of my knowledge, those are both objects and body parts that are in fact allowed in such shelters that ban trans women.

And unless the women in question were assaulted by trans women, I don’t see how such a fear is logical or anything other than seeing trans women as “really men.” And if the woman in question was attacked by a trans woman? Well, other women have been attacked by cis women. But cis women are still allowed such shelters.

You’re more optimistic about the kindness and understanding of people than I am.

Re: discomfort. I think there are lots of things that may remind a victim, particularly one suffering from RTS of their experience, many of which may be discriminatory. Will it make some victims uncomfortable? Maybe. Is there discomfort rooted in the trauma of being victimized? For some I’m sure it is, for others the discomfort is transphobia.

Your experience with shelters and mine must have been different. I’ve rarely worked at shelters that have access to a therapist let alone mandatory group or where all victims talk about what happen to them…too much guilt, shame, and isolation.