Note from Emma: it hasn’t escaped our notice that the UK police seem to have become very invested in their own brand of trans rights advocacy. Recent events, such as police taking two men into custody over a tweet deemed to be ‘anti-trans’ (Police force is savaged by its own crime commissioner over the arrest of army veteran | Daily Mail Online), have increased our concerns that children of transitioners will not receive fair treatment. Even as I publish this, I notice new stories such as ‘Jayde’ Palmer, a convicted sex offender who has used a trans identity to hide his past and build a TikTok presence, being escorted to Pride by Norwich Police. Meanwhile, lesbians were told by Cardiff Police leave a Pride march for daring to resist trans-identified male harassment. In light of this I have asked a contributor with experience of the police and the court system in issues related to her violent transitioner father, to write on this issue.
This press photo was taken recently when some parents protested about drag queens reading to children in libraries. This has become hugely controversial in the UK, with defenders arguing that this is about helping ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ children. Aida H Dee, drag queen pictured, has expressed support for Mermaids, the child transition charity, and has made offensive comments about women with gender critical beliefs:
For some reason, male sexualised and misogynistic behaviour around children has been repackaged as a progressive endeavour. But it’s important to consider how our desire to seem kind and inclusive can enable behaviour that would normally be challenged.
As someone who was exposed to my father’s fetishes at a young age, I’m horrified that parents are taking their children to events like this. The idea that events are being held to normalise transvestism is abhorrent. Given the connection between male transvestism and sexual offending, surely the opposite should be the case.
I find this photo quite frightening because of what it shows us about the police. These same police officers are the ones called to our homes when we have to be removed as children by Child Protection from our fathers for our safety, so we are not coerced into taking part in our dad’s sexual fetishes, the same ones we see if we ring the police to report a crime, child sexual abuse and/or domestic violence. Let people wear what they want – but the police have crossed a line here by taking sides in a political issue that divides the nation about child safeguarding and abuse of women and girls.
For some of us this isn’t a joke. Our dads may pop a dress on over their penis, but they will still be the same domestic and sexual abusers as any other man. When this happens it is essential that we have an impartial police force. Instead, many police forces are clearly engaged in political campaigning about transgender issues. If anything, there seems to be a measure of hostility and antagonism to female victims of men like my father. The police should be protecting children from abuse, not enabling it. Men are no less likely to be abusers if they identify as women and I do not understand why police are treating this high risk group of men as a sacred caste.
I understand the police needed to improve relations with different parts of society – it is shocking that just being gay was illegal for so many years and that gay people and abused women were treated so badly by the police. But misogyny in the police is still entrenched, and acting without fear or favour does not mean favouring male fetishists who enforce oppressive gender stereotypes, or taking a side in a political debate that seeks to end the privacy, dignity and safety of women and children. Here are some of my concerns about the police, whom I continue to rely on for safety from my father:
Abusive police officers
Several police officers (including from my father’s current force area) have threatened/blocked people on social media who don’t believe that trans identified males like my father are women. (Note that like most male ‘transpeople’ my father has simply changed the clothing he wears to conform to more stereotypically ‘feminine’ attire: under the Stonewall umbrella this is sufficient for him to be a woman). There is no way female victims like me can trust the police.
Police Training
The police employ trans-identified males with a history of violence and abuse of women and girls to train police officers on how to treat incidents involving trans-identified males like them. I have no confidence that officers who received this biased training delivered by individuals who are wholly inappropriate can respond appropriately to female victims of trans-identified males.
Police forces are Stonewall champions.
Stonewall slogans include ‘Transwomen are women’ – in total conflict with material reality as sex is immutable. All rape/abuse victims know these men are not women and their abuse patterns do not magically change. No police force should be Stonewall Champions. In particular Stonewall has campaigned to remove single sex spaces for women and girls – the same spaces I and other women and girls need for safety and privacy from my father and other males like him.
(Stonewall submission to government ‘to remove exemptions, such as access to single-sex spaces” https://womansplaceuk.org/2018/06/25/references-to-removal-of-single-sex-exemptions/)
Public Engagement
I used to feel relief as a child when I saw police at the door and police cars on the road. Now I dread it. It is common for police officers and police cars to be emblazoned with rainbows and trans flags. On Twitter, police have constantly emphasized they support Stonewall version of trans ‘rights’ (demands which include males like my father being able to access female toilets and changing rooms if they ‘identify’ as women and coerced speech) flying trans flags, photos of police shields with trans slogans on, and pride week.
There is no balancing reference to the facts i.e. that trans identified males like my father, from Jessica Brennan to David Challenor, have abused women and girls, that male pattern offending doesn’t change if men ‘identify’ as women, or the fact women need to be able to access single sex abuse support or even basic services like women’s changing rooms without males in them to avoid voyeurism, harm and distress.
https://fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-male-criminality-sex-offences/
Police encourage male fetishes and abuse women and girls with impunity
Police contempt for girls is further demonstrated by the illegal strip search of female children by the police, high amounts of domestic abuse by police officers (that police ignore as the perpetrators remain in post), as well as sexual abuse of female members of the public by police. I am horrified that police contempt for women is so total that some forces want officers to intimately search suspects of the opposite biological sex and charge anyone with ‘hate crime’ if they object. Female officers would have to touch the genitals of men like my father and take part in his sexual fetishes. If a male officer ‘identifies’ as a women police policy would enable him to intimately touch (and thus sexually assault) female suspects and say the police sanctioned it. I find it very scary that this level of hatred for women is enforced by the police.
