JK Rowling called-out British Transport Police yesterday regarding their White Ribbon Day post about womens safety‚ which she found at-odds with their trans-inclusive search rules
The well-known author pointed to BTPs recently-approved policy (from sept 2024) that lets trans officers with special certificates do body-searches on women; this comes after other police groups stopped similar rules earlier this year
Cathy Larkman from Womens Rights Network — a former police boss — called this practice “state-sanctioned sexual assault“. Meanwhile the group Sex Matters is thinking about court action‚ saying its against womens basic rights:
- Goes against current laws about same-sex searches
- Doesnt consider womens comfort and safety
- Makes paperwork more important than real-life facts
BTP tried to fix things by saying that anyone can ask for a different officer to do the search (which they say helps calm-down tense situations). However the forceʼs policy still lets officers search people based on either birth papers or gender recognition papers — whichever is newer
The timing raised eyebrows because BTP posted about stopping violence against women‚ using the catch-phrase “it starts with men“. This post came right before their trans-search policy got more attention in news reports