Today is a horrendous day for women.

[Catsanfan]

I haven't the energy to explain, just skim Aja's twitter this morning. So much there, I am losing heart. Especially the police thing.

Anyone can refuse to be searched by a particular officer for any reason, and if his happens standard practice is to switch officers to de-escalate the situation. If this happens to a trans officer then the rejected officer will be offered counselling and the situation will be assessed to determine whether the reason for the request was 'transphobia', in which case action can be taken against the searchee.

In other words, "Women, we'll let you refuse to be strip searched by a man, but we'll accuse you of committing a hate crime and smear you as a transphobe if you do.''

What does that sound like to you?

It's a depressing to see women and girls literally being handed undressed to men who claim to be women. Given the frightening number of sex offenders and paedophiles found to be working in the police (& currently being prosecuted) it's not surprising to see clear evidence that some of them have escaped notice and risen to senior roles.
There needs to be a deep dive into the hard drives of every single senior officer who has signed off on this followed by a lengthy interview about their views on sexual VAWG.

These are the values that predators hold - that women have no right to boundaries from men.

How many women are you happy to hand over to be traumatised and damaged for you to pat men's egos? (I'm putting that very politely.)

Put a number on it.

And for fucks sake, if this does not make you froth, there is something wrong with you.

@Echobelly . Agree. All strip searches should be conducted ethically. That is by a person of one's biological sex.

Echobelly · Today 10:49

I think this does needs putting in proportion seeing as 0.01% police officers

I thought that 0.5% of men were claiming to be female? In any case, if your figure is correct, that's over 1,600 nationally.

Say they each do a strip search a month, 48 weeks a year. That would be about 19,000 women a year, strip searched by a male, who says he has the identity of a female.

It doesn't affect a small number. It affects every single woman or girl on this island, living here or visiting. Anyone of us could find ourselves on the wrong side of the law.

Good to see Sonia Sodha (the Observer) all over this:

We'll see it first in a film - probably set in the recent past. Our heroine, probably a victim of DA, is in the station and is lined up for a strip search, possibly because of a violent defence against her attacker.

Amongst the smirking male officers, one steps forward - clearly a male in a wig and lipstick. Laughingly, the sergeant says "Robert, I mean Roberta, will do your strip search. Jane will assist him, I mean her, apologies Roberta." Jane tries to say something but the sergeant stops her "Now, now, Jane, don't be transphobic and deliberately misgender Roberta - that's a hate crime!"

As our heroine is (hopefully) led to the private area, the guffaws of the men are still audible - delighted at not just having got their own back on feminists and uppity women everywhere but also being able to stick it to the suspect and a female colleague at the same time.

Scene

A male friend was once strip searched by a male and a female officer at Holyhead ferry port. It is always done to abuse and humiliate. The numbers involved are quite irrelevant. I'm sure most US service men and women are not torturers at Guantanamo but we don't blithely wave the subject away. I hope...

The maths ain’t mathing

You may be able to count, but you seem to have struggled with reading. The previous post said 4 in the Met. Not the whole of all police forces.

Genuine question, perhaps off topic even, how do biologically straight women feel about being strip searched by lesbian women? I honestly am not trying to wind anyone up. Would she be considered homophobic if a woman refuses to be touched by lesbian woman(who finds other women sexually attractive)?

PointBreak83 · Today 12:35

The maths ain’t mathing

You're almost certainly right, I was working on a figure of 164,000 Police x 0.01. Do you want to do it for us?

According to this FOI request from July 2023, the Met has 4 trans officers. 1 TW and 3 TM.

https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclosure-2023/july-2023/police-officers-met-identify-non-binary-trans-women-trans-man/

The perspective is of little comfort to the one individual woman being strip searched by a male bodied person.

Yes, there needs to be a focus on the ethics of all strip searches, including by trans officers. The Met cannot be trusted, as we saw from the abusive searching of Hackney schoolgirls.

Male bodied people should not be allowed to strip searched women WITHIN an ethical practice.

The principle that it is allowed in law is a dangerous and wrong principle.

Principles are symbolic. Principles allow a precedent, the legal searching of women by male bodied officers, even if never happens in practice, sets a precedent.

Would you like to explain how you've decided all 0.5% of the trans population all work for the police force AND conduct a strip search a week?

Possibly an undercount as declaring a tg id is optional. Might also not include those with a grc.

Why are pp just focusing on the Met?

‘The policy paper made it clear that anyone who objects to being searched by a member of the opposite sex, and any officer refusing to carry out such a search, may be the subject of a hate crime or a non-crime hate incident if this is based on “discriminatory views”.

This is not a hypothetical situation. Many forces already have officers who identify as the opposite sex including West Midlands where 12 officers identified as the opposite sex when asked in February 2023.

Of the 47 forces consulted, 35 confirm they have either already implemented, or are in the process of implementing this policy.

I feel absolutely fine about it, thanks. Women do not live in fear of mythical predatory lesbians.

Are you quite sure you can always assume someone's sexuality?

Can't find info on West Mids, but assuming the number of 12 is still accurate, they have 7,579 serving officers. So 0.16% of the force is trans. (Edit: no idea of breakdown between TW and TM).

For the Met, 4 out of 33,984 means 0.012% of staff are trans, and of that only one quarter is male identifying as female.

And we don't even know if any of these staff are actually qualified to carry out strip searches.

I do think the odds of any female prisoner being forced to be strip searched by a trans woman are vanishingly tiny, to be honest.

I did because another poster mentioned it, and because being the largest force in the UK it's easier to get data on.

Small local hospital, my friend's DH is waiting for a life-changing op and has been signed off work till it's done, waiting 9 months due to shortage of staff. One surgeon has been struck off for sexual harassment. Jolly times!

"I do think the odds of any female prisoner being forced to be strip searched by a trans woman are vanishingly tiny, to be honest".

Minimise, minimise. Look over there women while your rights not to be intimately touched by random men are obliterated.

Seriously, is this ok because it'll probably never happen and it'll only happen to a tiny tiny number of women?

(Who aren't me or my friends?)

What about the prison officers this has happened to?

What about the women raped in prisons and on hospital wards that we were told oh it'll never happen?

Seriously let's put a number on the amount of women who are an appropriate sacrifice to men's varying egos and desires?