Mrs Benn

Five years ago, Andrew Gilligan – he of the “sexed up” dossier about Iraq – wrote a piece for the Sunday Times about sexual assaults in public swimming pools. The majority of sexual assaults (120) in swimming pools occurred in unisex changing rooms, with only 14 occurring in single sex changing rooms and 46 in other areas (in the pool, a sports hall or corridors). You can find a summary of his data in the Independent (the Sunday Times article is behind a pay wall).

Gilligan is one of a number of prominent voices raising concerns about trans-inclusive spaces and the potential threats that they pose to women and girls. These sorts of argument often rely upon the conjoining of two propositions:

(1) Unisex (or gender-neutral) facilities create safety problems for women

(2) Transwomen present a threat to women.

These are separate propositions, but they are often conflated. The line of argument is: “men are apt to be sexual predators; transwomen are men; therefore allowing transwomen into womens changing rooms will make women unsafe.” Or, in this particular case, “people are trying to create trans-inclusive spaces, such as unisex changing rooms or gender-neutral toilets, and this creates a threat to the safety of women, therefore transwomen are a threat to women”. Thus, statistical evidence is produced to demonstrate that unisex facilities present safety problems for women and girls and is translated into evidence that there is a conflict between considering the safety and inclusion of transwomen on the one hand and the safety of women on the other. However, Gilligan’s data do not test this explicitly or, indeed, implicitly. The data may support the hypothesis that there are more sexual assaults on women in unisex changing rooms. But they also support the hypothesis that women assault other women in single sex changing areas (14 such assaults in the year in question, according to Gilligan). Moreover, Gilligan reports that a significant number of assaults (46 in the year in question) occured in public areas. Thus, sexual assaults are not eliminated by the use of single sex changing rooms, even though the numbers are reduced.

What Gilligan’s data do not illuminate at all is the likely impact of admitting transwomen to changing rooms (whether single sex or unisex). The available data are simply too sparse for it to be possible to say whether the rate of assaults in single sex spaces would increase or stay the same if transwomen were admitted. The data provided by Gilligan provide no evidence about this.

Despite the lack of any evidence in Gilligan’s data set about the impact of transwomen on women’s safety, campaigning organisation Fair Play for Women claimed that Gilligan’s data demonstrated that legal recognition of gender self-identification would make women less safe. However, this inference can be made only if one accepts a priori proposition (2) above, something about which the data are silent.

This line of argument has been widely rehearsed in the public sphere, and propositions (1) and (2) above are regularly conjoined. Unisex facilities are created so that transwomen are not excluded; women no longer feel safe; thus transwomen make women feel unsafe. A good illustration of the line of thought is found in this post on Mumsnet. Much of it consists of ranting, but much of the debate about these issues consists of ranting so in that respect, it is representative.

But the question of whether unisex changing rooms are safe for women, and the question about changing spaces for transwomen are unconnected; one can answer the former without answering the latter. Moreover, questions about safe spaces for transwomen (and for women) are in any case much more complex than activists like Gilligan like to suggest. As an illustration, consider NPR’s report of a transwoman who was sexually assaulted by two women in a North Carolina toilet and then subsequently in a bar.

Of course it is very easy to identify a unique case and build an elaborate contrarian argument around it. Recent mainstream media coverage of a Scottish case involving a rapist who later transitioned and, on conviction, was initially scheduled to be incarerated in a women’s prison was particularly disappointing. Of course no right-minded person thinks that somebody who has raped a woman should be locked up with women (although what do you do with female rapists? and where is the concern about the colossal rates of sexual assault in women-only prisons? If you doubt me, look at official US data in a blog elsewhere on this site). But for a few weeks, it felt as though there was an unspoken assumption in every broadcast that transwomen were intrinsically kinky people and that a major motivation for transition was to facilitate sexual assaults on women – as though this prisoner, who had committed what all right-thinking people will agree was a wicked and vicious crime, was somehow a representative of an entire class of people.

