Police Scotland say rape suspects can be recorded as female

[Scarify]

Campaign to ensure all rape suspects are recorded as men

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/110093be-c8a0-11eb-b6f5-fed739e7c1ca?shareToken=4acb4073f36d8b2406094ddd66589608

That really shouldn't need a campaign, it should be so glaringly obvious! Absolute insanity!

Wow well done the Times. I have told people in RL about this matter and uniformly I get disbelief (understandable!).

Thank you for the share.

The article is behind a paywall, I can't read it.

Unrelated to this campaign relating to transgender issues, women can indeed rape. I wrote my dissertation on it.

Rape with a penis, however, requires a male body part so on that front it's insane.

SoddingWeddings how on earth did you write a dissertation on women being able to rape? In UK law, rape requires a penis. Women can be accessories to rape, but there is no such thing as rape without a penis. Other sexual offences yes, but not rape!

Is that the same definition in Scots law?

Hmm how to distract from the actual issue.

From the campaign:
^Rape is defined in law as involving penetration by a penis without consent and is therefore, by definition, the act of a male body (cases involving a surgically constructed penis appear to be unknown to date).

Women may be charged with rape as accessories, but this is extremely rare.^

Here is a link to Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, and their petition :

murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/scottish-parliament-public-petition-on-recording-sex-accurately-in-cases-of-rape-or-attempted-rape/?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR1nAgB8Bl8-fxFgwD5a1JmabE41eSte1FYReTTwN4KELCOkgMititQ4pG0

The Times article :

Mark McLaughlin
Wednesday June 9 2021

"Campaign to ensure all rape suspects are recorded as men

Police Scotland said that it had yet to encounter a case whereby the perpetrator of a rape self-identified as a woman.

The Scottish authorities are facing pressure to record male rape suspects by their natal gender amid concerns that some will self-identify as women.

Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, a women’s rights organisation, has petitioned the Scottish parliament to “accurately record the sex of people charged or convicted of rape or attempted rape”. The petition, which gathered over 4,000 signatures in 48 hours, calls on MSPs to require Police Scotland, the Crown Office and the Scottish Court Service to record the sex of people charged or convicted of rape or attempted rape as exclusively male.

The petition states: “Police Scotland recently stated that a person directly charged with rape or attempted rape could be recorded as female. The Scottish government has stated ‘This is a matter for Police Scotland’. Rape is defined in law as involving penetration by a penis without consent and is, by definition, the act of a male body.”

The Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 also defines rape as penetration by “a surgically constructed penis if it forms part of a [person] having been created in the course of surgical treatment”.

However, the petition states: “Cases involving a surgically constructed penis appear to be unknown to date. Women may be charged with rape as accessories but this is extremely rare.

“Only a very small proportion of offenders directly charged with rape or attempted rape would need to be recorded as female to have a misleading effect on the understanding of female offending. The same issue appears to arise for information collected in other parts of the criminal justice system.

“Recording sex accurately matters for data accuracy and trust in statistics, public policy, media reporting, research, and for trust in public bodies.”

Police Scotland said that it had yet to encounter a case whereby the perpetrator of a rape self-identified as a woman.

Detective Superintendent Fil Capaldi said: “The sex/gender identification of individuals will be based on how they present or how they self-declare, which is consistent with the values of the organisation.”"

I'm not particularly interested in how likely it is for a transwoman to commit rape, or for a woman woman to be some kind of accessory, but have signed because accurate data matters! As a data scientist one of my real bug bears is the conflation between sex and gender across apparently all fields (there are even scientific papers discussing the 'gender' of mice for instance, which is literally nonsense!), and we need to reverse this trend and get back to accurate data recording.

How is that distracting from the issue? Surely the whole issue is that you have to have a penis to commit rape. It is a bit difficult to discuss recording the information correctly if people don't even know what the offence is.

Bump.

I once served on the Jury in a rape case (Scotland) and the judge was very clear that rape, by definition, involves penetration with a penis.