Violence – Feminist Legal Clinic

Anti-Sex Trade Protestors Beaten by Trans Activists in Brussels

French and Belgian women’s rights demonstrators are once again sounding alarm bells over the violence they are facing from trans activists while trying to campaign on women’s issues.

On November 28, a small group of about 12 female activists took part in a march against violence against women in Brussels, holding signs protesting the sex trade, including pornography. But the women’s efforts were quickly drowned out by a sea of trans activists, who they say surrounded them and pushed them into a corner.

The women report they were “beaten, insulted, intimidated” and had their signs stolen and torn up by a gang of over 50 trans activists who swarmed them despite their signs having nothing to do with them.

In footage a participant uploaded on Twitter, masked and hooded trans activists can be heard chanting “cassez vous,” (fuck off) at the women.

Similar events transpired at a violence-against-women demonstration in Barcelona on November 25.

These are not the only two occasions of women demonstrating against the sex trade being targets of trans activist anger. Earlier this year, women who gathered in Paris were pelted with eggs and assaulted with red spray paint in their eyes.

Later, the statue where the incident had taken place was spray painted with words translating to “save a trans person, kill a TERF.”

In Barcelona, during a March 3 Women’s Day demonstration, according to Women Are Human, a group of trans activists could “be seen suddenly kicking away and stomping on the women’s signs.” Then, the trans activists turned “their destruction into dance moves and set it to the beat of music and a rhythmically clapping crowd.”

Later on, an effigy of a woman was hanged on a tree in the same area.

Source: Anti-Sex Trade Protestors Beaten by Trans Activists in Brussels

‘Body modification’ on trial – Law Report – ABC Radio National

In a precedent-setting case, a New South Wales judge has found self-proclaimed extreme body modification artist Brendan Leigh Russell guilty of female genital mutilation, grievous bodily harm, and manslaughter. Is consent a valid legal defence when cosmetic ‘body modification’ procedures go wrong?

Source: ‘Body modification’ on trial – Law Report – ABC Radio National

J.K. Rowling hits back at trans activists who posted her address online | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

The 56-year-old spoke out after three exposed her home address by posting online a photo of them protesting outside.

She added: “They should have reflected on the fact that I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven’t stopped speaking out.

“Perhaps – and I’m just throwing this out there – the best way to prove your movement isn’t a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us.”

Source: J.K. Rowling hits back at trans activists who posted her address online | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

Woman in Turkey Sentenced to Five Months for ‘Insulting Men’ Online

Turkish author and influencer Pinar Yildirim was sentenced to five months in prison over a tweet that authorities allege contains the phrase, “I don’t like men.”

Yildrim says she will appeal the conviction. “Women are humiliated, insulted and harassed in every field, and our courts prefer to be insensitive to these issues for some reason,” she says. “Every week a woman is killed because of domestic violence. These murders are romanticised in the press and presented as ‘love murders’.”

In October alone, 18 women were murdered by men and 19 died under suspicious circumstances in Turkey, according to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform.

Source: Woman in Turkey Sentenced to Five Months for ‘Insulting Men’ Online

Sexual Offending Per Capita: Female, Male and Transgender (Both Sexes) – Women Are Human

The sexual offender per capita of the transgender population (both sexes) is some 35-90 times higher than that of the female population (and a little below that of the male population).

Source: Sexual Offending Per Capita: Female, Male and Transgender (Both Sexes) – Women Are Human

The spin doctor for psychopaths – by Graham Linehan – The Glinner Update

Comerford has been menacing women for years, acting as a spin doctor for men like ‘Tara’ Wolf by dismissing and minimising the justifiable fear women have in the face of male violence. One would hope a list like this would shut him up once and for all but no doubt his selective blindness will kick in as soon as he realises what it’s about.

[Ed: access the link to Glinner’s post for long list of examples of violence against women collated to rebut Comerford’s assertion]

Source: The spin doctor for psychopaths – by Graham Linehan – The Glinner Update

Australia’s Prison Dilemma – Research paper – prison-dilemma.pdf

Imprisonment rates have been rising and crime rates falling
Australia’s imprisonment rate — measured as prisoners per 100 000 adults — is at its highest in a century (figure 1.2). The imprisonment rate has more than doubled in Australia since the mid–1980s and at its peak

Imprisonment growth has been higher among women in several jurisdictions, particularly since 2010. Nonetheless, men still make up the bulk of the prison population.

A study of Aboriginal mothers incarcerated in Western Australia found that women who reported using violence were more likely to have experienced it themselves. Of those mothers who reported using violence, 91 per cent had experienced family
violence compared to 77 per cent of those mothers who did not report using violence (Wilson et al. 2017).

Women in prison are more likely to have a history of mental illness than men — in 2018, 65 per cent of females compared with 35 per cent of males reported a previous diagnosis of mental illness (PC 2020, p. 1016).

Moreover, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in prison have a higher incidence of mental ill health than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men or non-Indigenous women.

Another feature of Australia’s imprisonment trends is that imprisonment rates are increasing faster for some demographic groups. While women comprise only 7.7 per cent of the national prison population, female imprisonment rates have increased faster than male imprisonment rates nationally and in several
jurisdictions (figure 2.7). This faster growth in female imprisonment has been common across Western countries including New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

There is some evidence from New South Wales that much of this increase has been driven by more women presenting to courts as repeat offenders.

