Safeguarding Women’s spaces and Combating Sexual Predators

Also here as pdf.
Dear Jenny [Jones],

Thank you for your question:

“When I ask Trans activists if it's wrong when males *falsely* Self ID as female, gain access to female spaces, assault and rape already vulnerable women, they say, well rape is wrong. So ... why not put in safeguards?” (Twitter, 20/09/21)

This is an important question, deserving of a fuller response, although it can be put to everybody with a stake in fairness and safety, which is all of us. Trans people are also failed by manipulators and fabricators who would abuse policies put in place for them, whether amongst their midst or not; but so long as people do lie then safeguards will have to take those possibilities into full account.

Protected spaces reserved for women only or women and girls only have been established throughout the world, not because all men are rapists, but because it is impossible to know in advance which men might pose a threat. Any man entering such spaces can be easily identified and then required to leave as a matter of basic safeguarding. Gender self-identification, if used as a sole basis for entry to a previously same-sex space or service, can provide a loophole through which male sexual predators can self-identify as women in order to gain access to women and, in some instances, children. Moreover, they wouldn’t necessarily have to self-identify at all, in order exploit the probability that they wouldn’t be challenged. Women themselves are self-censoring for fear of being labelled transphobic.

Any falsely trans-identifying man can claim to be rightfully present in women's protected spaces and so cannot be required to leave. This is not fear-mongering; there is evidence that it is happening. Male prisoners convicted of sexual crimes are self-identifying as women in order to serve their sentences in the easier environment of a women's prison, with ready access to more victims, e.g. Karen White (Guardian, 11 Oct 2018).

There is the recent high-profile incident of a transwoman (as stated by Pink news, 3 Sept 2021), Agee Merager, a tier-one sexual offender, facing multiple felony charges of indecent exposure after four women and a girl accused her of exposing her male genitals at Wi Spa, Los Angeles in June 2021. She has two earlier convictions for indecent exposure, one in 2002 and another in 2003. Five years later, she was convicted for failing to register as a sex offender.[1]

Reports of sexual predation by trans-identifying males can be found on the Facebook site This Never Happens, which collects such reports in order to refute the claim that adopting a policy of allowing men access to women's protected spaces does not cause problems. Men are responsible for 99% of sexual assaults and 100% of rapes under UK law.

I do not profess to know the solutions to these problems but I do know that my starting place would be to listen to concerns on all sides, and that would include women and girls who feel that their single-sex spaces should be protected better or absolutely. Here is a letter to the Equalities Minister (April 2020) representing some of these concerns to protect single-sex spaces. I would find it especially problematic – and this has been central to one of my core campaign aims to fix – that the concerns of women and girls were somehow not of equal worth to those of any other group. I regard it as core to Green Party politics and value that we would take considerable effort to make sure that we do seek out those concerns in order the better to address them. We should reject as authoritarian attempts to silence their concerns without giving them a fair hearing.

Let’s be absolutely clear about where smears of transphobia can lead. Andy Wightman resigned because he felt bullied into not being able to vote for an amendment in the Scottish Parliament. This would have guaranteed that a victim of sexual assault had the right to be examined by a clinician of the same sex. This passed by 113 votes to 9: I am with the 113.

Shahrar

[1] I use “she” in order to respect Merager’s affirmed gender, but it is arguable that the use of preferred pronouns here can cause confusion about the type of sexual offence taking place, that of a male-bodied perpetrator. Moreover, it is not clear that a lying affirmation should be worthy of respect in a democratic society, as contrary to the intention of the practice of respecting preferred pronouns or certainly not to the degree that it should override the utility of being able to record crime statistics meaningfully; but such a debate, whilst important, would take us into a longer foray into philosophical linguistics and ethics. It does at any rate seem preposterous to want to criticise the victim of a sexual assault, say, for misgendering a rapist who was lying about their gender identity. I doubt I’m the only one who feels that a report which respects the preferred pronouns of a multiply lying rapist could do with a reality check.