Blog (thoughts and musings)

21st September 2025

Why the VAWG Sector Must Be Explicitly Anti-Racist and Challenge Supremacist Ideologies

Last week, I attended the CWASU Summer School, an excellent and intensive course exploring supremacist movements in the UK and their implications for women’s rights. The sessions examined far-right networks, fundamentalist movements, the rise of the Manosphere and Incel ideology, and the ways these intersect with male violence against women and girls. What follows are my reflections on why we must be explicitly anti-racist and committed to challenging supremacist ideologies in all their forms

The VAWG sector has long been at the forefront of tackling violence, abuse, and exploitation. But in today’s climate where supremacist movements are emboldened, misogyny is mainstreaming through digital spaces, and far-right ideologies are intertwining with other forms of fundamentalism, our sector faces a pivotal choice. We can either limit our focus to the symptoms of male violence, or we can confront its deeper roots in racist, patriarchal, and supremacist ideologies.

To do the latter, we must make a clear and explicit commitment: the VAWG sector must be anti-racist and actively challenge supremacist ideology.

Supremacy as a Unifying Thread

Whether we are talking about far-right nationalism, Islamist fundamentalism, Christian or Sikh fundamentalism, or the Manosphere, the common thread is supremacy. Supremacy is the belief in dominance and hierarchy of one race, one religion, one sex, one nation, or one way of being. These ideologies construct power through the subjugation of others, and women and girls are always among the first targets.

When the VAWG sector fails to name and challenge supremacy, we risk tackling only the violence at the surface while leaving intact the ideologies that fuel it.

Why Anti-Racism is Non-Negotiable

Racism is not just an “adjacent” issue to sex-based violence. It is a structuring force of violence. We see this in:

• Far-right movements in the UK that mobilise around racial hatred, while domestic abuse is rife among their ranks.

• Islamist fundamentalist networks that impose gender apartheid while weaponising racist narratives of victimhood.

• Christian and Sikh fundamentalist groups that police women’s bodies, while often colluding with nationalist projects.

If we do not take an explicitly anti-racist stance, we leave space for racist logics to creep into policy and practice. For example, the UK government’s Prevent strategy has too often securitised Muslim communities in ways that stigmatise rather than protect. The result? Women’s real safety is sidelined while racism is reinforced.

Linking Private and Public Violence

One of the most important insights from research on radicalisation is the continuum between private and public violence. The same dynamics of control, entitlement, and domination that underpin domestic abuse also drive supremacist politics. The statistic that two in five men arrested in the 2024 UK riots had prior reports for domestic abuse is a stark reminder: violence against women is not separate from extremist violence; it is entangled with it.

By being explicitly anti-racist, the VAWG sector can hold governments, institutions, and communities accountable for addressing the root causes of both private and public forms of supremacy.

The Manosphere and Mainstreaming of Supremacy

The Manosphere illustrates how supremacist ideology mutates and spreads. Online spaces that begin with complaints about dating or “men’s rights” quickly spiral into racialised conspiracy theories, anti-feminist vitriol, and violent fantasies. Andrew Tate’s global influence shows how easily misogyny, racism, and authoritarianism converge.

If our sector does not challenge supremacist ideology as a whole, we risk underestimating the threat of these movements and their impact and influence on young men and boys, and by extension, on women and girls.

Towards an Ethically Grounded Response

Being explicitly anti-racist in the VAWG sector means:

• Naming supremacy as a root cause of sex-based violence.

• Resisting securitised approaches that weaponise women’s safety to justify racist practices.

• Standing in solidarity with migrant women, and women in minoritised communities whose safety is often treated as expendable.

• Building prevention work that recognises the continuum of violence across the private and public sphere.

• Refusing co-option by political projects, left or right, that undermine women’s rights in the name of nationalism, religion, or security.

Conclusion

The VAWG sector cannot afford to treat anti-racism and anti-supremacy as optional extras. They are core to our mission. Supremacist ideologies whether far-right, fundamentalist, or rooted in male grievance pose a direct threat to women’s safety, freedom, and equality.

To protect women and girls, we must challenge not only the acts of violence but also the racist, patriarchal ideologies that sustain them. An explicitly anti-racist, anti-supremacist stance is not just political clarity, it is a matter of survival.

📩 Let’s talk — sally@sallyJconsulting.co.uk

9th September 2025

Beyond Awareness: Turning Feminist Values into Everyday Practice

In our sector, it’s common to hear organisations declare their commitment to feminist values.
They appear in strategies, sit proudly on websites, and are spoken about in meetings.

