Teen with Aspergers convicted of transgender hate crime, he asked is that a boy or a girl.

moderate it's a nice idea, but unfortunately women are not protected from abuse or misogyny by this law.

I don't have a problem with someone being trans snowblight

I have a problem with a teenage lad being criminalised, called a yob in the press, fined, curfewed, when he's a clearly a vulnerable adult, for saying "is it a boy or is it a girl".

Hope that clears it up for you.

@TreestumpsAndTrampolines

I wonder if this isn't a direct action opportunity - report every incidence of street harassment, so they understand the magnitude of what women put up with as a matter of course.

That's what I was thinking. Report all instances of "show us your tits", holding up this story as an example of how no misdemeanour is too small to warrant the full force of the law.

I got shouted at 'are you a boy or a girl' all the time as a child, as a girl with short hair, and I was fine with it. I understand it may be a more sensitive issue for a trans person, however - trans people, as I understand it, are a protected group, and women with short hair aren't and there are reasons for that.

At the same time, I do think the response was OTT

I haven't 'decided the guy was guilty' - I am saying the title of this thread an subsequent discussions seem to be presenting this as though 'innocent child with autism made an honest mistake' and the circumstances don't seem that way to me. Unless he totally randomly decided to shout 'Are you a boy or a girl?' at a random man and it was awfully bad luck that man happened to be a trans man who looked unambiguously male (which this guy does). Maybe IRL the guy is small and slight, but surely you'd shout out 'shortarse!' or something rather than querying their gender?

Seems to me:
Mistake - unlikely
Hate-filled invective - also probably unlikely
Intended as a bit of a joke without realising how upsetting it was - quite possibly

So all in, charge probably not very fair considering accused guy's social issues.

I'm glad that threads like this exist here because they show everyone that, even if you took away all the supposed concerns about self-ID etc, some people here would still have an issue with the fact that someone is trans. That's just hateful prejudice. If you substituted black, Muslim, gay etc for trans in some of the posts on this forum there would be no doubt about the hate that exists in some people's minds. And some people criticising this story are probably the worst hypocrites. I'll bet some suggesting a trans person is supposed to just accept abuse and get on with it would be knocking at the door of their human resources department... despite their convenient claims that they would just ignore it.

I read poota's post as satire - but it is so frightening that this is the CPS's thought process, it must be.

Yes it must be hurtful to the trans man to come up against the hard fact that they don't pass as well as maybe they thought - but the important fact is the lack of egality here. The police simply cannot prosecute all cases of hurt feelings for the protected groups - they'd never do anything else! And it's demonstrative that they wouldn't even try to legislate for women facing misogyny - misogyny wasn't even written into the legislation. And women are also a protected group.

It's ridiculous. Even the question, 'is it a boy or a girl' sounds quite child like and innocent. No foul language, no threat, no crude reference to genitals. Ridiculous.

The TRAs I know tend to be very anti-police and anti 'carceral feminism' (ie women who think the law ought to protect their rights too).

I wonder how they square this with the evident wider scrambling of the CPS, police forces, and every other misogynistic public body to prosecute those who don't believe in their ideology.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7943259/Judge-orders-yob-19-pay-200-damages-transgender-PCSO.html

Daily Mail went all out - awful reporting. Yob ffs!

Judge orders yob, 19, to pay £200 damages to transgender PCSO, 25, after shouting 'is it a boy or is it a girl' while he was on patrol on town
• Declan Armstrong, 19, abused PCSO Connor Freel as he was on foot patrol
• Armstrong shouted 'is it a boy or is it a girl' at PCSO Freel, who is transgender
• Mold Magistrates' Court convicted Armstrong of using abusive language
• He was handed to a night time curfew and pay £590 in costs and compensation

That’s how I read it...

I’m hoping Poota’s post was satire.

Did you just say this is worse than racism?

