You might think that in our post-#MeToo age, forcing women to strip naked in front of men in positions of authority would be unthinkable. Yet in the latest case of trans ideology trumping women’s safety, the British Transport Police (BTP) has decided it’s fine for a male officer to strip-search women.
Last week, the Telegraph reported that a policeman who identifies as a woman could be allowed to carry out strip searches and intimate searches on women, so long as he has a gender-recognition certificate. A female suspect could be asked to remove her clothes and be given a rigorous physical examination by an officer who is, to all intents and purposes, a biological male.
It is worth noting that, in the UK, a gender-recognition certificate is available to any adult who has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and who has been presenting as their new gender for at least two years. There is no requirement to have received any kind of hormone treatment or reassignment surgery.
BTP could actually face legal action over this new guidance, on the grounds that it potentially breaches women’s human rights, under which women have the right to only be searched by someone of the same sex. On Sunday, Maya Forstater, chief executive of Sex Matters, wrote a pre-action letter to BTP chief constable Lucy D’Orsi. In her letter, Forstater called the guidance ‘state-sponsored sex discrimination and sexual abuse’ and highlighted the grim possibility that some officers might use this as an excuse to abuse women. ‘Abuse of position for sexual purposes is the largest area of corruption that the Independent Office of Police Complaints deal with’, she wrote. Indeed, in the past few years there have been several horrific and highly publicised cases of police officers using their badges in order to gain the trust of victims – like serial rapist and former Met Police officer David Carrick. This new loophole around strip searches would put women at needless risk.
In January, the National Police Chiefs Council issued similar guidance to the BTP’s, saying it would be acceptable for a biologically male, trans-identifying officer to strip-search women. But it quickly withdrew the guidance after facing a backlash from women’s rights campaigners and the then Conservative government.
BTP shows no signs of backing down, however. In a statement, a spokesman reiterated that ‘an officer may only search as the sex indicated on their birth certificate or listed on their gender-recognition certificate, whichever is more recent’. That a man may have a certificate purporting to show he is a woman will be cold comfort to any woman on the receiving end of a strip search. Having been led to believe she would be examined by another woman, she will then suffer the humiliating shock of coming face-to-face with a man.
Let’s be clear, male officers should have no business strip-searching female suspects, no matter how they identify or what certificate they may possess. We are stripping women of their dignity in order to flatter men’s delusions.
Lauren Smith is a staff writer at spiked.
To enquire about republishing spiked’s content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.
