Disability, Same-Sex Carers, and Safe Spaces

I enjoy Quentin Tarantino films but watch them from behind a pillow.  I’m squeamish about the violence but his films don’t unsettle me with one exception, Kill Bill: Volume 1. There’s one scene where the heroine, Beatrix Kiddo, wakes from a coma and realises that while she has been prone and vulnerable she has been raped and prostituted by a male nurse who has access to her room.  I’m disturbed by this scene because it makes me realise that we women are more vulnerable than we like to think.  Women’s access to same-sex spaces and same-sex care givers goes a considerable distance to preventing abusive situations arising but insisting on these accommodations is becoming increasingly fraught and viewed, by some, as unreasonable.  An example of this tension became apparent when  two disabled women, Rosaleen McDonagh and Henrietta Freeman, recently disagreed about whether trans people should have the right to use disabled toilets.

In an Irish Times article, McDonagh, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, wrote that trans and non-binary people are welcome in her accessible bathroom, stating, “[the] trans and non-binary community are welcome in my accessible bathroom.” Henrietta Freeman, a disabled woman and activist for the rights of disabled people in the United Kingdom,  disagrees. Freeman believes that since disabled people fought tooth and nail to acquire these specifically designed toilets, they should not give away access to them so easily. In response Freeman, tweeted “disabled toilets (let’s call it that, not ‘accessible’) are for disabled people. I know disabled people who no longer go out because the loo is being used as a solution. I don’t understand why some disabled people approve of it? Apart from forced teaming.”

Freeman has gone on to outline an additional concern she has about broadening access to disabled toilets, commenting that “another safety concern with disabled toilets is that many of them are only accessed with a Radar Key. The door is opened by a radar key and it has a lock on the door, however, someone else can use their radar key to access the toilet whilst another person is inside. Most of the time this is just an embarrassment for the person opening the door on someone, but this has more serious implications: someone who is a predator and feels they do not belong in the toilet of their sex are now being directed to use the disabled toilet, they now have access to a vulnerable person who may not be able to defend themselves.”

Henrietta Freeman has grounds to be concerned.  Women with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to male violence. The United Nations reported that an Australian study found as many as sixty-two percent of women with disabilities under the age of fifty had experienced violence since the age of fifteen, and women with disabilities had experienced sexual violence at three times the rate of those without disabilities.  The same report highlighted that “children with disabilities are almost four times more likely to become victims of violence than children without disabilities, and nearly three times more likely to be subjected to sexual violence, with girls at the greatest risk. In a study by the African Child Policy Forum of violence against children with disabilities, nearly every young person interviewed had been sexually abused at least once – and most more than once.”

A perhaps more pressing but related issue is the right of disabled people to have access to same-sex carers. Freeman, who is paralysed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair, has explained why she believes women must have the option to choose same sex carers. Using her own life as an example, Freeman writes “in the morning I have my ventilator taken off and am repositioned in bed. I have my drugs given through my PEG tube by my carer (normally Mum as I want someone I know, but sometimes my carer duty is done by agency carers who can nowadays be men). My drugs leave me zombied so you can imagine as someone who’s paralysed from the chest down with upper body weakness, I’m pretty vulnerable. If a carer was to be a predatory man, there’s his chance to take full advantage. Carers let themselves into my house whilst I’m in bed. I have short-term memory issues, so if something were to happen I won’t remember until a few days after. Say a man sexually assaulted me or raped me, I wouldn’t know until heaven forbid, I ended up pregnant or unwell. (This has happened to women. It’s not a moral panic.) Then it’s the washing – I’ll never get used it to after years of intimate care and knowing I’ll need it forever. You never get used to someone else washing your intimate areas. It’s the bit which really reminds me of my disability. Whilst I’m not embarrassed, put yourself in that situation.”

Henrietta Freeman is correct, this is not a moral panic.  Trans rights activists deliberately use this language to undermine her legitimate concerns. The word ‘moral’ implies something akin to religious intolerance and the use of the word ‘panic’ suggests hysteria. There is nothing intolerant or hysterical in women insisting that the person who bathes them, touches their genital area or dresses them is female.  It is willful ignorance to believe that granting a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) has no impact on male patterns of offending. Recent census figures were extrapolated to reveal that one in every 585 trans women in England and Wales are convicted sex offenders, compared to one in every 2750 men and one in every 243,000 women. Two of the three trans identified males granted a GRC currently held in the women’s wing of Limerick jail  in Ireland have convictions for violent and sexual crimes. This includes the rape of a child.  This should serve as a reminder to everyone concerned with safeguarding that predatory males will do anything – they will join the priesthood, train as swimming coaches, become leaders in the Scouts, and identify as women – in order to gain access to their targeted prey.

The movie Kill Bill does have a happy ending, of sorts.  Our heroine, Beatrix Kiddo, avenges the great wrongs done to her and is reunited with her young daughter.  In one final scene, overwhelmed by her experiences, she retreats to the bathroom and weeps unobserved. The bathroom, whether public or private, is often a place of refuge.  It is not unkind, or unsympathetic, to insist that it remain a place of safety, a place where dignity and privacy of females, disabled or not, is easier to ensure.