Court told it was “blindingly obvious” that man accused of sexual assault against another man, and who says he’s a woman, was not biologically female.
Transactivists tell us that our eyes can't distinguish between women and men, and then a lawyer indicates a victim of sexual assault should have used his eyes to do that.
In the UK, a man going by the name of Ciara Watkin, who says he’s a woman, was convicted of sexual assault after performing sex acts on another man, but didn’t reveal he was actually a man.¹ He used the excuse of having his ‘period’ to not be touched below the waist.
The lawyers defending Watkin told his trial that it would have been “blindingly obvious” that she [sic] was not biologically female. This is an implication that Watkin’s accuser should have used his eyes to deduce that Watkin wasn’t a woman.
To address the language used here first, how much more evidence do we need that trans ideology is making a nonsense of our language? How can we have a common understanding of what’s being said, which is vital for social and civil functioning, when a lawyer can say words like “she is not biologically female”, and the incongruity of it goes unchallenged in a court of law?
Who knows why Watkin’s accuser allowed sex acts to be performed on him if it was “blindingly obvious” that they were being done by another man, when he’s not gay? Perhaps he thought that ‘she’ was just a very ugly ‘woman’, but hey, sex is sex, eh? When Watkin ‘fessed up to being a bloke after the fact, and not the woman he initially presented himself as, then it became sex by deception, and his accuser’s mental wellbeing suffered as a result.
Second, haven’t transactivists been telling us forever that we can’t trust our eyes when it comes to telling women and men apart, and that we can only really know by doing genital inspections? Why then does a lawyer imply that their client’s accuser should have used his eyes to see that he was having sex with another man, and not a woman? It seems that using your eyes is considered a legitimate way of discerning who’s who in our environment – imagine that - until it serves transactivists’ purpose to say it isn’t.
On rare occasions we can be deceived about a person’s biological sex, or someone can be challenged about their biological sex, because of their looks and appearance. Even though we humans come in all shapes and sizes, we still largely fall into a range of norms, but the odd deviation from this, both intentional and unintentional, does happen in a world that isn’t perfect. However, transactivists and other dingbats want to use those rare occurrences as a reason to never question anyone’s biological sex, and let those who claim to be the opposite sex to that which they were born go into any spaces they want. In these instances, we’re supposed to repress our instinct to scan our environment to see who and what’s in it, and keep our eyes on the ground.
In New Zealand, irrespective of whether someone has paid to have their birth certificate altered to legally mis-name the sex they were born, the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act tells us that “other factors can be considered over and above the registered sex listed on a birth certificate. This reflects the fact that birth certificates are not intended to be considered evidence of a person’s identity”². In other words, we can legitimately use our eyes and ears as to establish if a person is female or male, and them waving a certificate under our noses with the wrong sex listed on it (for a price), doesn’t matter one jot. It’s an indulgence document for the holder, nothing else. It was once trusted for identification purposes, but sex self-ID scuppered that.
We’re also informed that “The self-identification process should not affect how access to single sex spaces or sports is determined. Birth certificates are not usually used to determine a person’s right to access single sex services or spaces.”²
It’s clear that our eyes and ears are considered trustworthy enough by law-makers and lawyers to establish a person’s biological sex for the vast majority of time, without the need to inspect genitals. Yet transactivists claim that only the inspection of genitals can be trusted for this.
A couple of weeks prior to NZ’s 2023 general election, 1News hosted a Young Voters’ Debate where a number of issues were debated, including the matter of single-sex spaces. The one man on the panel, Lee Donoghue from the NZ First political party, was the only person to say that single-sex spaces should be protected. In particular, women and girls should not have to share their spaces with men and boys who claim to be women and girls. The women on the panel had a mixture of reactions to this - from a meltdown, to opining that the issue was just a distraction, to staying silent. The moderator, Anna Harcourt, even went so far on national television to ask the utterly bonkers question if teachers should inspect kids’ genitals at the door before letting them use school toilets, because how else can they tell the girls from the boys.³
So, to reiterate, we have law-makers saying it’s allowed for us to use our eyes to ascertain a person’s sex, lawyers saying we absolutely should use our eyes for this, and transactivists and idealogues trying to tell us not to use our eyes unless it’s for inspecting genitals.
I think it’s fair to say that trans ideology has no place in a world where even a little bit of sense is useful.
¹UK trans woman convicted of sexual assault after not revealing gender status to male partner
³ Highlights: Young Voters’ Debate | 1News Election 2023 Recap – discussion on single-sex spaces is between 6.00 and 9.00
Then there’s the pivot to genitals don’t determine sex anyway. But, say the same people, some people need their genitals surgically altered to a simulacrum of the opposite sex. Look, I have a piece of paper, I have a vagina, I’m a woman, say men. But I don’t need the surgery or paper because I always was a woman because I say so, say the same men.
BDM Act NZ (no not bondage et al) having in its terms of reference (oh the irony) that there is not a way of identifying someone's sex ( I paraphrase) is utter nonsense and makes the legislators who wrote the amendment to insert choosing one's sex for payment of a nominal price to alter a document (one formerly instituted to identify one as one or other sex) to fit one's false fetish would be laughable if not for the teagic consequences. Consequences in USA and in NZ are erosion of women's sex based rights, males put into women's prisons (since 2015...Jan Logie's initiative)and clowns in all our circuses.