Lexi Secker, rapist, and his pronouns

I don't get it at all, by legal definition in the uk, only a man can commit rape. Why on earth are they playing these stupid fucking games.

I don't understand why news organisations can't have a policy of "We'll call trans women by their chosen pronouns unless they use their penises to rape somebody". Literally only lunatics would disagree with that policy.

What can you expect from the BBC. An organisation known to be longstanding harbourers and protectors of paedophiles and sex offenders.

Also fuck the BBC for this paragraph:

Secker, 35, of Lowbourne, near Melksham, has been ordered to carry out her sentence in a male prison and will remain on the sex offenders register indefinitely.

There is ABSOLUTELY no need for "her" in this paragraph. Even if the reporter and/or the editorial team are all too fucking weak-minded or unprincipled to use "his" they could have said "carry out the sentence" so the decision to use "her" is just a gratuitous knife to the guts of this man's victim.

I do struggle with the whole 'I promise to tell the truth' bit and then being obliged to lie about the sex of the perpetrator.

Absolutely.

I honestly don't think anyone found guilty of rape/sex abuse against females should be allowed to 'identify' as the opposite sex. If you did that to a woman then you cannot be associated with them in any way. They should've kept calling him male and He.
I'm glad he went to a male prison.

Women can't commit rape, but I understand there have been a very few rare cases where women have been charged with it, and what's happened is that man has done the raping, and the woman is being charged under 'joint enterprise'.

Are we confident on the stats business? Can we be confident that no crimes committed by men are assigned to women? One thing saying it's happened in this case. But in every case?

True.
And I would say not just legally but physically we can't.
We can do all sorts of horrible (sexual) things but we can't rape.

Sounds like the judge’s computer needs looking at

Legally a woman cannot commit rape. If the person sentenced to a male prison for rape is a woman then the police, cps, jury and judge have all messed up severely.

I always feel very suspicious of judges who become notorious for consistently giving sex offenders lenient sentences. Such judges should be investigated themselves to find out why they are sympathetic to such bestial creatures.

Good point. But he'd probably say "women can rape" which starts a whole different topic - on 2 levels.

I posted a Telegraph article about this in the It will never happen thread. The extra information on the judge does concern me regarding sentencing

https://archive.ph/dRDse

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/27/trans-rapist-referred-to-as-she-by-judge-sent-male-prison/

especially as the judge being quoted here

The judge said he was sentencing Secker “with regard to how difficult a prison sentence in a male institution will be for you”.

Did he reduce the sentence because Secker claimed to be trans? I'm struggling to see any other interpretation to that comment.

Perhaps this might help explain why pronouns matter to the “but why can’t you just beeee kind??/how does it affect you?” brigade

Something else about the article. The shifting use of man, woman, male, transwoman etc. are pretty hard to follow even when you're well-versed in all this. And if you are, it also highlights the incoherence of the ideology.

One assumes the "woman" victim is described as such on the basis of her sex, for obvious reasons. But when the perpetrator is, in contrast, described as "identifying as" a man, does that not highlight a problematic inconsistency? By the time we read the explicit and emphatic, "At the time of the offence, you were a man", it seems clear that, in both court and article, "man" and "woman" must logically be being used in line with the perpetrator's interpretation of these words - that of self-perception, not biology. But does the victim agree with that?

If not, his reality is being imposed on her - redefining her according to his perception - even in the aftermath of a case which is all about his removal of her agency in order to meet his "needs". And in a context in which her sex is absolutely fundamental, it's implicitly being dismissed as secondary - to his preferences. Ironic.

I don't like reflecting on it in this detail so soon after it's happened - it feels intrusive to do so - so probably won't explore this aspect further... but, even as I type that, I think, again: if I feel that way about this, I struggle to understand how there's not, at the very least, more official recognition of the complexities of respecting convicted criminals' pronouns in certain contexts.

That's a really good point.
Of course all this undermines the "principle" that people are who they say they are and TWAW (except for rapists). The judiciary and the police repeatedly beclown themselves with all this. It brings the law into disrepute.
No wonder people are so cynical about authority when they pander to and prioritise the demands of a rapist.

To add, I've now read the article and can see this timeline is addressed more explicitly in it (in, for example, the judges' remarks), and this creates a wider context to the language used above in a way that means my interpretation of it in this instance may not stand. I still feel the two quotations above - BBC and my hypothetical - in isolation are an interesting indication of the power of language and how subtle its effects can be, though.

Something else that's struck me for the first time, that really highlights the power of subtle linguistic shifts...

Compare:

1. The BBC's "Lexi Secker raped a woman in Blunsdon, Wiltshire, on 23 April 2023. The attack took place before Secker began identifying as a woman."

2. The alternative "Lexi Secker raped a woman in Blunsdon, Wiltshire, on 23 April 2023. Since the attack, Secker has begun identifying as a woman."

Would you agree with my sense that the first has undertones of - or at least the potential to be interpreted as - This was an attack more likely to be prepetrated by a man than by a transwoman? And that the second, in contrast, leaves more space for the reader to at least consider the possibility that such a transition may be in some way cynical?

Both versions are factual. Neither interpretation is definitive enough even to be considered as subtext.

Yet all the same, I do think they have a very subtly different resonance...

Is that me?

And would the victim have been told off if referring to this man as he in court? It's happened before with the Hyde Park case.

I see, bloody pronouns.

I noticed both the BBC and the Telegraph reported the rape as occurring in 2023. However, other local papers and Reduxx (I think), suggest it was 2021. I think 2021 is correct which must have been awful for the victim to have to wait all that time and then hear her rapist referred to as ‘she’ in court.

www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/24614663.transgender-rapist-jailed-blunsdon-woods-attack/

I wouldn't call that pos man "she" in a month of Sundays.