But here’s the truth:
Awareness isn’t enough. Statements alone don’t change women’s lives.

If we are to end male violence against women, feminist principles cannot sit on the sidelines as abstract ideals.
They must guide the everyday, the decisions we make, the services we design, the funding we provide, and the systems we hold accountable.

The trap of values without action

Too often, feminist principles remain aspirations rather than actions.
They’re admired but not applied.

For example:

• An organisation may say it is “survivor-centred” while still designing services around existing institutional structures instead of survivors’ lived realities.

• Commissioners may claim to value “equity” but continue to funnel resources away from specialist women’s organisations, especially those led by and for Black and minoritised women.

• Multi-agency work may “recognise perpetrators” in theory but still put the onus on survivors to manage their own safety.

This isn’t about bad intent, but about the dangerous gap between what we say and what we do.

What feminist practice looks like in action

1. Decision-making

• Survivors’ voices must not just be heard but shape the agenda from the start.

• Every choice should be tested against a simple feminist question:
  Does this increase women’s safety and hold men who use violence accountable?

2. Service design

• Services should dismantle barriers for women, not expect them to adapt to broken systems.

• Intersectionality must be non-negotiable. Violence is never experienced in isolation from racism, ableism, homophobia, classism, or immigration status.

3. Commissioning

• Funding must recognise the expertise of women’s services, especially grassroots and minoritised organisations.

• Contracts should enable collaboration and stability, not pit services against each other in endless competition.

Embedding feminist values in daily work

Feminist principles should live and breathe in the everyday:

• Language that never excuses or minimises men’s violence, and never blames women.

• Policies that protect staff who may themselves be survivors of abuse.

• Partnership spaces that reflect on power and privilege, not just tick off agenda items.

• Accountability that focuses on perpetrators, not on the coping strategies of women.

This is what it means to live the values we claim to hold.

Feminist + collaborative = systemic change

Feminist practice alone can be radical but isolating.
Collaboration alone can be efficient but shallow.

Together, they can transform systems:

• Power is shared more equally.

• Survivors’ needs shape not only services but entire systems.

• Men who use violence face coordinated, consistent consequences.

Awareness is only the beginning.
Practice is where change happens.

If your organisation wants to move beyond words and embed feminist principles into decision-making, service design, and commissioning, I can help.

📩 Let’s talk — sally@SallyJconsulting.co.uk

18th August 2025

Collaboration that Delivers: How Partnerships Can Truly Hold Perpetrators to Account

In our sector, we talk a lot about collaboration. Multi-agency meetings, partnership boards, memorandums of understanding — all designed to bring organisations together around a shared goal: ending male violence against women.

But here’s the truth: too often, these structures exist without real follow-through. We meet, we talk, we share updates… and yet survivors still face barriers to support, and perpetrators remain unchallenged.

If we are serious about ending male violence against women, we need collaboration that delivers — partnerships that are bold, accountable, and relentlessly focused on outcomes.

Why “good meetings” aren’t enough

I’ve been in countless partnership settings where everyone is dedicated and hard-working, but the structure doesn’t demand follow-through. Actions are noted but not tracked. Perpetrators’ behaviour is discussed but not directly addressed. Survivors’ safety plans are agreed but not consistently monitored.

Collaboration without accountability risks becoming performative, it feels good, but it doesn’t shift the ground beneath us.

The three essentials of collaboration that delivers

1. Shared, measurable goals
Every partner should know exactly what “success” looks like,  not just in broad terms like “reduce harm” but in measurable outcomes: increased survivor safety scores, reduced repeat offending, improved arrest-to-charge ratios.

2. Accountability mechanisms
If an action is agreed, it needs a named lead, a deadline, and a process for follow-up. Without this, actions evaporate. Accountability isn’t about blame, it’s about ensuring commitments turn into change.

3. Perpetrator focus
Too often, the system orbits around survivors’ responses to violence, not the behaviour of the perpetrator. Effective partnerships keep the focus firmly where it belongs: on the person causing harm.

What this looks like in practice

When partnerships operate with impact:

• Survivors see consistent, joined-up support.

• Perpetrators face a clear, coordinated response.

• Organisations trust each other to deliver, because commitments are met.

It’s not about being adversarial, it’s about being purposeful.

The work to end male violence against women is too important for “polite” partnerships. We need collaboration that challenges, questions, and delivers.

If your organisation or partnership wants to strengthen its approach, I can help you build the structures, relationships, and processes that make accountability unavoidable.

📩 Let’s talk — sally@sallyJconsulting.co.uk