The nastiness and the unreasonableness of this undertone was illuminated with great intelligence by Guardian columnist Zoe Williams. The following is a quotation from her piece, but I do urge you to read the original, which is very persuasively argued.

I’ve never encountered anyone from either side of the debate who didn’t critique the process by which she was moved into a women’s prison. But in arguments since, White has come to represent every transgender prisoner, and … is often used to represent trans women generally, and indicate that they will always be a threat to cis women. This seems pretty obviously prejudicial: no cis man would accept his essential nature being extrapolated from that of a male sexual offender.

Since the prison regulation on trans prisoners was reformed in 2019…there have been no assaults by trans prisoners on women in prison. It seems pretty obvious that if the majority of sexual assaults in the women’s estate are committed by prisoners who are not trans, then a relentless focus on trans prisoners is not going to keep women safe.

Finally, it just didn’t occur to me that the behaviour of trans prisoners would be used to tarnish the characters of all trans people and call into question their legitimacy in any single-sex space. You simply can’t infer anything broader from the behaviour of inmates: they are an outlier population. That’s why they’re in prison.

Zoe Williams, “Why are trans rights in prison so rarely defended?”, The Guardian, 1 June 2023

The arguments have extended far beyond toilets and swimming pools, to changing rooms in shops. Recently the UK Science Minister, Michelle Donelan, even announced a plan to “remove woke ideology from science”, and moved rapidly from questions in EDI surveys that were based on self-declared gender rather than natal sex to the above case of the “transgender rapist”. Zoe Williams hit the nail squarely on the head: the behaviour of trans prisoners is used to tarnish the characters of all trans people.

But while we know that politicians on the far right are waging war on woke, what of the general population? If I am honest, I went through a reasonably lengthy phase in which I started to become – for the first time in my life – a little bit nervous about going out. I began to feel overwhelmed with the torrent of hate, misinformation and negativity from politicians and media outlets. In the case of the “transgender rapist”, even Sky and BBC, who typically strive hard to be sensitive and balanced, seemed to be opening the door to conjecture that the individual concerned was some sort of representative of trans people more broadly.

I am not an activist, and I don’t wave placards. So I went shopping instead. A couple of weeks ago I spent a happy (albeit expensive) afternoon in the Meadowhall Centre. As I went in and out of the changing rooms in my favourite stores, one thing was crystal clear. Nobody felt remotely threatened by me. A very sweet and helpful assistant in Seasalt offered candid opinions, as did ladies popping in and out (“the jacket looks great. I love your skirt”). One of the things I’ve found is that women are very chatty in the changing rooms. I’m supposed to be making them quake with fear. But they’re just there for the same reasons that I am: to find something that fits and to have a little fun. And they seem to enjoy giving me the benefit of their experience – a feminine perspective on my homage to femininity. Its simple, really, and it puts a smile on everybody’s face.

Most of the women that I interact with in my very ordinary trans existence simply don’t notice me. Those who do are to varying degrees fascinated, amused, friendly, supportive, and intrigued. I really can’t say that I’ve ever seen fear in anybody’s eyes. I can recall one assistant many years ago who gave the impression that she didn’t approve of me as she relieved me of my money. But she stands out precisely because that experience was unique.

I don’t think that the people in Sheffield are more woke than those in London. They are, of course, Northerners – which means kind, friendly, warm and down to earth. And of course this all goes a lot further than woke vs conservative: it’s about fundamental, shared human values. People know a threat when they see one and they plainly don’t see me as a threat. I don’t want to pretend for a moment that people are relaxed with me because they see me as a woman; I can tell from the way they interact with me that they know exactly “what” I am. And in a sense, its a lot easier for people if we’re all relaxed about that. I’m trans; I’m a guy who wears frocks and of course I need to try them before I buy them. We’re all on the same page, just getting on with our ordinary lives and having a bit of fun along the way.