Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

by Helen Joyce

Reporting restrictions in Ireland mean I cannot name the transwoman concerned – absurdly, since the case was widely reported before the restrictions, and the information is from official sources. So I will call this person Kandi, which captures some of the obsession with plastic femininity that clearly inspired the female name this transwoman chose. In 2020, Kandi was charged on two counts of sexual assault and four counts of threatening to murder women. Kandi’s history merits a good deal of compassion. But I am sorrier for the women who are Kandi’s targets, and I think that the fiction that this horrifyingly damaged male is a woman only causes further harm to everyone. Here, in brief, is Kandi’s life story. At the end of 2001 a male child was born to a woman with a sadistic and abusive partner. Straight away, the father started to abuse the child, too. As he grew older, the child was recruited to join in the abuse of his mother. Later psychiatric reports found that he identified with his father and had learned to be violent to order. His mother fled home with him when he was eight. Aged ten, he carried out a serious attack against her. In the years following, his behaviour became more violent and sexualised. Aged thirteen, he committed another serious assault on a woman. He was twice sentenced to young offenders’ institutions for violent crimes. At fifteen he said he was a girl. He was assessed at the Tavistock (Ireland has no paediatric gender clinic), where clinicians c...