Transwoman accused of sexual assault after concealing male genitalia on date

I think the passing issue in these cases comes down to whether the victim was genuinely deceived, or whether it could be argued that they knew what they were getting into. (Though it would be a brave lawyer with a trans client who says "you couldn't possibly have believed my client was a woman")

It could be a factor in those cases, which I assume are rare though they make good headlines, where a woman poses as a man to sleep with heterosexual women. We know women can pass convincingly as men better than the other way round, and that lots of young women are attracted to somewhat feminine men - the whole boy band or K-pop thing.

In those cases I think we're mostly talking about horny young lesbians who have come to the cruel realisation that none of the girls they fancy are interested in same-sex partners. I feel sorry for them, but sex by deception is not an answer to that problem. Similarly, people who adopt trans identities are often slow to realise that they've reduced their dating pool to almost zero.

A big part of the techniques taught on the male pickup artist circuit are about using emotional manipulation to pull women. As distasteful as that is, it's probably impossible to legislate against. But deception as to your biological sex - which affects the protected characteristic of sexual orientation - that should be a no brainer.

@JamieCannister The obvious issue with allowing men to murder trans women on the grounds that they were tricked is that a trans woman could declare their identity, the man could shag them, regret it, and beat them to death. It's not like the trans woman would be alive to testify against them, is it?

Men have happily done this to gay men, women who are prostitutes, women who aren't prostitutes etc. so I can absolutely believe they'd do it to a trans woman.

I think this case is awful, and clearly involves a young and possibly vulnerable man. On the face of it the trans woman appears guilty to me (no pun intended). That doesn't mean I'll endorse male pattern violence because it's being used against someone I don't like.

I think this is also probably true, and like with many cases regret or embarrassment after the act can lead to the wronged party putting in a complaint.

These cases could easily be dismissed if the trans person was upfront about who they were (if messages exchanged beforehand detailed it), but because they weren't it goes to trial.

Trans people are putting themselves in these situations because they are not being honest upfront.

I agree that it's disgusting and "rapey". I think that it's one step milder than if you have to share bedroom with a collegue, and the collegue rapes you while you are asleep(which is 100% rape). Perhaps the sentence should be a bit milder than such a scenario. (I'm just thinking how victimized I would feel in the two scenarios).

You do know that the longer the minimal sentences, the harder it often is to convict. So it's not like longer sentences is unequivocally good, it's often a trade-off.

Haven’t read whole the article but this scenario got me thinking esp that they were young at the time. How young autistic males internalising the TWAW mantra would be legitimately confused and will struggle.

To a certain degree of confidence I can assume an older TW knows full well that they are not a woman and just want to look and act like one within the boundaries of what they think women act and look like.

But a young person? Being lied to at possibly a very young age (yes you are female/male) by unethical teachers / healthcare professionals / surgeons / therapists / govt / parents / orgs / newspapers etc…. Add in the increasingly lost skill of critical thinking thanks to SM and now AI and it adds up to a toxic cocktail of 2 + 2 = 5.

Without someone reaffirming material reality, these young people are, of course, going to be extremely damaged and more of these incidents will happen but possibly with genuine confusion on the part of the teen who thinks they’re trans.

All because of a massive safeguarding and reality check fail on the part of so many professionals. And it’s still going on unabated despite the SC judgement.

I read the article, and I wonder this too. What's your point? Did you read it all?

Forgot to quote poster - please delete

So you're playing the "don't believe the claimed victim of sexual assault" game?

I don't care if he did know to be honest. If he did know the man pretending to be a woman did not know he knew, so it was attempted sexual assault at minimum, and I have no problem with people who try to commit sexual assault being punished as if they did actually commit the offence.

And the other 50% of trans-inclusive straight men are men who think trans'women' are women who are trans.

It says "96,7% of hetero males would not even consider dating a trans person" not "trans'woman'". In other words for all we know 100% of hetersexual males would not date a trans'woman', and only 3.3% would date a trans'man' (even if they were 100% unmedicalized and no different to any other woman).

And that is before we get to the cold hard fact that a straight man who dates men (eg trans'women') is not a straight man in any way at all. By definition no straight man is willing to date any other man.

Obviously any trans person who does not reveal their sex is disgusting / coercive / rapey. The only possible exception is if they meet someone who says "I am bisexual and I am happy to date people who may or may not be trans and therefore whose sex I do not know".

I think any sort of unwanted sexual contact is deeply wrong and worthy of a prison sentence. And not only that it is incredibly risky to the point that I could not convict a man of assault or murder if it was in response to sexual deception.

I think rape should start at 10 or 20 years (no parole, longer if parole is on offer) and that sex by deception is as rapey as any other type of rape.

Interesting that Watkin (the transwoman) was the one who contacted the other man to tell him about being transgender ("I have a big secret"). If he hadn't done that nobody would have been the wiser and he wouldn't now be in court accused of sexual assault.

I don't condone the behaviour, obviously, but he sounds like a confused young person.

Sex by deception is one of those areas that's so interesting it often comes up in law exams.

