Rapes committed by women - JKR got me thinking

[scratchedbymycat]

JKR just tweeted again. I agree wholeheartedly with her views, but some of the responses have got me thinking.

Why does it matter if crime stats say women rape?

(I promise I'm not trolling here. In fact, I'm hoping for some startlingly clear objective responses to fuel my arguments.)

For me, I find it downright hateful, after all the violence and hate directed towards women by men, that stats will now say 'women are doing it to women'. That makes me so damn angry. But is feeling offended by this, on principle, enough?

On crime stats and recording... Seth Abramson (I know) on Twitter commented that the fact the perpetrator has a penis will come up in the court case. So the court will know they are not biologically female.

Also, if we say a woman raped another, doesn't that also immediately tell us the rapist was transgender? (The only group who identify as women but are also bepenised).

How does a biological women rape another? Because I've seen claims on Twitter that some biological women have been found guilty of rape. Is this a lie?

I'm trying to tease my thoughts out. Only just starting to comment about the gender identity consequences for women to friends etc, and just want to be super clear when I say anything, and not to slip into emotional anger (which happens a lot for me).

@WeeBisom

Technically the law encompasses penetration by a penis or a surgically created penis (neo Phallus), so it’s not the case that the law identifies perpetrators by their sex (male) because it is possible a female could have a neo phallus as well as a male. The law isn’t misgendering because it just refers to genitals not gender, and as TRAS are keen to tell us genitals have nothing to do with ones gender.

Oh god, I hadn't thought of that. I'm rethinking again. Would this mean that transgender men might have a vested interest in biological sex being recorded alongside identity? To protect them from being statistically linked with all the male rapists..?

@WeeBisom Pronouns are present in the law:

1Rape

(1)A person (A) commits an offence if—]

(a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,

@scratchedbymycat

I was turned years ago too, but I've been quietly reading and reading and reading. But every time I talk about it (which is not often) I find myself ranting about males in female prisons, rape crisis centres etc. This is fine if the person is equally horrified, but if the person thinks there are ways around these things and concerns are most likely 'not valid', this tack doesn't work. The anger can easily be seen as hate. I'm ready to start talking about it. I'm clear on where I stand, just trying to find ways to talk about it that cut through, but relies on reason and fine details rather than wholesale shock. IYKWIM.

You've mentioned friends a few times now so I'm assuming you don't want ammo for this dispassionate argument for work reasons.

You'll probably find this unhelpful, but have you considered that your friends are perhaps arseholes? If you're talking about real women suffering real detriments and you're getting a dry "not valid" or "we need nuance" response, that person may very well just not give a fuck.

So you trying to influence them in a very factual, morally neutral way is admirable, but it could well be a complete waste of time. What's their motivation for being "inclusive" as you mentioned? Are you assuming it's because they are nice, kind people or have they worked out it is politically expedient for them?

A lot of people don't give a fuck about women in prison. Perhaps they are just part of that group and too polite to put it so bluntly?

This is fine if the person is equally horrified, but if the person thinks there are ways around these things and concerns are most likely 'not valid', this tack doesn't work. The anger can easily be seen as hate.

You have to find your calm, single sentence. It took me a couple of years to find mine - which turned out to be 3, for ease of blurting they can be said together or separately.

"But human beings cannot change sex. A man is a man with all the blindingly obvious male physical advantages over a female. Why would I want to share a sport, small space or any other single sex female service with a man I do not know?"

And if that doesn't work and the friend I spea to just repates some mantra at me I add

"I taught sport science for decades. I know that men are faster, stronger and larger than women - as a class. How the hell am I supposed to forget all of that and a penis because someone said I had to be nice?"

Bit late to the thread, sorry, but to answer the OP - describing predatory males committing typically male crimes as women is not only a lie, it's offensive. In many cases we're being forced into a game the person is playing. Many won't fit the classical definition of a person with sexual dysphoria. Obviously for the victim it's horrific. It also skews crime statistics and creates a misleading impression of what's going on. Then of course the perpetrator could end up in a women's jail, and we know what can happen there.

HoardingSamphireSaurus
That's good advice but I still think you can't make everyone care. Some people just don't care, and I think OP needs to be open to the possibility that her friends just don't care what happens to women in prison.

if the person thinks there are ways around these things and concerns are most likely 'not valid', this tack doesn't work.

Some people are fanatically devoted to the idea that transwomen are women, transmen are men. Nothing is allowed to contradict this. Witness Seth Abramson's diatribe on Twitter. twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1470370487998066691 You can't say that a transwoman who commits a sexual crime is not a woman, because that invalidates all transwomen.

