I am married, but I don't assault my partner. I am a parent, but I don't abuse children. I am a man, but I don't molest women. I am straight, but I don't hate people who love differently to me. I am genderfluid and I don't think I am a woman. I am an atheist, but I don't want to destroy religion. I am white and racism disgusts me. I have male parts, but I don't expose them. I have struggled with mental illness, but I am not a threat. I went to university, but I'm not part of the elite. I am English, Scots, and Irish: a citizen of nowhere. I was a biker and a metaller, but I'm not violent. I am trans and we are not the enemy.
This week has seen two events that have sickened me. One was a person who was exposing themselves in a shop in Nottingham. The other was the conviction of a rapist. In both cases, the criminals in question identified as trans. What they did to others was wrong, there can be no doubt of that around their crimes. What they have also done, is put other trans people in danger.
Is it akin to being a skinhead and reading about racists who look like you? Do Scout leaders or Catholic priests shake their heads in quiet desperation when another is arrested? Do people of the Muslim faith despair when a terrorist claims to be of the same religion? In fact, do police officers look at the current scandal of predators within their ranks and feel as I do now?
No-one should be subjected to what the victims went through and the behaviour of an individual should not damn a community.
L x
I can see you are upset, dear Lynn, and I am sorry to hear this has happened, although it’s not the first time a person who was trans has been convicted of either exposure or rape. Or, if you prefer, that convicted criminals turn out to be transgender. Most normally adjusted people won’t connect the two things. But it’s politically unhelpful that, when transphobes are claiming that trans people are violent sexual deviants who are a danger to the public, a handful should turn out to be so.
As for what people in other groups or communities think about members of their following being convicted of crimes, some will disassociate the criminal from the community as you do, and others will claim that the person is being unjustly persecuted for being a member of that group by false accusations by the authorities or enemies. I come from a family of religious fundamentalists and any member of their religion, especially leaders, who are convicted of fraud, paedophilia or any other crime are deemed to be martyrs being unjustly persecuted and abused for their faith. So, yes, some transphobes will latch onto this, and conversely some trans people may even deny the crimes and claim persecution.
Personally, I find the timing awkward in these two cases but generally welcome the fact that even criminals can be trans. The reason for what may seem an odd position is that I cannot see any pattern or demographic that indicates that one sector of society or another is more or less trans. Trans people seem to exist right across all classes, ages, upbringings, education, family sizes, wealth, state of sanity, nationalities, locations, point in history or however you want to cut the cake. This suggests that being trans is innate and not created by social factors or that it affects any one group of people more than another. So some trans people do bad things, just like some in the rest of society. But it’s not, it seems, the case that trans people are more or less criminal than others in society, at least when looking at those we know to be criminal and those we know to be trans. I think that makes a point.
Sue x
Except the gutter press are not noted for being written by ‘normally adjusted people’ and they will almost certainly flag this on an anti trans agenda.
Even while I accept that we can’t all be angels, I feel the same way Lynn does about this news. It’s not at all helpful, particularly at this time.
The writers may be both normal and all adjusted… just not in the rent-a-gob columns.
It certainly isn’t useful timing. I’m sorry to say that crimes have been committed by trans people before but it’s likely that these two cases have been highlighted now because we are in a time of fierce transphobia, at least in the UK. The UK’s problem is its deranged media, among the worst in the world. No-one – from governments to watchdogs to courts to reader bodies – seems to be able to get to grips with the power behind the throne that is Murdoch or the other three or four big unscrupulous media owners. What are we going to do about that?
I had a look online to see if I could find the exact words the coroner used around the tragic death of Lucy Meadows. For those not familiar with Lucy’s story, she was a trans woman and primary school teacher in the early 2010s. Certain newspapers took significant interest in the situation.
The link below is from her former partner and this was written in 2017, a handful of years after Lucy’s death. I do not say this lightly or with irony: some readers may find the following upsetting. Trigger warnings for harassment and suicide.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/lucy-meadows-transgender-teacher-ruth-smith-media-press-daily-mail-lgbt-rights-a8063946.html
I feel that at this time, there’s a confusion over freedom of expression and freedom of consequence. Add into that deep pockets to cover legal processes and the balance of power lurches very quickly one way. I feel that sections of the media have a licence to discriminate. They may bully and torment their target with seemingly little comeback and in ways that would not be tolerated at work, school, or similar.
The person who’s been found guilty by a jury with the evidence presented. I’ve no issue with that. The other criminal, I believe, is still at large at the time of writing.
Likewise, I know people do illegal, unkind, unspeakable, and/or unethical acts. I truly wish people did not and I think demonising a minority through stereotyping is inaccurate, unfair, and dangerous. I forgot which person said “if you can convince people your enemy isn’t human, you can do whatever you want.” 😔
I think my anger and frustration are a mix of the wrongness of their crimes, the impact to the victim(s), and the risk it puts other trans folk under. Tempers & emotions are running high is certain areas, and we know online abuse can spill out into the real world.
There is already an issue about where to send the rapist, currently the miscreant has been sent to a Scottish female jail, there are some that say that the miscreant should be in a male jail, on the basis that female names where used during the trail
One for the lawyers and the Prison Service, I think. They were convicted, yes, and the custodians will need to keep them locked up. That’s to ensure they complete their sentence, be rehabilitated, and released if they’re not a danger to others.