The United Kingdom continues to justify its nickname as “TERF Island” following a recent ruling where a 21-year-old transgender woman named Ciara Watkin was found guilty of sexual assault for not telling a man that she was trans, according to the BBC.
Watkin performed sexual acts on the man, but claimed to be on her period to keep the man from discovering she had not had bottom surgery. When Watkin revealed that she was a transgender woman, the man filed a complaint with police saying that he wouldn’t have engaged in sexual contact with Watkin if he had known because he does “not swing that way.” Prosecutors argued that the man was not able to make “informed consent.” Watkin was found guilty by a jury that deliberated for only one hour and now has to sign the sex offender registry.
Whether or not you believe that Watkin should have disclosed, it’s a pretty extreme punishment that’s supported by some pretty transphobic ideologies. First and foremost, Watkin did not lie about being a woman. Watkin is a woman, despite what the U.K. Supreme Court has ruled. And the precedent for the case, according to PinkNews, comes from a 2013 case where a woman named Justine McNally—who, to the best of my knowledge, was not trans—pretended to be a man to have sex with a woman, which is an entirely different circumstance.
There’s also some worrying precedent, as the U.K. courts have already ruled that lying about having a vasectomy or failing to disclose positive HIV status do not constitute sexual assault. It seems the big difference here is that the U.K. is whipped up into a hysteria about transgender people and are looking for any excuse to prosecute them
There’s also the fact that this is obviously opens the door to the trans panic defense, a worrying defense for assault and murder in which people—usually men—justify violence against trans women by saying that they were so shocked to find a person was trans that they just couldn’t help themselves. It’s time to acknowledge that trans women are women and, while people have a right to choose who they sleep with, a trans woman telling someone that she’s a woman isn’t lying.
