Badgey McBadgerson

Jo Bartosch writes:

If there’s one thing predators are good at, it’s spotting soft targets. Thanks to Dr Ronx Ikharia, this could soon be easier than ever. Ikharia – a BBC children’s presenter and NHS emergency medic who identifies as ‘trans nonbinary’ – has launched a new scheme called ‘Safe With Me’. It involves distributing large yellow badges, which signal that the wearer is available to escort ‘trans+ people’ to ‘their preferred facilities’. In other words, it is to help men in frocks breach the law on single-sex spaces.

The first thing that occurs to me is not even the “but women” bit, it’s the glaringly obvious fact that someone saying or signaling something does not make it true. What’s to stop men who like a little recreational violence getting one of those nice large badges and slapping it on? What if the wearer turns out to be available not to ‘escort trans+ people’ to ‘their preferred facilities’ but to kick the shit out of them? It seems like a wildly fatuous campaign in its own terms.

But the second thing of course is the usual “yes but what about the safety of women who don’t want your huge male friend in their toilets?” So what about that, eh?

It’s no surprise Ikharia seems to have overlooked the risks here. She has the monomaniacal focus of a true believer. Not only did she have her own breasts amputated to align with her ‘trans nonbinary’ identity – she has also used her position as a children’s TV presenter to promote harmful interventions to confused young people. In one BBC Three clip, she hands out a new breast binder to a girl whose previous use of one had displaced her ribs.

Here, kid, make your ribs even worse.

Ikharia’s badges are a petulant response to the recent UK Supreme Court ruling that the word ‘sex’ in the Equality Act refers to biological reality, not identity. This legal clarity has caused a moral panic among activists. As Ikharia told the local press: ‘The ruling means trans+ people may be forced into spaces where they don’t feel safe… Toilets are one of the most dangerous of these spaces.’

Now think about women in those spaces when a man comes in.

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