Oh I agree. If I have to utter any of that then I have already downgraded the person I am talking to from friend to ''spmeone I vagualy know'.

The difference, for me, is I know that is what I am doing and I refuse to get drawn any further. Well, I might repeat "You keep on telling yourself that, I'll stick to the science". I used to try and have a sensible discussion, but that was such a waste of time with some people. So off they pop into the hinterland of "Who? Oh yes, Them!"

Apologies for the typos, my hands are particuarly aggrieved tonight!

I refuse to get drawn any further. Well, I might repeat "You keep on telling yourself that, I'll stick to the science". I used to try and have a sensible discussion, but that was such a waste of time with some people.

Agreed, I just don't want OP to get hurt or discouraged when and if these people let her down by continuing to not give a fuck even after she's crafted an unassailable argument.

Why should OP be excused that right of passage

Sorry @scratchedbymycat, @FlyingOink is right. You need to armour yourself against the inevitable. Harden yourself against the impulse to be nice and polite. When it happens to you remember to be be scornful and move on, quickly!!

I get the cognitive dissonance thing, and the huge pressure to be kind, and the intentional conflation with gay rights, and and and
But
Even if I was on that side, firmly in the TWAW camp, I'd still be interested in ironing out problems, discussing facts and trying to ensure vulnerable people weren't fucked over.

If you've got blinkers on (and you're not a horse - trust me this is laboured) you still turn your head from time to time. If you are consciously aware that you have blinkers on, you can take them off. If you know you've got blinkers on, and you can sense commotion slightly out of sight and people tell you about it and you still ignore it, you can't blame the blinkers. That's all on you. You might as well have just shut your eyes. You've decided you don't want to see it, and it's not media bias, the Overton window or a lack of spoonfed source material, it's willful ignorance.

And it's because you don't have a ready answer for what to do or think or say once you've seen what you're trying to avoid looking at.

God Seth Abramson is such a wanker. And I mean that in a impeccably sex-neutral way. The reason I came off twitter is because I found myself sounding more like that (not that bad though).

HoardingSamphireSaurus I spent so long torturing my analogy that I didn't notice you'd posted what I needed to say

At a minimum, law is about establishing facts. So if a trans women rapes another person ( man or woman) , then a man has committed rape. Fact.

@FlyingOink

@PermanentTemporary

God Seth Abramson is such a wanker. And I mean that in a impeccably sex-neutral way. The reason I came off twitter is because I found myself sounding more like that (not that bad though).

He has a poem- thing, in which he states he masturbated in a synagogue, so I don't see how he could disagree with you about being a wanker.

www.fishousepoems.org/white-privilege/

@PermanentTemporary

God Seth Abramson is such a wanker. And I mean that in a impeccably sex-neutral way. The reason I came off twitter is because I found myself sounding more like that (not that bad though).

I do like "Criminal law is one of those areas one must be careful tweeting about if one doesn’t know what the hell one is talking about" followed half a dozen tweets later by the suggestion that if police don't record crime by self ID'd sex that would have to strip search trespassers. Arrested trespassers? when a quick Google confirms trespass is a civil matter in Scotland. "It is an oft-repeated myth that there are no trespassing laws in Scotland. This is simply not true. Trespass is a civil wrong, called a delict in Scots legal terminology."

@FlyingOink

You'll probably find this unhelpful, but have you considered that your friends are perhaps arseholes? If you're talking about real women suffering real detriments and you're getting a dry "not valid" or "we need nuance" response, that person may very well just not give a fuck.

I haven't had a proper chat with anyone yet, so I don't quite know how they'd react. I can gauge it though from moments.

My reference to 'not valid' relates to Nicola Sturgeons comment. My friends haven't said that - but then, I haven't really discussed this with them. They aren't arseholes. And it concerns me that the 'peak transing' direction might reach a final peak when it comes to persuading friends like mine, unless we find a different way of communicating.

For example, a friend I'll refer to as S, puts a massive amount of stock into 'being kind'. Ridiculing her for that will get me nowhere. She does actually use those words. She is an extremely gentle sweet compassionate person. The best of the best. She also has had a friend who is trans for decades now. She doesn't engage with the trans debate at the level I do, I think because she doesn't feel a need to (no direct experience of violence herself, so she's not triggered by it in the way I am), and also she already feels she knows what 'trans people are like' because she has a trans friend. I suspect her friend isn't a TRA. But the idea of someone like her friend in a male prison would absolutely appal her. I don't think she feels it costs her anything to accept trans women as women, but it costs trans women if we don't. So me simply saying 'male bodied people belong in male jails', for example, wouldn't work. The only time I spoke to her about this it was acutely uncomfortable. I was shocked she judged me and frankly, I didn't like the way it made me feel, so I have essentially spent something like five years reading almost daily to ensure I am not transphobic and to approach the subject again, differently.

