Tbf this photo is on the BBC feature too.
And for once they’ve got some justification for using the womanface photo, I suppose, to show how his appearance could have deceived the girl into thinking he was a woman.
The BBC is complicit with this crime though, as is every organisation and body that has championed the act of men passing themselves off as women as not just acceptable but an actively positive thing, to be celebrated.
We live in a world where men as a class pose a risk to women as a class, and to children. That’s the sad fact of it. Not all men are predators, but nearly all predators are men.
Enabling men to claim they’re women, to make themselves look as much like women as possible, and to require that others see them as women, is blatantly obviously a safeguarding nightmare waiting to happen.
This little girl thought she could trust the person offering her a lift because she thought that person was a woman.
This man felt emboldened to pass himself off as a woman on a regular basis, including on this occasion, because society has deemed that giving men this right is more important than safeguarding women and children.
Society has totally ignored the power imbalance between the sexes, and the vastly, vastly differing rates of sexual offending, even while being supposedly hyper-aware of these facts in other contexts.
Society has said there’s no problem with encouraging some men to make themselves out to be women, none at all. And that only bigots wouldn’t accept these men as who they say they are. Right, Amnesty et al?
And this is the result. A man who knows he can get away with calling himself a woman’s name, wearing prosthetic breasts, women’s clothes, everything he can do to most closely approximate the physical appearance of a woman, and nobody will question it. Nobody will hold him in check. Indeed, anyone who tries to will be accused of transphobic bigotry.
He will be lauded as part of a vulnerable, marginalised minority; politicians will court him and fawn over him, and pass laws saying that if he wants to, he can acquire legal recognition as a woman.
Even if he rapes someone.
Even if he kidnaps a little girl and holds her captive for 27 hours and abuses her repeatedly throughout that time.
His right to his “identity” is still the most important thing in the picture. Because what matters in this world are men’s feelings.
So this is where we are. How many more men like this will it take to wake enough people from their delusional coma that men being able to freely pass themselves off as women without challenge, without question, without suspicion might not be the best idea in the world?
Their delusion that the thing we have to prioritise above all else is indulging mens feelings about themselves - not just the men who identify as women, but also the men who support them and are determined to see themselves as the good guys, however much harm what they’re supporting causes.
I wonder.