There is little evidence that women are committing more serious crimes or spending longer in prison (Ooi 2018).

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have experienced the fastest growth in imprisonment rates. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s imprisonment rates have increased by 115 per cent between 2000 and 2020 compared with an increase of 65 per cent for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men. (ABS 2020b; SCRGSP 2020b). The underlying structural, relational and personal circumstances of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women put them at greater risk of imprisonment (SCRGSP 2020b).

Imprisonment rates have increased steadily over the past two decades in all Australian jurisdictions from different base levels. This growth has been more pronounced for women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

And the rate of suicide has been measured to be between five times higher in men, and twelve times higher in women incarcerated in Australian prisons compared to the general population (Kariminia et al. 2007).

Source: Australia’s Prison Dilemma – Research paper – prison-dilemma.pdf

Male, ‘Transgender’ Inmate Who Bit Off Woman’s Nose Seeks Move to Women’s Prison – Women Are Human

UK — Weoley Castle, Birmingham. A 61-year-old male who was sent to men’s prison after pursuing a woman into the street and biting off her nose has put in a request for transfer to men’s prison.

According to testimony heard by Birmingham Crown Court, the attack was so brutal that surgeons had to graft part of her forehead onto her nose. The woman must undergo further surgeries, and has been receiving counseling for trauma resulting from the assault. She says her “life” and her “household” were left “destroyed” by the vicious attack.

Mr Gills pleaded guilty to Wounding With Intent, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Maxine Styles argued that a “lengthy” jail sentence would impact on her client’s plans for “gender reassignment surgery.” Despite acknowledging that the attack was an “unwarranted, aggressive act of violence” that must have brought the survivor “unbearable pain,” Judge Avik Mukherjee sentenced the perpetrator to just four years in prison.

Mr Gills has put in a request to serve out his sentence in a women’s prison. The request is currently delayed due to the fact that Mr Gills does not have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). A GRC is obtained from a panel after an individual has received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria from two doctors, and has been “living in their gender” for two years and vows to continue doing so until death.

Source: Male, ‘Transgender’ Inmate Who Bit Off Woman’s Nose Seeks Move to Women’s Prison – Women Are Human

The Behavioral Ecology of Male Violence

Understanding patterns of lethal violence among humans requires understanding some important sex differences between males and females. Globally, men are 95 percent of homicide offenders and 79 percent of victims.² Sex differences in lethal violence tend to be remarkably consistent, on every continent, across every type of society, from hunter-gatherers to large-scale nation states.

To understand why this pattern is so consistent across a wide variety of culturally and geographically diverse societies, we need to start by looking at sex differences in reproductive biology.

Noting these sex differences in reproductive biology and parental investment is important because they help explain why males tend to engage in more violence than females.¹⁰ Aggressively engaging in violent conflict is more likely to reduce a female’s fitness, as it may bring unnecessary danger to her offspring, or cause an injury that may prevent her from reproducing in the future. For a male, however, violent conflict can potentially increase his reproductive success through increases in status,¹¹ or by aggressively monopolizing access to key resources.

Source: The Behavioral Ecology of Male Violence

Judith Butler and Afghan women – The Feministani

Yesterday on Twitter, I wrote an angry tweet. It went like this:

“I just really need to know how Judith Butler’s definition of women applies to Afghan women who are being beaten on the streets by the Taliban. Have you ever considered that your academics really don’t fit the lives of women in the global South?”

In Afghanistan (extreme example) but also in Pakistan, where I live, in India, in Nepal, Bangladesh, Middle Eastern countries, North Africa, women (or people with female bodies) are being abused, harassed, assaulted and killed not just because they have female bodies, but because they refuse to hand those bodies over to men to do with as they please.

Because this possession and ownership of female bodies is absolutely tied to female biology and the production of children and sexual comfort for those men, separating sex from gender completely negates this form of oppression which is hugely insulting to all of us who are still fighting to end sex-based discrimination in our countries and regions.

Imagine a Muslim woman in the UK who escapes a violent marriage and threats of honor killing. She goes to a shelter where she feels safe because it is a female-only space. Not just because she is away from the realm of immediate male violence, but because as a Muslim woman she does not feel comfortable sharing intimate quarters with a person with a male body. This allows her to reconcile her awful situation as well as her need to feel she is acting in congruence with her identity and principles of modesty as a Muslim woman.

But if a trans woman with a penis is in the same space, then the Muslim woman will be in a terrible conflict about her actions in leaving her home. Suddenly, she is not able to remove her hijab or undress because she cannot do those things in front of a person with a male body who is not a family member. This not a hypothetical, there are Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu women who are now excluded from single sex-only spaces because the definition of woman has changed to include women with penises. To call that Muslim woman a TERF because she expresses discomfort is yet another abuse for her.

I’m afraid the trans rights activists are acting like Western colonisers and imperialists all over again, imposing their ideas of gender and sexuality on us the same way their Empire was imposed on us for a good part of the 20th century. I don’t really want gender colonialism in the 21st century. Do you?

Source: Judith Butler and Afghan women – The Feministani