Being trans isn’t a mental illness, so mentally ill people can’t be trans, and no predator would pretend to be trans so trans predators aren’t trans, and all trans people are being their authentic selves unless their authentic self is a rapist in which case they’re pretending.

It seems literally impossible for certain trans activists to grasp that not everything is about them. The only rape crisis centre in Edinburgh prior to the opening of Beira’s Place was run by a trans-identified man who publicly told potential service-users they would be ‘challenged on their bigotry’ if they didn’t agree he was a woman. Meanwhile a ‘non-binary’ man subsequently convicted of rape, and found by the sentencing judge to harbour serious hostility towards women, was permitted to access the centre’s services. Trans-identified men in Edinburgh were better served than women when it came to accessing support after rape or sexual assault. Beira’s Place, which I founded and fund in its entirety, gives women a choice. The female-led, female-centred model of support is provably preferred by most female survivors. We know for a fact that some of our service-users didn’t seek help before we opened, because they didn’t want a male providing their therapy, or for men to be accessing what they needed to feel was a completely safe space. However, if a woman was happy with a male support worker, or with males also using the service, she could of course choose the alternative rape crisis centre. Some men, trans-identified and not, disagree that even the most vulnerable and traumatised women should be allowed to exclude men from rape crisis centres, yet many women see a male-free space and service as the last or only chance of putting their lives back together. It takes immense courage even to pick up the phone to access help after rape. Yet, even at their worst moment, these women told by activists like Willoughby that their priority should be centering his feelings, pandering to his ‘identity’ and pretending that they don’t recognise his narcissism and aggression as a quintessentially male response to not being given what he wants, by women. The simple truth is that no decent male, however they identify, would ever seek to breach the boundaries of women whose sense of self and safety has been shattered by their experience of male violence or rape. 98% of sexual predators are male. 88% of sexual crime victims are female. Beira’s Place exists because I saw an unmet need and the fact that we’ve been so busy since we’ve opened proves, not that women hate trans-identified men, but that this is where women feel safe enough to deal with trauma they might otherwise have had to carry with them forever.