Can you imagine if women flung ourselves to the ground wailing dramatically every time a man said something offensive to us? I mean, obviously we wouldn't, because who has the time even if they have no dignity, but if we did people would think we'd lost our marbles rather than rushing to offer sympathy and prosecution of the person who'd upset us.

Sounds like his legal advice was possibly poor too.

I think what so many of us are missing, as per the recent CPS restricted guidance on bullying and hate crimes, is that LGBTQ+ people find what they perceive as bullying much, much worse than those with other protected characteristics.

So this Trans police worker, having perceived these questions as wounding to their very core identity, would have found it much more difficult to deal with, as LGBTQ+ people worry about others in their community being abused and bullied in a way that others from other protected characteristics, like those with disabilities, do not.

It's only right, as per CPS guidance, that this young man with Asperger's face the full penalty for the injury to the Trans police worker, to reflect the extra significance of the offence.

If not, how do you assess intent to harrass from one incident which could simply be tactlessness?

Yes, or in the case of some with Aspergers/ASD - a simple factual, but blunt question.

And @Bonkerz - that is crazy. 6 years old! - beggars belief.

Dear police forces - please could you concentrate on real crime over hurt felings. Thank you very much.

Can I write to my MP about this? I'm obviously not in the lad's constituency, or connected in any way - but who is looking out for this vulnerable adult?? He wasn't inciting violence or anything like that - the only thing he did was hurt a PCSO's feelings - and that should not be criminalised.

A man once said ‘What the fuck IS that?’ to me
as I passed him on the train pavement.

Didn’t cal the cops.

He didn't even ask "Are you..?", he asked "Is it...?". Doesn't sound like he was trying to engage with the pcso at all.

Are you a boy or a girl?' it does not sound like an innocent mistake of social misunderstanding. It sounds like he knew Freel was trans and was trying to upset and humiliate him

What a load of nonsense.
How humiliating and upsetting to be asked if you are a boy or girl.
The next time someone asks me if my short haired girl toddler is a boy I'm calling the police. Oh actually I'll give mermaids a call too and stonewall they'll back me won't they and I'm sure they will be very helpful.

He shouted at someone and asked if it's a boy or girl,twice.

This is not a drill.

Echobelly, that doesn't follow. We can all just make shit up. What about this:

Friend: Hey, I know her/him, she used to be a girl but now he's a man.
Autistic lad: What d'you mean? Are you talking about that police man?
Friend: Yeah, but he wasn't before. She was a girl.
Autistic lad (incredulous and confused): What do you mean? Is it a man or a woman?
Friend: Both, really.
(More of the same confusing shite)
Autistic lad: I don't get what you mean! Just make sense! IS IT A MAN?! OR IS IT A WOMAN?!

^^Just as imaginary as your input, but benefits from being a completely familiar exchange many of us can imagine from personal experience of being autistic or having relationships with autistics.

less than 2% of rape cases prosecuted vs 84% of hate crimes.

There was a whole thread last year about women who have been called 'Sir' or mistaken for a man.
Sex is a protected characteristic, but misogyny is not a hate crime.

TBF, the PCSO looks and sounds totally male to me and I don't see anything about him that would lead anyone to guess he was trans.

In person, perception is often different. One of my trans friends looks like a glamorous fashion model in photos but doesn’t pass in person due to proportion and scale, especially noticeable when standing beside other people.

Besides, I’ve been asked if I was man or a woman before, and I’d say I’m obviously female but I had just come out of the gym in sweats with a hood up, so had no gendered signifiers. The person who asked was a child, rather than a neuro diverse adult, but even if the asker was an adult, I wouldn’t have called the cops.
I just said ‘a woman’ and smiled, no biggie.

So a hate crime is a crime if the victim says they feel a crime was committed?

Could we have that for rape?

Instead of being humiliated for days in court, told we wore the wrong clothes, spoke too nicely, let the man in, didn't fight hard enough, so it wasn't really a crime...

...how about if we feel we were raped, then we were?

Maybe she's borrowing Layla's soul reading device.