No sweat. It’s an Australian research piece where the interviewer probes the views of fifteen women who hold various positions within CASA (centre against sexual assault), domestic violence refuges and women’s health centres and the impact admitting transwomen, either as clients or employees, have had on abused women within the various organisations. They’ve not been positive. Here’s an excerpt.

One of the main issues that came out of these experiences was that although MTFs had the technical skills needed to do their job, they had little understanding about gender. They did not appreciate that the life experiences of heterosexual women, lesbians, bisexual women and transgenders were different and that these differences needed to be understood by workers in order to meet their respective needs.

For example one of the past workers in one of the centres involved in this study was an MTF transgender. The interviewee, who had found this problematic, explained that this person ran workshops for women.

“He ran a regular workshop for lesbian, bisexual and trans-women in the same workshop without any understanding that their life experiences are different.”

She felt that this worker's understanding of the gender power issues involved in treating female identified clients as a homogenous group seemed to be limited.