Woman exposes herself in car park ...

[Bobkitten]

www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/19264825.woman-exposed-glebe-house-car-park-haverfordwest/

The headline caught my eye; the article refers to this person as a woman and uses she/her pronouns. No info about the victim.

I wondered aloud whether this person was likely to have been a natal woman, given the nature of the offence. DH suggested I was being prejudiced; I was leaping to conclusions; I didn’t have all the facts, etc, etc. (Despite the report indicating this person’s middle name is ‘Peter’, along with ‘Diva’.)

This person’s Twitter account appears to confirm this person is trans.

Will this (sexual) offence have been recorded as committed by a woman? I am assuming yes, though perhaps I’m leaping to conclusions again.

Surely the inclusive (hmm) thing to do would be for news organisations to refer to a “penis haver” exposing themselves in a car park? I mean, not all women have penises, after all.
Agreed. If we're expected to accept being reduced to vagina havers, (that auto corrected to haters!), let it work against them as well.

I expect any child seeing an exposed erect penis being waved about will be instantly comforted and detraumatised by the obvious explanation

“Don't worry dear, she’s a woman, it’s a lady penis so incapable of doing harm even though a man showing an erect penis to a child or a woman is a non verbal threat of sexual violence so you need to be aware of the difference. I expect in this case she was feeling a bit warm under her lovely lady garments so needed to take out her penis to cool it down. And while it was out she had a wee and a little wank. Yes, it was a surprising thing to see in a car park, and no it’s not the sort of thing natal women do, mostly because they don’t have penises, but also because they don’t need to use their genitals to demonstrate their misogyny, their feelings of sexual dominance and to intimidate strangers . ”

Surely the inclusive (hmm) thing to do would be for news organisations to refer to a “penis haver” exposing themselves in a car park? I mean, not all women have penises, after all.

Very good point!

she had a wee and a little wank

Off-topic and [merail] In a recent thread, several women confessed that they had always thought that they passed urine through the vagina and this belief persisted even after giving birth. I've seen variations on this comment various times from men on Twitter who believe it's a common passage for both activities.

It's only just struck me, that as Criado Perez might say, that feels like a very default male model of looking at things, doesn't it? Perfectly sensible people who've had an education that touched on this at some point, are nonetheless convinced that men have a shared function bodily part for urine/procreation and although it's different in women, women have a single bodily part with a shared function. [/merail with apologies]

I don't know how government and the 4th Estate can reconcile the need for records and clarity with this deliberate misreporting and misleading language. We saw the farce of that when the ONS was facing a judicial review about the census.

Temp023

"Dear God, if flashing your Willy in a supermarket car park doesn’t mean you lose your right to be considered as a woman, then I really have lived too long!"

Exactly! That is male pattern offending. A genuine transgender person would not go around flashing the bits they were born with, because they would wish to present as a stereotypical woman. There are so many things wrong with this case, the reporting, the recording of the crime, the intention to leave out the most important facts.
We sould be able to trust in the police, the courts and the press should be held to higher standards and scrutiny.
At the moment they are all failing.

Why on earth would a public body like the police record crimes by self-identified gender/sex? Why don’t they have appropriate categories: man / transman / woman / transwoman / natal [whichever sex], identifies non-binary?

They have specific enough ethnic origin categories. Why do they want to fudge this data?

@DuesToTheDirt

it’s left me feeling like I’m in the wrong to feel angry about this, because of course women do these things too (in smaller numbers though, right?)

Do they though? There are some things, like exposing yourself, and revenge porn, that seem to be purely male behaviour.

Not entirely, it isn't beyond the participants in some particularly raucous hen parties and similar inebriated gatherings to flash their breasts. I agree however that it is rather different from the lone flasher in a car park we appear to be dealing with here.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rape-suspects-can-choose-to-self-identify-as-female-vfl678tg6

In Scotland not just flashers can be treated as women but also rapists!

