Julie Bindel: “This link between men who push the trans extremist demand for access to female-only facilities, and child sexual abuse and exploitation is a clear one.”

“Rowling seems to imagine a world in which trans women are privileged predators working with a compliant police force to assault innocent cis women. In fact, trans women are a small, marginalized, vulnerable minority, who face terrifying rates of sexual violence from the police who are supposed to help them,” wrote Noah Berlatsky in a piece in The Onion, SORRY The Independent, headlined, ‘JK Rowling keeps tweeting and we keep wondering why’.

Referring to Rowling’s tweet in which she pointed out the craziness of recording male rapists as female if they so identify, Berlatsky all but suggested she give up supporting and defending women who are raped and focus only on transwomen.

Berlatsky’s support for the Prostasia Foundation for which he is the communications director, has been pointed out on several occasions, and yet he seems to be considered as a voice of authority, at least by the now-comic Independent comment section, on issues of abuse and oppression. Prostasia uses the well-dodgy term ‘minor attracted persons’ or MAPs, which is a clear attempt to rebrand those who wish to have sex with children as a sexual identity or orientation on a par with same sex attraction.

Berlatsky argues that trans people are way more marginalised and vulnerable than are women and girls. He also thinks that child abusers are a ‘stigmatised group’. Some of his tweets on the topic are extremely concerning, such as, one from 2017, “Certain people get designated as deviant; people hate [paedophiles].”

Before I continue, I need to make it clear that I don’t use the term ‘paedophile’ to describe those that want to/have sex with children. I call them or they are – child abusers and child rapists. Using the term ‘paedophile’ medicalises what is in fact a crime and a heinous act of sadistic abuse. It can give the impression that there is a distinct group of people, entirely separate from those men that consume images of child abuse, or sexually assault their own children, and that it is somehow a ‘condition’ rather than straightforward child sexual abuse. So please excuse my slightly clunky terms to highlight exactly what Berlatsky and his cohorts are apologising for.

Noah Berlatsky wrote for The Independent’s “Voices” section

Prostasia bends over backwards to make it clear that they do not endorse adults actually having sex with children, but rather suggests that a desire to rape a minor is something that they have no control over and has just popped up out of nowhere. My suggestion of course is that such a desire is neither innate or biologically/genetically driven. These men, because they are almost always men, get sexual pleasure at the thought of causing pain and suffering to extremely vulnerable human beings, which can include children, but also, such as the case of Jimmy Savile, adult men, women and corpses. And that’s why I will call these men ‘child abusers’ whether or not they have directly harmed a child, because they are almost bound to be accessing child abuse images (misleadingly and offensively also termed ‘child porn’) which require a child to be abused for the image to exist.

In 2016 Berlatsky claimed that the biggest threat “child sex workers” face is from the police. In a piece in the New Republic he wrote, “Most domestic minors in the sex industry are not kidnapping victims. They’re children who have fallen out with their parents (often because they are gay or trans), or been forced from their homes, and who sell sex to survive. The biggest danger they face is not from organised gangs of predatory criminals, but from the police.”

So, Mrs Merton may well ask, ‘what first attracted men such as Berlatsky to the campaign to rid vulnerable women and girls of their rights to be safe from male violence?’

I can only conclude that Berlatsky believes that children can consent to being prostituted and that the sexual violation and exploitation of minors is not rape or violence. The real  threat to these children is that they are being bought, sold and abused by adult men on a regular basis. But Berlatsky is way more concerned about police that rock up to arrest the punters than he is the fact that the punters are raping kids for money. He also considers parents per se to be ‘tyrants’, tweeting; “Parent“ is an oppressive class, like rich people or white people,” he tweeted. “There are things you can do to try to minimise the abuse it’s endemic to the parent/child relationship, but it’s always there.”

So, Mrs Merton may well ask, ‘what first attracted men such as Berlatsky to the campaign to rid vulnerable women and girls of their rights to be safe from male violence?’

This link between men who push the trans extremist demand for access to female-only facilities such as changing rooms, refuges, hospital wards and prisons, and child sexual abuse and exploitation is a clear one: they believe that men should be allowed sexual access to whoever, whenever, without challenge.

Well, hard luck Berlatsky and his merry band of beards. Feminism was invented to stand up to this type of bullshit. His attacks on Rowling are disgraceful, bearing in mind she is a defender of human rights, and a fine advocate for children’s independence and personal strength. Berlatsky is nothing short of a misogynist who supports the defenders of child abuse way more than he does women. Which one is on the ‘right side of history’ do you reckon?

Julie Bindel is a journalist, author and feminist campaigner. She came out as a lesbian in 1977 aged 15 and has never looked back. Her latest book Feminism for Women: The real route to liberation is out now and published by Hachette.