So this is worrying: a man in the UK has just been convicted of fraud for not telling a woman he was having sex with that he was trans: Three years probation and 240 days of community service for non-disclosure with an intimate partner. Unbelievable.
And while he did also say he was 16 in order to have sex with a 15 year old – when in fact he is 22 but looks younger, as trans men often do – that is not the offense he was charged with. I don’t think anyone in the trans community would be upset if that were the case. But no, his charge was “obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud”:
Setting the sentence, judge Lord Bannatyne said he recognized Wilson did not ‘dress’ as a man in order to commit offences, but always dressed that way.
Lord Bannatyne also said Wilson never set out to deliberately harm his ‘victims’ and he would review whether Wilson had broken the terms of his probation order in April 2014.
He added: ‘These are very unusual offences. I have accepted that you genuinely feel that you are male rather than female.
‘I believe this obviously significantly reduces your culpability. I believe that this can be dealt with by the imposition of a probation order.’
That is, he didn’t get put on a list of sex offenders for life, but only for 3 years due to these “unusual offences”.
Imagine if we convicted people who didn’t admit that they were married before sex. Or if they said they had more money than they did, or a different job. Imagine.
But with trans people, the culture of discrimination allows for this prejudiced and bullshit treatment.
In the meantime: what is the punishment for an adult who lies to a minor in order to have sex? To me that’s both fraud and statutory rape, right? But I don’t know what the laws are in the UK, so someone, please fill me in.