The police should be protecting women and children from male abuse, including sexual abuse, not enabling it. One police Chief in Wales actually wrote online that there is no conflict between women’s safety and what heterosexual trans-identified men like my father say are their ‘rights’, then called women and girls who don’t believe men can change sex (and can’t access intimate spaces with trans identified men) ‘homophobes’, wished us ‘uncomfortable’ experiences and then blocked a solicitor who raised safeguarding concerns online.
This is the terrifying level of hostility to female victims of trans identified males by the police we depend on to protect us. CoTs raised concerns to the UK government about this some time ago:
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/16837/pdf/
I have seen photos of police officers holding ‘dog leads’ of men in fetish gear to take part in pride marches. As a child, child protection and police sought to protect women and children’s privacy and safety from my father’s sexual fetishes – now police are actively campaigning to promote male sexual fetishes in public, and end all female boundaries, consent and safety. Several forces emphasize ‘hate crimes’ and ‘transphobia’ if women can’t pretend trans identified men are women (gaslighting that social services protected me from when I was in primary school) and similar messages have been posted by National LGBT+ police network.
Wiltshire Police educating the public about kinks
London Police should really have better boundaries.
And here’s yet another force publicising a threatening photo of a male officer wearing a wig (identifying as female) and pointing a taser at the public:
We know that male violence doesn’t decrease when a man identifies as female; this is an incredibly threatening and distressing image.
Police- failure to refer female victims to accessible support
The police refer victims to Victim Support, whose leaflet is given to victims by the officer allocated to our case. But Victim Support have accused female victims of hate crime and ‘transphobia’ for not pretending the that our abusive father a woman. In their public engagement they have created a hostile environment the result of which is that female victims like me are unable to access their support. Victim Support’s public messages confirm they instead consider women and girls who are victims of trans-identified men as abusive for refusing to submit to gaslighting, or be coerced into taking part in men’s sexual fetishes
(Note: the very thing children of these men are now condemned over, and considered hateful for, is the reason Police and Child Protection have to protect children of transitioners from fathers in the first place). This gaslighting is very twisted and abusive. What are the Victims’ Commissioner and Domestic Abuse Commissioner doing to address this? And the politicians who say they are committed to protecting children and women’s rights?)
As a result there is absolute conflict between the needs of female victims on the one hand, and messages in support of trans ‘rights’ from Victim Support and the police on the other. No one has the right to demand that we say that our father is a woman, or take part in his sexual fetishes. Victim ‘support’, like help from the police, cannot be accessed by many female victims of trans-identified men.
Even the ‘by women for women’ domestic abuse support groups/ counselling the police/ GP refer victims to are often not accessible as they now include trans identified men. Sometimes this is a funding condition imposed by trans lobby group trained councils. I find this extraordinary and it leaves female victims isolated, without support and very distressed. (More recently in Brighton trans lobby group supporters have removed all female only rape support and encouraged abuse of female rape victims who are excluded from help as a result. https://unherd.com/2022/07/why-im-suing-survivors-network/
It’s clear police have taken a side when police publicly support trans lobby groups and ‘Transwomen are women’ slogans but suddenly have nothing to say when the outcome of trans lobbying leaves female victims of trans identified abuse terrified, with no where to go for help and scared of the police.
If the police want to get involved in political lobbying, it would be more appropriate for them to campaign for accessible police and female only victim support services for the crime victims trans lobby groups have effectively ensured are excluded from care and who are too scared to approach the police.
CPS and courts
Schools guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service a few years ago said that any girl who objected to a male in female toilets/changing rooms could be guilty of a hate crime. This section of the guidance was accompanied by a photograph of an adult man in makeup as illustration of the type of individual with whom girls may not object to sharing their toilets. For female child abuse victims it was terrifying. (The guidance was subsequently withdrawn as it breached the law). Similar gaslighting is seen in the Judge’s Equal Treatment Bench Book guidance too which, until recently, made rape victims and family members refer to male attackers as female, and now just requires everyone else in court to gaslight the female victim instead. As the number of men/fathers/abusers who say they are women across the country increases there will be an increasing number of girls who are being abused but who will refrain from reporting because of the hostile environment created by the police/CPS/courts where female victims of abuse are told that their abuser who they know to be male was in fact female.
Reporting your father to the police is frightening and distressing, both as a child and an adult.
This is affecting a growing number of children and female victims of trans identified men. Police have created a hostile environment for female victims of trans identified males. We know the police turn a blind eye to child abuse if they regard the male perpetrators as a sacred caste- from Asian male groups to celebrities such as Jimmy Saville. And now all a man has to do is identify as a woman and the police will celebrate his fetishes, record him as female, gaslight the victim (and support the abuser going to a female prison to traumatise other females who can’t get away from him either). Female victims of these men can’t access help from a police service that is so biassed and misogynistic.
In summary, it’s vital that law enforcement agencies leave groups like Stonewall and stop acting on their advice. Impartiality is the minimum anyone in society should expect. We may be a small group in society, but as more men declare themselves to be trans, so there will inevitably be more of us. We need services to become aware of the needs of CoTs and transwidows. We vitally need an objective look at why the police are enabling fetishistic behaviour around children and how this can be stopped.
Children of Transitioners 