Another friend, O, works with young teens in desperate need. High levels of autism, and several students who identify as the other sex. She feels it important to support them. All her students voluntarily opt to use the disabled toilets so she hasn't experienced any issues or have any concerns. The issues feminists talk about are still completely abstract to her - she doesn't think it will happen, because she sees no signs of it happening. What she sees is children in real crisis, and being trans is only one part of complex needs.

Two others, female family members, are both in their late 20s and each have friends who have transitioned. They see the trans debate as being on a par with gay rights decades ago. Feminism bypassed them both in their education. They take their female rights for granted, but they aren't blind to #metoo etc.

I could go on. But these people are really not arseholes. I am pretty hardcore about who I am friends with and don't bother myself with people who are even remotely arseholes. They aren't on Twitter so don't see the horrific side of it all (porn, homophobia etc) and they don't engage with GC stuff either. They're just living their best life in accordance with good faith principles.

But they do vote. And this is SNP land. So ... I'd hope they'd vote with solid understanding.

Arrested trespassers? when a quick Google confirms trespass is a civil matter in Scotland.
"It is an oft-repeated myth that there are no trespassing laws in Scotland. This is simply not true. Trespass is a civil wrong, called a delict in Scots legal terminology."

It's a bit vague, tbh. You can walk where you like, 'cross land' - so long as you respect the land/close gates etc, but not through 'private gardens'. You can't camp or stop or light fires, but generally speaking and in practise, there isn't really 'trespass' in Scotland like there is in other places.

www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2003/2/contents

If it helps, and I have posted this quite often, I too have trans friends and we are good friends, I have known them since we were all about 16, 17, we are now all mid 50s.

I spent many weeks in foreign hotel rooms helping my transman friend go through all her surgeries, all that are physically possible, and wouldn't dream of referring to her to her face as 'she' or by her female name. But she knows she is female. I know this because we have discussed it. Before and after her 'heterosexual' marriage, as a male, to my former boss who, until they met, had been happily heterosexual. I know that because we discussed it.

I also sat beside my transwoman friend and discussed why he would NOT have surgery beyond breast implants and facial feminisation surgery. He now laments the money spent on his face as age has undone all of the surgein's work. Again, I wouldn't call him 'he' to his face, but he knows he is male. I know this because we have discussed it. His current self identity has been shattered by the actions of various TRAs, Stonewall etc. He know cannot help but see his trans self more from my perspective. He can't hide away from that any more. She he is male, lives 'as a woman' but makes a lot more effort not to encroach upon female spaces than was the case in the past.

They are the reason I originally posted her from a TWAW and TMAM perspective. Until the science got through to me and I realised I was patronising them both. Being an ally, defending them, when I didn't actually know what they themselves thought or wanted. So I asked.

Maybe she will have a moment like aiI did and will reassess her blind ally-ship

I don't know any trans people, but I was so concerned I might be transphobic, that I searched out as many trans people as I could on Twitter to gain a better understanding of everything. I've subsequently unfollowed a lot, for obvious reasons. But there are still a lot I do follow, who seem perfectly lovely (as far as I can tell through tweets), and who recognise that their biology is different to their identity, and - very important - that that difference actually matters in significant ways. I don't think they'd see me as transphobic at all. I also think that being inadvertently caught up in the TRA crap is so potentially damaging for them.

Yes. Both of my friends are off social media, mainly because of their jobs. But also because it very quickly became quite a hostile place for them. Both choose not to say much to anyone for fear of losing the trans support organsaitions they do belong to.

Far from helping TRA actions have stopped both of them from being "their authentic selves"

There are so many real losers in this, aren't there: transgender people, women, children, people with DSDs, the LGB community ... It's tragic.

[quote ArabellaScott]Arrested trespassers? when a quick Google confirms trespass is a civil matter in Scotland.
"It is an oft-repeated myth that there are no trespassing laws in Scotland. This is simply not true. Trespass is a civil wrong, called a delict in Scots legal terminology."

It's a bit vague, tbh. You can walk where you like, 'cross land' - so long as you respect the land/close gates etc, but not through 'private gardens'. You can't camp or stop or light fires, but generally speaking and in practise, there isn't really 'trespass' in Scotland like there is in other places.

www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2003/2/contents[/quote]
The point is Scottish police don't arrest Trespassers. Hot on the heals of a Tweet by the same person saying people should not Tweet about the law when they don't know/understand it it struck me as very ironic!