Yet another example of the “Colleen Francis” effect of Gender Identity laws and how they allow men to inflict sexual abuse on women and girls in locker rooms and other sex-segregated areas of public nudity. In this instance, a 70 year old woman described what happened to her in a question she sent to the advice column of her local newspaper, the Toronto Star:
“I am a senior woman. Recently, a “man” claiming to be transgender, who had not yet begun physical treatments, was permitted by our local Y to use the women’s locker room. There are no secure change rooms. The person they allowed in was not courteous and stared at me while I struggled out of a wet bathing suit. He was naked, had an erection and playfully asked ‘do you come here often?’ I understand that gender is no longer judged solely by genitalia, but does a brief contact with the duty manager mean that men not yet committed to gender reassignment are free to disrobe anywhere they choose?”
Did transgender activists respond with concern and address the fact that Gender Identity protections remove the rights of women to be free from male sexual abuse in public areas? No. Instead, they claimed that the sexual assault was a “false claim by right-wingers” and “a hoax”, the same way anti-feminist men blame rape victims by citing “false rape claims”. Did transactivists like Autumn Sandeen and Cristan Williams express an ounce of empathy or concern for the elderly woman abused by the “transwoman”? No they did not. They accused the woman of making a false claim, calling her a liar, for no other reason except that they would rather allow women and girls to be sexually abused than address the way Gender Identity laws eliminate rights and protections for women and girls.
Likewise, the advice columnist who responded to the woman’s letter advised her that Gender Identity laws allowed men “the absolute right” to exhibit their penises in women’s locker rooms, and that basically she should get used to it. He kind of waffled a bit on the erection part, deeming it “unacceptable” – but providing no clear measure to legally halt the behavior. And if erect penises are “unacceptable” but non-erect ones are “an absolute right” for strange men to inflict on women and girls in YMCA locker-rooms, then what about the partially erect? Is that “partially unacceptable”? Or an “absolute right”? The male advice columnist doesn’t explain. “You’re on your own, toots! Sucks being you!” the guy seems to say, like the transgender activists, assigning no value or concern to the female experience of male sexual assault. The issue raised by the woman’s question -namely that any man at any time can claim to be transgender to access the women’s change room to freely abuse women sexually, as was done to her, was poo-pooed and the victim was lectured on the importance of men’s sexual rights.
In fact, the whole matter was dropped, with the columnist hand-waving away female sexual assault and the transactivists doing the same (but calling the woman a liar as well) until transactivists began also claiming that the newspaper should not in future publish any sexual assault claims from any woman, ever, if the male perpetrator invokes a Gender Identity. The Toronto Star eventually decided that ongoing transactivist accusations that the victim falsified her claims reflected badly on the paper, having published them. So after two weeks of allowing transgender activists to rail heartlessly against a 70 year old victim of a sexual assault, the Star finally published a rebuttal today titled “Transgender Rights Letter No Hoax”.
Star editor Kathy English writes:
“I can tell you I have telephoned and talked to the North York woman whose name is on the email sent to Star ethics columnist Ken Gallingerin October. I have also confirmed that the YMCA of Greater Torontoreceived a similar letter from a former member in late fall. Last week, an executive of the organization contacted the same North York woman I talked with.
If this woman’s letter was a hoax perpetuated by organized forces opposed to transgender rights, as many in the transgender community through North America and beyond have declared with all certainty, then it is indeed a grand and elaborate one played on both the Star and the YMCA.
The woman would not agree to come forward publicly for this column. She spoke confidentially to me, in line with her expectation of confidentiality in the ethics column. “I am asking the Star to protect my privacy,” she said. “I would not rest easy if any group decided to approach me personally.”
She told me she is 70. She said the incident she described in her letter to Gallinger in which a naked “man” claiming to be a transgender woman behaved inappropriately happened “a couple of years ago” in the late afternoon in the women’s locker room of the Toronto Y on Sheppard Ave.
She said she shared her concerns with the Y manager at the time but felt she was not taken seriously. She said the branch manager contacted her in the fall after she sent her letter and she was again contacted by a senior executive of the Y following publication of the Star column.”
“She felt she was not taken seriously”. It is no surprise the victim is still seeking answers after the traumatizing sexual assault that has been ignored, dismissed, and “not taken seriously” again and again and again. By the YMCA. By transactivists. By the ethics advice columnist at the local newspaper, Ken Gallinger,who actually wrote an entire column today expressing his “deep resentment” that allowing women to report the sexual assaults that men commit MAY MAKE MEN LOOK BAD. Disgusting! Truly disgusting. It would not be surprising if the victim was still traumatized every time she stepped into a locker room to disrobe. It would not be surprising if she felt stressed by the prospect of her granddaughters using the locker room at the YMCA, or anywhere else where Gender Identity laws erase the rights of women and girls to privacy, including the right to be free from strange males forcing us to view their erections as they watch us struggle to change out of a wet bathing suit in a public locker room.
