Sarah Vine critiques the recent sex by deception case

[Justme56]

https://www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2025/09/10/ciara-watkin-where-did-the-deception-start/

Sarah attended the trial during the Judge’s summing up.

‘the more successful a deception, and the more desired its success, the more culpable the deceiver is likely to be deemed’

Excellent article, thanks for sharing. Shes right the constant messaging from TRAs to young people that trans id is sacrosanct ends up creating victims on both sides of this type of crime imo.

Thanks
That is a clear and on point article.

Jeez, I'm relieved I googled her because I thought you meant Sarah Vile.
I agree with every word. This generation have been sold up the river big style with the lies this movement has conjured up. Sadly Stonewall et al will never face up to the mess they made, all in the pursuit of £££££
We'll never know if CW deliberately deceived V, and having a teen (and another who's older) you can advise all you like but sometimes they literally won't listen.

Trans accounts on twitter are now using ghost icons in their names - I assume to say they intend to stealthly enter female only spaces. I guess if there is a complaint this makes things somewhat easier.

Thanks for sharing. This is an area that clearly needs the Government to be much more proactive in countering incorrect guidance

Thanks OP.

Sarah Vine is right.

This is the thread here about the hearing.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5395711-transwoman-accused-of-sexual-assault-after-concealing-male-genitalia-on-date?page=1

What is notable really was the lack of the usual posters who would defend either any male person going 'stealth' as their right to privacy, and who argue about whether people can correctly identify someone's sex.

But from a couple of past threads with a male poster who is an activist for extreme transgender rights (when gender is prioritised above sex every time), it is very clear that these activists are all about removing the Sex by Deception protection in the law. This was also one of Stonewall's objectives, if I remember correctly.

The activist on multiple threads told us how they advise young people that their privacy outweighs anyone's need to know. That consent is not negated by not knowing the sex of a potential sex partner because, according to them it is no one's business. That activist poster also was clear that rather than advising young people about consent, they told young people that the solution was to target only those people that they felt would not withdraw consent if they knew that young person's sex. (ie. this would include vulnerable young people who either would not think to ask the question, maybe too fearful to ask the question, as well as any that full accepted that their sex parent was not the sex that they presented as).

Needless to say, it was an sickening couple of weeks having those discussions. I believe that there is immense harm being done to our young people on this issue. Obviously victims, but also vulnerable young people who end up with sex offences recorded against them because they were led to believe they were righteous and justified and that this was in anyway appropriate behaviour.

Don't let's forget that 'Samantha' Kane a Barrister and an activist declared on UK National television in an interview the they effectively had potentially had sex by deception with someone because they didn't tell one of their sex partners that they were a male person. They told them later in the relationship.

Kane declared this publicly as if Kane was proud of what he had done. If that partner decided to report Kane for sex by deception, I doubt that Kane would win.

So, if you have Barrister doing it and proudly announcing so on national TV, and not even the interviewer picked this up, what hope do our children and young adults have? This is the messaging that they are receiving.

Around 7.55 in this video

Funnily enough, having looked through the PN article replies not one person suggested that they had actually changed sex, which I thought would be at least one person’s response!

The article makes an important point about 'stealth' that is not being acknowledged in the broader trans debate, even though it sits at the heart of it. Firstly there is a very small class of trans identified men who, either by genetic disposition or early medical intervention, do indeed pass, and secondly there is a much larger class of TIMs of whom it is demanded that we treat as though they pass -- that somehow they could be taken for 'masculine' women, even though they don't. In both cases that deception is being used as justification for law breaking.

With respect to the specific case there's a tension in the law which has not been noted in the media discourse -- statutes to protect against sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape are enacted mostly for the protection of women against men. That's obvious as the great majority of perpetrators are men and the great majority of victims are women and surely laws would look different if the only concern were violations by men against other men.

However their perceived (and effective) legitimacy depends on them being universally applicable, ,i.e. everyone irrespective of sex has a right to sexual autonomy, privacy and to be free from violence or coercion. In this story the tension is that if the case were transposed to one where the perpetrator were male and the victim were female it would take on a more sinister tone. It's perfectly reasonable to make the argument that some of the perceived harshness of the ruling is necessary to maintain the seriousness of the sex by deception charge, because that seriousness serves to protect women in other cases.

Likewise its perfectly reasonable to assert that going stealth to access women spaces and services is more serious than just 'wanting a place to pee'. This is because predatory men use deception of all types to get access to women and it should not be normalized.

Good article and i appreciated Sarah's point that the trial was used as sensationalism to mock both perpetrator and victim, I appreciated her sympathy and compassion for both.

It is absolutely true, though, that trans people are potentially putting themselves in serious criminal positions and facing serious legal consequences for the "privacy" they are not entitled to in law. I hope that organisations working with trans people start to highlight this risk and suggest helpful ways to manage the situation.

Part of the problem is that trans organisations seem so stuck in the "TWAW, don't deadname, we are what we say we are" toddler stage of magical thinking that complex life situations pass them by.

When you exist by demanding the subjugation of women, children & citizens in order to satisfy your own personal whims, the rights of others, the need to safeguard children and the vulnerable just aren't anywhere in your thinking. So the elders, leaders & lobby groups don't appear to have the nuanced skills that adults need to navigate life & relationships in a democratic society.

Its a massive issue and Sarah Vine has very compassionately highlighted how these two young people were both harmed by all this. I'm not sure how this can ever be addressed as it appears to be a feature of tranactivism rather than a bug?

It's good that this has been highlighted, because yes, transactivism was really heading towards the you don't need to know my sex and if I'm not the right sex, too bad.

The media can't say enough how this is actually a crime. Because TRAs egg each other on, all the time, to pretend that at best it's raging transphobia.

It's the whole 'sex is determined by the way you think', bollocks.

No. It isn't.

statutes to protect against sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape are enacted mostly for the protection of women against men. That's obvious as the great majority of perpetrators are men and the great majority of victims are women and surely laws would look different if the only concern were violations by men against other men.

You're also suggesting that "obviously" only two options are possible, and that since the laws are not "only" for the conern about violations by men against men - and I agree that they are not - that they must be "mostly for the protection of women".

Can we agree they function for the protection of both men and women, from both men and women?

What is true is that the laws against sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape are - as they should be - entirely symmetrical as to the sex of victim, and refer to the sex of the offender only in the case of rape (since only men have a penis).

I was trying get at an aspect of the discussion about the Watkin case that's concerned me and which I admit is not easy for me to articulate - that there's a cohort of people, predominantly men, who find the case amusing and not very serious and seem to do so because they imagine themselves in a similar situation as the victim and wouldn't have found it anything more than mildly embarrassing. Trying to argue, as I've seen done, that that they're wrong, they would have been traumatize if in a similar situation or arguing that they're morally defective for not being capable of being traumatized by such incident happening to them seems counter productive.

Instead there's a need for making the argument that even if you think sex deception laws are unnecessary to protect men, they are needed to protect women, and they need to be applied symmetrically because laws that only apply when the perpetrator is a man and the victim is a women become second class laws and worse, undermine the foundational principle of equal protection. It seems to me a similar situation exists with single sex services and bathrooms.

I'm definitely not making the case that men can't be equally traumatized by those situations and that if they are, they don't need legal protection, I'm just making the argument that even if you do believe that, that that's not disproof for the necessity of the laws against sex deception.

Great article. For me, this was a standout line:

the hallucination of Stonewall Law