When I was studying, there was a problem question which put the following scenario: You have two women who are identical twins. One twin fancies her sister's husband. She pretends to be her sister to get the husband into bed. On getting him into bed, it turns out that he has a taste for rather rougher sex, including anal, than she had bargained for.

In this scenario, who's liable?

The man might be liable if the woman clearly says no to being penetrated anally and he ignores that, but he might also have a defence if he reasonably believes this is his wife and they have an agreed safeword.

The woman is definitely liable because her premeditated deception goes against him consenting to sex. Even if he's enjoying it, he's been suckered into it under false pretences.

(Disclaimer: my legal ken may be slightly out of date, but I think I've got the gist)

The clear issue here is informed consent. That applies to a man (maybe young, naive, drunk) who doesn't realise his partner is male. It applies to a woman who pretends to be a man so she can get other women into bed.

I think one of the things that first set off major alarms for me on the trans issue was the campaign to amend the law on sex by deception - am I remembering right, or didn't Stonewall explicitly argue for that at one point? It was a clear signal that a certain caste of people feel that the need for consent doesn't apply to them.

He is the victim in this.

The joking, shaming and disbelief of the victim on this thread is dreadful.

It's almost as if sexual orientation has something to do with biological sex!

I am not convinced he didn’t know

I’ve met a number of men in Thailand who apparently didn’t know that felt disgusted with themselves and played the victim I think it was more likely they wanted to experiment and than felt bad about it. Yes the Thai ladyboys were certainly more feminine than western trans women tend to be but you could still tell

This is important too though the pro trans researchers and article writer pretend they found it “surprising” 🙄

Similarly, 50% of trans-inclusive straight men and 69% of trans-inclusive lesbians said they’d date a trans man, even though both groups are presumably only attracted to women.

I’ve posted this link to that study many times on here. The actual paper is linked in the article but paywalled.

https://www.them.us/story/cis-trans-dating

I did read the article but didn’t quite understand the charge although a kind poster has explained it too me now.

To be honest, as a bisexual male I don't think I'd feel much different to you.

If I'm having sex with a woman then I don't expect to be confronted by a penis, and vice versa. If I were to suddenly find out during or after sex that I'm actually sleeping with someone male rather than female (or vice versa), then I'm going to feel, tricked, and quite frankly, assaulted. While it's probably not going to do as much long term damage to my identity as it would a heterosexual person, it's still not something I'd accept. I'm attracted to either men, or women, and I like my men to have male parts and my women to have female parts. I'm simply not attracted to trans people and so would not choose to have sex with them.

"A 2019 study asked 958 online participants, mostly young adults in Canada and the United States, which gender identities they would be interested in dating. In the sample, 3.3% of heterosexual men, 1.8% of heterosexual women, 11.5% of gay men, 28.8% of lesbian women, and 51.7% of bisexual, queer, and non-binary people (grouped together for analysis) reported they would be interested in dating a transgender person, and the remainder were not interested."

This I found on wikipedia, I'm sure trans activists would have had it removed if the study wasnt sound. Hehehe. That's like a new way to confirm gender research: If the trans activists is not able to discredit a piece of research in their disfavour, you know for a fact that the reasearch is of the noblest standard possible.

But I digress. My point is that the stats, that only 96,7% of hetero males would not even consider dating a trans woman, let alone sleeping with one, has another implication. It also means, the way I see it, that the trans woman that knows nothing of the potential partners desires, statisticly almost certainly is on a fraudulent path from the very beginning by not stating that it is a trans woman.

I'm not saying that this should be the first sentence when you match online, that would just be weird. But it certainly should be clear before you meet up. (To be honest, it should probably be very clear in the profile itself. That would be a best practice).

I work in criminal law. And here is what I feel about this: If it's not disclosed before kissing, that would for me feel like a mild form of sexual deceit. But probably not worthy any criminalization. But to be fooled into doing stuff together in bed would make me feel like I have been wronged in the most intimate setting. And the knowledge that the other person probably had the act of deceit as a strong sexual motive makes it even worse. So I think it should be illegal. It's basically not illegal in most of the world. I think it's illegal in Israel and Britain. I think the punishment could be somewhere in the line of 6 months to 2 years of incarceration - depending on the concrete circumstances of the case. Actual jail time. The situation Im thinking of is that of a "passing" (post operative) trans woman deceiving a hetero guy or lesbian woman into sex. If a trans man actually uses his neo penis to penetrate a natal lesbian women that would make it more severe than the situation im thinking of.

Yet still, the trans community would probably just read all this, shrug, and think, "What are they talking about, it's well established by now that a trans woman is a woman, so their argument or feelings is therefore invalid", and still conclude with "no moral obligation to tell, whatsoever =)".

"The defendant had concealed from the man that she had a penis, during their brief relationship,' Mr Reid told the jury".

It never ceases to amaze me to be alive in these times.

But I think in these cases it is the "passability" test, with people being mislead or thinking that someone is of the opposite sex when they aren't. They're not aware of the trans status.

For many trans people it is a badge of honour to sleep with the opposite sex without being found out. And time and time again this just leads to more trouble, and can be very dangerous for the trans people involved too, due to violent reprisals.

Why not? It's a mainstream news source even if not to your personal preference.