So what is the best way to complain about the laying reporting going on here? To the paper concerned, the owner, in the same paper?

@LazyHorizon

Why on earth would a public body like the police record crimes by self-identified gender/sex? Why don’t they have appropriate categories: man / transman / woman / transwoman / natal [whichever sex], identifies non-binary?

They have specific enough ethnic origin categories. Why do they want to fudge this data?

Most organisations have been captured in a way that is truly breathtaking in scale.

And all without public consultation or transparency. Stephen Whittle (a prime mover of GRA 2004), amongst others, openly admits that it's remarkable how easily all of this went through with private talks and privileged access to officials.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3397127-Stephen-Whittle-Press-for-Change-irresponsible-use-of-likely-suicides-follows-Helen-Belchers-Trans-Media-Watch?pg=4

@334bu

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rape-suspects-can-choose-to-self-identify-as-female-vfl678tg6

In Scotland not just flashers can be treated as women but also rapists!

And raped women who have beaten the odds and had their case actually brought to court can be reprimanded in public by the presiding judge if they misgender their rapist by using the wrong pronoun. Because of course the trauma of being violently raped and penetrated by a penis is nothing compared to a self identified person being cruelly misgendered as their victim is cross examined over the smallest details of the assault.

And as Maria MacLachan discovered, misgendering the person found guilty of attacking you will lead to the refusal of the judge to offer you compensation because of the “bad grace” you showed in not referring to your attacker by their preferred pronoun.

@SheldonesqueTheBstard

If you go around exposing yourself in public then no matter how you wish to describe yourself, it should also state - in the headline - what you exposed.

E.g. woman flashes breasts in Supermarket

Or

Woman shows penis in supermarket.

Totally factual. People can then judge them on the part exposed.

Seems fair enough to me.

I would hazard a guess that there will not be many reports of man flashes vulva in supermarket.

Have those details actually been discussed in court yet? The suspect has only been remanded by the Magistrate pending a Crown Court trial so I would hope that when the details do come up during the actual trial they will be reported accurately and in full.

[quote blackwhiteandstripey]@MidsomerMurmurs

Yes, if they played by their own rules they could even report "person arrested for exposing their penis" or some such.

But they don't even know what rules they are playing by.

There's a lot of harm that will need to be undone from years of this nonsense reporting. [/quote]
I would almost prefer them to say "woman arrested for exposing her penis" because it will cause men reading the headline (who hitherto will hardly have paid any attention to this debate) to sit up and go "what the hell is this shit?" and they may start reading further around the topic.

@Leafstamp

The photograph of this person (google image search/associated with their Twitter account) is of a male born person.

If he has a penis he's a man. End of.

Chucking on a dress does not a woman make.

I would hope that when the details do come up during the actual trial they will be reported accurately and in full.

Judging by similar and graver cases, the answer is no (but it might depend on what you consider to be accurate or in full). You'll find the reports of some trials and news stories in this thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread

The flashing your breasts in public thing- I’ve seen lots of (what I assumed at the time to be men) topless in the street in summer.

I’ve not asked their gender identity so maybe they were women.

And social media that has policies for male and female nipples, do they check if there’s a she/her he/him in the person’s profile? Would it make a difference?

Woman shows penis in supermarket

I'm now imaging one of those product stalls with give-away samples - pieces of penis on toothpicks.

[quote EmbarrassingAdmissions]I would hope that when the details do come up during the actual trial they will be reported accurately and in full.

Judging by similar and graver cases, the answer is no (but it might depend on what you consider to be accurate or in full). You'll find the reports of some trials and news stories in this thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread[/quote]
I was thinking particularly of naming the body part so exposed. Having done that the public can draw their own conclusions.

@Deliriumoftheendless

The flashing your breasts in public thing- I’ve seen lots of (what I assumed at the time to be men) topless in the street in summer.

I’ve not asked their gender identity so maybe they were women.

