by
Les May
ON
Tuesday morning
a friend telephoned me to suggest that having recently written about
problems with the Gender Recognition Act, I might like to listen to
BBC Woman’s Hour where the proposed changes were to be discussed.
I
assumed that the ‘Karen White’ case in which a
man called David Thompson, who had previously been jailed for life
for rape, had
been housed in a women’s prison after claiming he identified as
female and had gone on to sexually assault two female prisoners,
would
be discussed.
It got a mention.
I
assumed that someone would point out that the prison service had a
duty of care to the female prisoners. No
one did. Nor did anyone point out that the decision to move him to a
women’s prison was made by an anonymous ‘local transgender board,
though much was made of the fact that under the current Gender
Recognition Act (2004) the decision about whether a certificate is
issued is
made by
an anonymous board.
I
assumed that someone would point out the absurdity of the
prosecutor continuing to refer to White as ‘she’,
as
in ‘Her
penis was in her hand and she was winking at the victim.’
(There may be a spelling mistake here.) No one did.
The
problem it seems is MEN!
No
woman is safe on the streets. We men don’t need to use the Gender
Recognition Act (GRA)
to
find Machiavellian ways to assault women. We’re at it all the
time. That’s why they need ‘safe spaces’ like the ‘snowflakes’
who inhabit our universities. And
there was me thinking that in the context of the GRA what women need
is ‘privacy’.
The
women taking part in
this programme all wanted
to sound ‘cool’. They did not want anyone ‘calling them out’
for voicing an unpopular opinion such as, ‘We
cannot let the demands of individuals
who
identify as trans
override the need for
others to maintain their own sense of privacy and dignity.’ Or
‘A
person’s sex still matters.’
That’s
what you are going to get when the only people giving their opinion
are happy to say that their contributions are ‘academic’. These
women were drawn from too small a stratum of society. Perhaps this
was intentional. It wouldn’t do to have have some random woman
saying things that would generate complaints.
Why
has any discussion of possible changes to the GRA by Woman’s Hour
been left until three days before the consultation ends? Must
be a male conspiracy.
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