Female sex offenders: What exclusionary feminism ignores

On August 13th 2023 Isable Hardman wrote a Guardian article outlining the shifting stance within the UK Labour Party towards a gender critical perspective. This move is away from a previous position of potentially granting self-identification for trans people rather than the current medicalised gender recognition panels that the UK currently has. Since The Transsexual Empire was first published by Janice Raymond in 1979 there have been waves of exclusionary feminism that have attempted to halt or erode trans rights, much of it based around the myth that trans women only transition to gain access to female only spaces to sexually abuse, sexually assault, and rape women. What exclusionary feminists ignore are the statistics and data on female sex offenders, female domestic abusers, and women who commit violence against other women.

Cortoni and Babchishin point out in their 2016 meta-analysis that despite the popular belief about the lack of harm caused by women, the reality is that female sexual offenders cause as much harm to their victims as men. Yet, they point out that the true prevalence of female sexual offending due to the lack of data and statistics published by national governments. They state that traditional perceptions of womanhood need to be broken down in order to see the reality of sexual offences, not simply assuming that only men want to and actively seek out victims.

The Lucy Faithful Foundation highlighted in a 2009 report that 20% of the suspected paedophiles in the UK are women, and their website has significant resources in how do deal with female sex offenders. Their point is that we cannot afford to ignore women who sexually abuse simply because we assume that sexual offenses are carried out by men or penis owners. UK law states that rape can only be carried out by a penis or if a woman is a direct accessory to the act, meaning that female rape convictions in the UK are vanishingly rare. Rebecca Holloway was convicted of child rape in 2019, one of the few women to be done so in recent year. Yet, the evidence used to fight against self-identification for trans women included rapist Karen White, a trans woman whose gender identity was disabused in evidence given to the UK parliament by Dr Michael Biggs in 2020. No mention was made to women on women sexual violence or the prevalence of female sex offenders in society at large.

This is where the data gets complicated. The British Office for National Statistics (ONS) research advised that over the course of 2021/22 1% of women arrested in the UK were for sexual offences, while for men it was 7%. The ONS does not account for the relationship status between offender and victim in its statistics, nor does it say against which sex the sexual offence was carried out. The ONS assumes female in the statists based on sex, though this is complicated by the UK’s gender recognition process which the ONS only briefly touches upon when rejecting gender identity as a measurement for binary sex. The ONS figures do not explicitly state how many women were convicted of sexual offences, and does not supply the raw data to scrutinise.

The UK’s Ministry of Justice’s 2018 report on sexual assaults does not record the sex or gender identity of the perpetrator/victim, so it is impossible to correlate the true number of women on women sexual assaults. US 2006 research by Wolff et al suggested that inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization in women’s prisons was four times higher than in male prisons, with abusive conduct more likely than sexual violence. This would suggest that while rapists like Karen White get the headlines, the reality is that women-on-women sexual violence is much more prevalent and under reported than the data would have you believe.

While statistically 90% of sexual violence arrests and convictions are male, the notion that trans women are predatory or simply using transition as camouflage to commit sexual violence is patently false. The under reporting of female sexual predators, societal myths that women are somehow purer and more sexually noble, and that just because you were assigned female at birth you somehow cannot commit a sexual offence are not bourn out by the facts. Indeed, it does more harm to the victims of female sexual abusers to suggest that women cannot commit such offences.

Yet, in the under reporting, under counting, and under highlighting of female sex offenders exclusionary feminists are able to point fingers straight at trans women and say they are sex offenders waiting to happen. By not acknowledging that sexual predation is a broad spectrum offence irrespective of sex or gender identity it cossets female sex offenders, makes it shocking when they are arrested and convicted, and makes it harder for victims to come forward.

The deep irony of the demonisation of trans women is that they are much more likely to be the victims of sexual violence than they are to commit it. Human Rights Campaign point out that 47% of trans people are sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime, which is double that for cisgender women. 20% of trans people in prison are sexually assaulted, with 17% of trans folk living in homeless shelters suffering sexual violence. When exclusionary feminists accuse trans women of being potential rapists, stalkers, and sexual abusers they ignore the lived reality of many trans people.

In ignoring the realities of sexual violence exclusionary feminism sets up a false paradigm that pits cisgendered women against trans folk in the hope that what ever rights have been hard won from the patriarchy can be kept close. Yes, there are trans women rapists who need to be accounted for, but those women make up a fraction of the female sexual predators in society. A 2021 US report by Canan et al highlighted that 63% of bisexual women, 49% of lesbians, and 35% of heterosexual women reported experiencing rape in their lifetimes, a horrific figure that shows that in demonising trans women from public spaces we are ignoring the far bigger crisis in women’s lives.

The attack on self-ID, trans women’s ability to access women’s only spaces, and to simply exist in society ignores the data surrounding cisgendered female sexual predators. By no means is this an attempt at creating more panic about sexual abuse; rather, this is an attempt at highlighting that the whole argument about trans women is build on myths and lack of empirical evidence. Exclusionary feminists do not appear interested in facts, they would rather rely on gut feeling and personal fears. Female sex offenders are able to exist in the shadows because we make assumptions about women, they commit their crimes knowing they are less likely to get caught, their victims are less likely to believed, and they are less likely to be convicted and sentenced to prison. This is why there is an urgent need to cut down exclusionary feminist arguments, to get better data, and to stop treating trans women as sexual offenders waiting to happen.

Sources:

‘Depraved’ mum admits raping two children to ‘satisfy urges’ (2019) — https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/10/depraved-mum-admits-raping-two-children-satisfy-urges-10549765/

Differences in Lesbian, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Women’s Experiences of Sexual Assault and Rape in a National U.S. Sample (2021) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31347442/

It took female MPs from both parties to change Starmer’s stance on gender politics (2023) — https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/13/keir-starmer-gender-politics-labour

Sexual Assault and the LGBTQ Community (2023) — https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-community

Sexual Assaults Reported in Prisons: Exploratory Findings from Analysis of Incident Descriptions (2018) — https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/737991/sexual-assaults-reported-prisons-exploratory-findings.pdf

Sexual Violence Inside Prisons: Rates of Victimization (2006) — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2438589/

The Proportion of Sexual Offenders Who Are Female Is Higher Than Thought: A Meta-Analysis (2016) — http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0093854816658923

Up to 64,000 women in UK ‘are child-sex offenders’ — https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/oct/04/uk-female-child-sex-offenders

Women and Equalities Committee: Reform of the Gender Recognition Act Evidence submitted by Dr Michael Biggs, November 2020 — https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/16943/default/

Women and The Criminal Justice System (2021) — https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2021/women-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2021

Women Who Commit Sexual Offences (2023) — https://www.lucyfaithfull.org.uk/our-research.htm#Women%20offenders