And social media that has policies for male and female nipples, do they check if there’s a she/her he/him in the person’s profile? Would it make a difference?

I'm all in favour of equal attitudes to nipples - parks, beaches and swimming pools are all acceptable places (in my view) for men and women alike to be topless. However, men wandering down the high street, into shops and sitting on trains without a top on is gross and should be just as socially unacceptable as it is for women.

Statistics are going to be skewed against what we previously knew was the sex committing the overwhelming majority of sex crime.

@LubaLuca it is really really really unlikely that the flasher in the report was a woman. I'm sorry it happened to you but it's as rare as hens teeth.

[quote TheWatersofMarch]@LubaLuca it is really really really unlikely that the flasher in the report was a woman. I'm sorry it happened to you but it's as rare as hens teeth. [/quote]
I know that. I was mentioning it because it's an anomaly, and that that sort of headline is a problem because it wouldn't always be an obvious misrepresentation to everyone.

So we got on to the topic again today. DH questioned whether this offence would be recorded as having been committed by a woman (assuming this person is found guilty, of course). I said, more than likely yes, because government crime figures provide only male or female options and many police forces record male/female based on gender self-identification.

DH then queried what is my issue with this even if this were true? At which point I got angry (because aren’t we meant to record and value relevant information!?), and said this potentially leads to a world where muddied stats indicate women are almost as/just as likely to commit sexual offences as men, so no need for sex-segregated spaces for women. DH felt that this response was hyperbole and would never happen. He then said that some of the things I’ve said do sound a bit hateful, and he’d need to see the evidence. And that none of this affects me personally, since it’s not like I’m a sportsperson having to compete against male-bodied people, and after all, I’ve never had a problem in a toilet and nor am I likely to. I don’t need to use other sex-segregated spaces. And aren’t I tarring a whole group with the same brush? Nearly cried at this point. Evidently caring strongly about women’s rights is transphobic. My blood was boiling at this point (how fucking dare he accuse me of being hateful when my very issue is concern for the safety of women), so said I said I’d get evidence to him. And also said that I bet he would care more if we had a daughter and not a son.

He has previously half-joked that I’m being radicalised by the feminists of Mumsnet, so a non-Mumsnet thread would be helpful. I’m thinking sending him to FairPlay for Women.

And breathe!

You could point him in this direction, rather than defending your completely rational position, challenge his illogical one:

Nathan Williams
'Sex deniers are the new flat earthers
Those who deny biological sex are dangerous and disingenuous; it’s time the rest of us stood up to them'
(extract)
"When a biologist tweeted that stating biological facts is not bigotry, she was attacked by the very body you might expect to support her — The Royal Society of Biology — which labelled her comments as “transphobia”. Perhaps there was some detail of the science she got wrong — in which case you would expect this learned society to point out the error. But despite numerous attempts to find out what was incorrect about her statements, they have refused to answer. Even at its most censorious — the Catholic Church would tell blasphemers what their crime was. The modern witch-burners won’t even do that — they will rarely even discuss their claims with anyone who does not already share their beliefs.

Even one of the world’s best-known biologists isn’t safe. Prof. Richard Dawkins recently tweeted to ask whether there was a difference between self-identifying your race and self-identifying your sex/gender. This was the final straw for the American Humanist Association which duly stripped him of a 25-year-old lifetime award — something they’d only done once before when a recipient was accused of serious sexual harassment. Humanism is supposed to stand for rationality and freedom of thought, but for the AHA it seems heresy is still a crime punishable by excommunication. These are far from isolated examples. Many academics, particularly women, have faced threats and harassment merely for daring to talk about biological sex. There is no clearer demonstration that sex denialists are charlatans; their only weapons are creating fear and confusion. It’s time the rest of us stood up to them."

thecritic.co.uk/sex-deniers-are-the-new-flat-earthers/

so no need for sex-segregated spaces for women. DH felt that this response was hyperbole and would never happen.

Can he name a single sex-segregated space for women right now?