This is an important report by Fairplay for Women.
I would hope that Dr Burroes would read it and consider seriously the findings:
Executive Summary:
- Women are afraid to speak.
Our whistleblowers reported widespread silencing of any and all discussion about self-identification policies and reform of the Gender Recognition Act that affect the provision of services for victims of violence and abuse:
n Professionals feared – or had directly observed or experienced – targeted campaigns of harassment against individuals aggressively trying to intimidate women expressing doubts about self-ID policies.
Accounts include people losing their jobs and organisations losing their funding.
n Women merely asking questions about sex self-ID or GRA reform are labelled ‘TERFS’ and subject to threats of harm, death and sexual violence.
n Organisations and activists involved in lobbying for trans-inclusive policies, or even advising and training organisations supporting vulnerable women, have suggested that violence against so-called ‘TERFS’ is justified. Government, LGBT and women’s organisations alike have failed to condemn this.
(see section: Violence, threats and TERF as hate speech).
n Several organisations did not take part in recent Stonewall research on this topic because they were too frightened to speak openly, or because they did not trust their views would be properly reflected by Stonewall.
- Biology matters more than identity.
Whistleblowers and survivors were concerned that people were labelling the evidence-based demand for single-sex spaces as somehow transphobic or hateful. They were clear that:
n If a refuge chooses or is pressured to adopt a self-ID policy (and thus does not make use of the sex exemptions which the Equality Act allows for) this means in practice any fully intact male will be allowed to use the service simply because he says he is a woman. Contrary to public perception the overwhelming majority of male-born transgender people retain their penis and are fully male-bodied.
n The potential threat to the physical and emotional safety of the women using their services came from biological males – however they describe themselves.
n There is no evidence to show that risk changes when a man says he is a woman.
n Professionals and service-users wished to be able to exclude individuals on the basis of their biological sex (as they would any other male-bodied individual wishing to use the service) rather than on the basis of their proclaimed gender identity.
- Risk assessment will become impossible.
Professionals said that existing systems for assessing the risk posed to users and staff by a potential new service-user are already limited and imperfect. Allowing anyone who identifies themselves as a woman – and preventing any questioning of that identification – to access ‘women-only’ services will render those safeguards wholly ineffective.
n It is naïve and wrong to assume risk assessments can identify abusive men. It is simply impossible to tell someone’s intentions. Many abusers are extremely skilled at deception.
n Male perpetrators of violence will go to any lengths to gain access to vulnerable women and children. This fact is not adequately recognised in public policy debate over this issue.
n Over-the-phone assessments done at weekends or in the night are of necessity basic, and some refuges assess post-arrival.
- Survivors have been ignored.
Survivors’ concerns have been dismissed. Women have been told to accept a male’s interpretation of reality.
n Survivors have been given no formal voice in the Government consultation on GRA reform.
n Some feel that lobby groups like Stonewall, who compare female survivors’ concerns to racism or homophobia, are themselves acting in an abusive manner.
n Some feel that service providers and policymakers are in danger of throwing out lessons already learned:
from the painful acknowledgement of the risk abusers pose to women and children, to the necessity of single-sex spaces for deeply traumatised women and children to heal.
- This is a matter of life and death.
Among advocacy groups and some policymakers, there is a profound lack of understanding or consideration of the potential impact these issues could have on vulnerable women and children.
n Self-ID policies mean effectively giving the keys of women’s refuges to abusive men. One whistleblower warned that widespread adoption of these policies would lead, “without a shadow of a doubt”, to women in refuges being murdered by perpetrators.
n Deeply traumatised, vulnerable women who felt unable to use single sex services would find it harder to escape abusers and may even end up returning to their abuser.
n Self-ID policies would have a disproportionate effect on some women, for example Muslim women of south Asian and east African origin, who can face significant cultural penalties for the use of mixed-sex spaces. (continues)
fairplayforwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FPFW_report_19SEPT2018.pdf