Anecdotal testaments about trans people people and their merits, which they no doubt have, really have no bearing on those who the receiving end of threatening behaviour and sexual assault. As with any demographic trans people will encompass the good. Nevertheless, because of recent developments when all this kicked off and became a whole industry, there are those who are cynically manipulating a situation that has allowed them access to women spaces. Quite possibly that had gone on under the radar, because, as most of us accept, there were and are the "quiet" trans women who did and do not present a threat to women per se. and I think if we could wind back to those times there wouldn't have been the disquiet there has been around the issue. Not to mention all the matters that have unfairly impacted on women, sport, adapting language in a ridiculous way to accommodate the sensibilities of the few "chest feeders" "cervix holders" "birth givers" whilst simultaneous insulting women and at times describing them as a mere collection of body parts. As always, it's always gone just one way, the trans man has never been the problem. I can't recall any man stating he's been threatened by a trans man with violence or sexual assault, happy to be corrected though.
Going back to the anecdotal "if you only knew the trans people I know maybe you wouldn't react in the way you do" without a nod to any of the more worrying aspects that frame part of the argument. Trans women who have been allowed into women's spaces, such as Karen White who went on to assault female inmates when he was allowed in the women's wing of a prison. There was a case a few years ago of a woman on an all female ward who was raped by a trans woman, at the time the NHS refused to accept that could have taken place stating that there were no men on the ward and obfuscating around the fact that the trans woman was in fact a biological male. The victim's case which dragged on for a year, was taken up by Baroness Nicholson who cited this incident illustrated the dangers of allowing trans patients on female wards and that should be withdrawn. Private spaces do matter, particularly where women and girls would find themselves in a state of undress. Health clubs can have very limited curtained off cubicles, I'd always make for one of those when I took my boys when they were small into the women's changing room. Incidentally, how ridiculous to have the arbitrary age of 7, as it was then as a cut off point for no longer being able to bring a boy child into the women's, but to allow, before the ruling, a fully intact man in on the basis he identifies as a woman and I would also add, having been a member of various health clubs over the years, depending on its size, there are those quiet times when you can find yourself on your own when emerging from a shower area with just a towel around you. I worry more for younger women, particularly adolescent girls being in that sort of situation.
Jennifer Melle's case highlights the extreme end of the spectrum, the type of person who will seek recourse to identifying as a woman. A paedophile prisoner who was admitted to hospital for a urinary infection, anatomically specific to his sex. For not following due protocol in her addressing him as Mr, for her crime, whilst she was racially abused by a sexual deviant, she's suspended. What that case, along with Isla Bryson's and others, these are people who are cynically manipulating the law for their own ends. I don't believe for one moment a man who has raped a female is in the wrong body, I think the fact that he has committed that act would tell him exactly what body he's inhabiting.
