Martin O’Neill

Trans-identified men in Edinburgh are fortunate enough to be welcome at the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, which was headed for a while by a trans-identified man who believed, and said publicly, that women who wanted a female-only service were bigots. That same rape centre admitted a male as a client because he called himself non-binary. The man was subsequently convicted for rape. Beira’s Place was set up by me to provide women in Edinburgh and the Lothians with the female-only service they were being denied. Internal emails between ERRC staff were revealed during an unrelated court case, which showed them to be angry and dismayed that there was now an alternative service for women. One might have thought, reading those emails, that ERRC staff’s priority was the ideological conversion of rape survivors rather than the provision of a service that traumatised women required to feel safe after rape. Beira’s Place has been exceptionally busy since it opened. We’ve taken on more staff and are currently looking for larger premises. We’ve helped women who’ve admitted that they didn’t want to use the alternative rape centre because of its very loud and public ‘trans women are women’ stance. We are also open to any and all trans-identified women who need support after rape. In short, you’ll be relieved to hear that the trans-identified men for whom you feel such empathy and compassion aren’t losing out. It was biological women who were being shamed for their entirely legitimate desire for a male-free space. Apparently you’d have preferred that situation to continue, but I think you’ll find that most people, whether male or female, will see that as evidence of your cruelty, not mine.

Possibly, as Minister for Health, James Murray could compel the adult gender clinics to hand over the data they refused to give to Cass. We might then find out just how much benefit these interventions confer long term, without needing to perform experiments on children too young to give meaningful consent. Read the testimony of the ever-expanding numbers of detransitioners. Grasp that these young people, many of them extremely vulnerable - autistic, care-experienced, abuse survivors, same-sex attracted in unsupportive families - have been irreparably harmed, left with their fertility destroyed, unending medical complications and profound psychological damage. This is a medical scandal of epic proportions and people of power and influence are still too frightened of trans activists and trans lobby groups to do the right thing and put an end to the insanity. Kids are being sacrificed to ideology and cowardice.