My attention is captivated every day by news stories that expose crimes of depravity, just like many other people. Here’s an example: This one is from the New York Times, just over a month ago. She killed two women. A Third Woman is Dismembered by She, At Age 83.
This is not something that you should read daily. It’s not something you read every day about a female killer. At the very least, it was something I’d never seen before about a female serial killer who used to dismember her victims.
Continue reading to learn more about Ms Harvey Marcelin’s criminal past. She had killed her then-girlfriend in 1963, and, one year later, she stabbed another woman with whom she was living.
Remarkably, Marcelin was freed again on parole in 2019 … and earlier this month was charged with yet another murder of a woman, 68-year-old Susan Leyden.
Harvey Marcelin was granted parole and released in 2019. He was also charged earlier this month with another murder.
According to the New York Times, Ms Marcelin was previously listed as a male court record, but is now identified as a female law enforcement official.
Brooklyn police found dismembered parts of Ms Leyden in a shopping cart and — Exhibit A — ‘her head inside Ms Marcelin’s home’.
In reports from parole hearings in the past, Marcelin acknowledged that she had ‘problems dealing with women’. She has not had as many problems as her female counterparts.
It’s a terrible feeling
It is only a ‘her’. Well, no. Officially, not at the time of two first murders. One sentence in the sensational report clarified: “Ms Marcelin was previously listed as male but is now identified as a women, according to law enforcement officials.”
So, on the basis of that recent ‘self-identification’, this now enters the records of the police as the work of a prodigously violent female serial killer.
This might seem very American. I am referring to the fact that you are able to’reinvent yourself’ in this country more than in any other.
But the same thing is happening in the UK (though not yet with such a grotesque crime) — and in a way that exasperates many campaigners for women’s rights.
What especially concerns them is how sexual assaults on women — including rape — by male-bodied people self-identifying as female are officially registered as crimes ‘by women’.
Sir Bernard Jenkin, Conservative MP, raised this issue during Parliamentary debate about International Women’s Day. Anne Jenkin, Anne’s wife and longstanding advocate for more women’s participation in politics (who founded Women2Win).
Sir Bernard said to MPs, “Nearly all violence towards women is committed against men. But there is an emerging category of violence against females committed by those who claim they are women, but are biologically masculine.”
Sir Bernard Jenkin brought up the subject in Parliament
‘We should always respond positively to people with genuine gender dysphoria, and I deliver this speech with kindness in my heart, but the Sexual Offences Act 2003 defines rape as when a person ‘intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person … with his penis without consent’.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, more than 436 cases were reported by women between 2012-2018. Penis is a male organ so men can commit rapes by presenting themselves to women.
The same point was made with characteristic force by J.K. Rowling last December, after Police Scotland — following the SNP administration’s decision to remove the requirement for medical checks before people obtain a ‘gender recognition certificate’ — declared: ‘The sex/gender identification of individuals who come into contact with the police will be based on how they present or how they declare, which is consistent with [our] values.’
Harry Potter author Harry Potter tweeted, echoing George Orwell’s “newspeak”, 1984: “War is Peace.” Freedom is slavery. Innocence is strength. A woman is the one who raped you.
J.K. Rowling also made this point in a Twitter post.
This is why, aside from the linguistic confusion. Kate Coleman, of Keep Prisons Single Sex campaigns points out that’male crime and gender crimes are concealed in statistics and data files for women. This is a serious problem for both the accuracy and planning of services.
Example: Karen White (born Stephen Wood) was sent to New Hall, a Yorkshire women’s prison for allegedly arranging her services. She had previously been convicted of multiple rapes.
Outcry
The male-bodied Karen White abused four others inmates over three months. Only this and the subsequent outcry forced the prison system to apologize and White was moved to Leeds to be in a male prison.
Official statistics showed that although transgender male inmates account for about 1% of female prison population, they were responsible to 5.6% of sexual assaults on women’s prisons.
So, numerically, the problem is very small: but, proportionately, it is an obvious — and highly predictable — anomaly.
A court in 2018 heard that Karen White, the ‘Predator’ used a “transgender persona” to assault vulnerable women. Pictured (left) in 2018 while serving time in a woman’s prison, and (right) in 2016, before arrest
It’s one thing to talk about ‘rapes by women with penises’ — thus defying the reality of biological sex — quite another to deny that it happens. This is what the NHS is doing, at least if Emma Nicholson, former Liberal Democrat MP Emma Nicholson is right.
Last week, in a Lords debate on single-sex hospitals, she presented a case where a transgender male had raped and abused a female on the same ward. The hospital originally denied this because there was no man.
Nicholson claims that CCTV later revealed that what the hospital claimed was impossible actually happened. The NHS accepted the claim, and police are planning a criminal prosecution.
Last week, Baroness Nicholson spoke out at a Lords debate about a case where a transgender man of male-bodied had raped another woman in the same hospital ward
Last summer, Nicholson wrote a piece for the Mail — this newspaper has long campaigned on the need for single-sex wards — protesting that ‘without consultation, NHS Trusts across the country have issued guidance saying patients should be accommodated based on the gender they say they identify with.
‘As a result, a biological male who is ‘physically intact’ — that is, who possesses a penis — has the right to choose to be accommodated on a female ward and to use women’s lavatories and facilities.’
After objecting, she claimed that “some nurses had lost their jobs”.
Realisticism
To make it more clear, I’ve come up with a compromise solution that will work for both prisons and hospitals. Post-operative transgender women — that is, minus the dangly bits — should be allocated to female wards/prisons; but those who are still in possession of a penis should be restricted to male facilities.
This would allow people to be recognized for their great suffering and reassign themselves to their true gender. It also acknowledges the fears of women regarding their sexual privacy and safety from men-bodied persons in their intimate environments.
Also, I’d like to see more realistic reporting on crimes to prevent women from suddenly becoming more violently assaulted or sexually obscene.
In her book Material Girls, Professor Kathleen Stock also supports this argument. This was the reason she was forced out of her Sussex University academic position for her ‘transphobia.
In the wake of her book Material Girls, Kathleen Stock was subject to abuse by trans rights activists at University of Sussex. Feminist movements to secure safe spaces for females only
She observed: ‘In a context where men — understood as adult human males — are responsible for nearly three times as many violent assaults as women, headlines such as ‘Gang of women repeatedly stamp on man’s head’ (Daily Mirror, June 26, 2018), ‘Sheffield woman found with over 1,000 indecent images of children hauled before the court’ (Daily Star, July 19, 2019), and ‘Woman who bragged about being a paedophile approached boys at Remembrance event’ (Wales Online, May 15, 2020) seem to demonstrate a flagrant disregard for women’s interests.’
All these headlines focused on male-bodied criminals who identified themselves as female.
As Professor Stock said when I raised this with her, in the light of the grotesque case of Harvey Marcelin: ‘I think these crimes were male crimes, and I don’t see any problem with reporting them that way — and if females were committing them, that would be worth reporting too, of course.’
This doesn’t mean that transgender individuals shouldn’t be treated with respect. That respect is something I strongly feel for someone I knew who was Don and now Deirdre. But we have to describe the world as it is — and that includes biology.