Every few years there is another of those rather
bizarre cases of a woman pretending she is a man tricking another woman into
having sex with her. So now again we have someone called Georgia Bilham who
called herself George Parry deceiving her girlfriend into thinking they had a
straight relationship by taking off her very short-sighted girlfriend’s
glasses.
These cases always seem peculiar, not least because it
would appear unlikely that the deception would work. Human beings are very good
at identifying whether someone is a man or a woman even a distance and a first
sight. This is why we have a language involving words like He and She that does
not depend on asking someone whether they are He or She. Only rarely in the
case of babies do we not always know. Normally when I say that I met a woman I
neither need to ask the woman whether she is a woman, nor do I have any doubt even
in the case of witnessing a crime. Courts will normally accept witness statements
about criminals being men or women without question.
But there are too many such cases of women pretending
to be men in order to have straight sexual relationships to doubt that such
cases are real, and that the deception works even when the couple go to bed.
What is interesting about these cases however is not
what they say about such rather strange relationships, but what they say about the
issue of transgender.
Georgia Bilham victim had consented to sex with George
Parry a man and not with Georgia Bilham a woman. Georgia Bilham has therefore
been charged with multiple sexual offences including sexual assault and assault
by penetration. It is the deception and false pretence that means that the
sexual activity could not be consented to.
But this whole case and others like it depends on the
distinction between Georgia Bilham really being a woman while she was
pretending to be a man. But how do we determine that she really was a woman and
only pretending to be man? It can only because she is physically a woman. Whatever
she used to penetrate her victim was not real, because it was not part of her
actual anatomy.
If this is how the law determines who is really a
woman rather than who is merely pretending to be a man, it is quite devastating
for the trans argument.
What is to stop Georgia Bilham saying she is really a
man? She is a trans man and according to the mantra trans men are men. But what
about the deception? But we don’t require trans people with Gender Recognition
Certificate to tell everyone they have a relationship with that they are trans.
We don’t require it even if they don’t have such a certificate.
But then let’s imagine a case of a woman who says she
is a trans man. She obtains a Gender Recognition Certificate and has surgery to
approximate the appearance of man. If she then enters into a sexual relationship
with a woman and uses her new anatomy to have sex with that woman, what would
be the difference between that case and the case involving Georgia Bilham? The
trans man need not tell anyone that she was born a woman, she need not admit that
she had surgery. But in that case the deception would be the same. Only in the
one case someone is charged with sexual assault while in the other we have to
accept that the trans man is really a man in which case there is neither
deception nor assault.
But this is absurd and unjust. If there is a real
distinction between being a woman and pretending to be a man, then it has to apply
in both cases. If there is not a real distinction between being a woman and
pretending to be a man, then Georgia Bilham can legitimately claim that she
really is a man and merely used a fake penis without having an operation that
would have given her a fake penis. The distinction can hardly be that a fake
penis created medically is legitimate while non medically it is merely a pretend
penis.
If consent requires that the sexual partner knows that
she is sleeping with a real man rather than a pretend man, then a trans man or
a trans woman would need to say although I might approximate the look of a man,
I am really a woman or although I might approximate the look a woman, I am
really a man. But if that is the case then the whole trans argument collapses.
If we determine who is really a man and who is really
a woman by means of anatomy, then why would we allow some people to use a
different method (feelings, thoughts, identity) to determine whether they are
men or women? That would be to create two classes of human beings, one who are
men and women because of anatomy, the other because of feelings and thoughts. But
why would we allow this, given that in ordinary life we determine who is a man
and a woman objectively by physical appearance?
The whole problem with the trans argument is that if
it were true it would have to be applied universally. But in that case, there
could be no distinction between being a woman and pretending to be a man. But
we know from history that there are numerous examples of woman who dressed as
men, e.g., to become soldiers, only to be discovered later after being wounded
to have been pretending. But if the trans argument were true, we would have to
conclude that these women soldiers were really men, just as we would have to
conclude that there was no deception in the case of Georgia Bilham and that she
really was George Parry.
If the trans argument were true, there would be no
such thing as being a woman as distinct from pretending. It is for this reason
that the trans argument erases what it is to be both a man and a woman, because
it erases the anatomical distinction between being a man and being a woman. But
it is just this distinction that the law requires in order to charge Georgia
Bilham. She is not really a man, because she has the anatomy of a woman.
Worse the Georgia Bilham case shows the perniciousness
of the idea that in order for a girl who fancies girls to have sex with them
she needs to be a man. She doesn’t. She needs to be a Lesbian. So too boys who
fancy boys don’t need to become women, they need merely to be gay. That way
there is no need for deception and no need to pretend that you are something
that you are not.
