"Sarah," a female rape victim in the U.K. voiced out her concerns after Survivors' Network, a rape crisis center in East Sussex, England, allowed a transgender woman who physically still looked like a man to attend group sessions. "Sarah" lamented to the support group's leaders that while she supports trans people's rights, she felt uncomfortable with a presence of a man in a rape support group that used to exclusively host women.
"Sarah" described the transgender woman as being "over six feet tall, had a deep voice, wore casual trousers and a sweatshirt and had no obvious female attributes," the Daily Mail reported. The female rape victim added that she had "no idea why" the transgender woman was there, adding that "My paranoid side makes me think they were there for voyeuristic reasons. My rational side thinks they were probably there because they need help."
"Sarah" recounted how she felt more comfortable attending sessions without the transgender woman, because the biological women in the group were able to freely express their thoughts and feelings and share their stories of rape and sexual abuse. The female rape victim recounted how some of the participants in the support group "had been abused as children so obviously we had that shared experience of being a girl and abused by a man."
She added that they "talked a lot about male entitlement, about how men feel entitled to women's bodies. Quite often we just said how we didn't trust men and it felt like a safe space to say that."
Born male but identifies as a woman
The Blaze reported that the level of comfort changed when the transgender woman started appearing in the support group without sharing any personal stories of sexual abuse. "Sarah" admitted that since the transgender woman's appearance, the group made it a point "not to talk about male entitlement any more or our shared experiences, but about making sure this person who was born male felt comfortable."
"Sarah" alleged, "No matter how much a man says they're a woman, they're still born male." The female rape victim expressed concerns that more women will be subjected to lesser safe spaces to deal with their experiences of abuse in the hands of biological males.
"Sarah" also called out how these woke support groups are "now taking to please trans activists." She said she spoke out because she had a daughter and that she would not want her to experience what she had experienced with the woke support group's openness to transgender members.
The woke support group however, issued a statement defending the transgender woman, saying that they do not "police gender" and do not "define who is and is not a woman." Describing themselves as a "feminist organization," Survivors' Network went on to say that the biological male who identifies as a woman had every right to be at the rape support group because "Survivors of trauma and sexual violence, irrespective of gender identity, need support, care, and belief."