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Interesting news this week of the case of Gemma Barker, a young woman who posed as a young man in order to form sexual relationships with two of her friends. The reporting has obviously focused on the sensationalist aspect of the cross-dressing, but from what I can glean, it seems that the two victims gave willing consent to sexual contact with the male alter-egos ‘Aaron’ and ‘Connor’ but that they would not have given such consent had they known that the person they were with was actually a woman. Barker pleaded guilty to sexual assault on both victims, and received a pretty harsh 30 month sentence (bear in mind that two men who raped an eleven year old recently got only 40 months).
There is no suggestion that Barker is transgendered, as far as I can tell, this is a simple case of deceit. Although it raises the far more serious question of whether proceedings could be taken against someone who IS transgendered. I’ll leave this aspect of it to someone who knows more than I do, but I would be concerned that this opens the door to prosecutions of trans* people who don’t fancy going into their medical history on a first date, and legitimises in law the transphobic notion of a ‘trap.’
But that aside, this case is interesting because it shows that the police and courts are capable of understanding conditional consent, usually scathingly dismissed as ‘regret sex’ or similar derogatory terms. I don’t think there was such a consensus when it came to Assange and his condom, for example, which raises broadly similar issues – consent is given but only with a condom; a subsequent alleged decision that consent is consent is consent, never mind the details, is actually assault.
And what about Mark Kennedy et al, the men who had sexual relationships with activists for up to nine years by virtue of pretending to be activists. The women in that case are suing the police in a civil action, arguing that they would not have given consent to sex had they known that their partners were in fact undercover police officers.
Oddly, the police don’t seem too keen to investigate that one. If the principle from Barker’s case is applied, they should be arresting their own officers for rape.
In theory of course, this could extend ad absurdam; false profiles on match.com, or married men who claim to be single. It’s uncomfortably medieval to think that the law would be involved in adultery cases.
But absurdity aside, it does seem that there is a distinct double standard at play. On the one hand, a young woman with diagnosed ASD and ADHD is given 30 months for minimal sexual activity with friends (bad though it no doubt was for the victims to discover they’d been duped), and on the other, police infiltrators maintaining false identities for nine years, not because they were attracted to the women they deceived but to betray them, with the tacit approval of the police force rather than threat of arrest.
How can you you excuse the actions of a paedophile? you try to somehow make this out to be a male double standard by comparing the actions of two legally consenting adults in a police operation to this?
Shame on you.
How can you say she is a paedophile when she was only 2 years older than the victims? I was wrong and bizarre and I feel sorry not the girls – but she wasn’t a paedophile…
I don’t think she is defending a pedophile at all…. after watching the documentary it became very clear to me that at least one of the victims was a complete idiot.
Also when Jessica Sayers said “He pulled my shorts and pants off, and took off my leotard, he then proceeded to have oral sex with me, but the whole time I was telling him to stop”
If your clothes just happen to slip off…. you aren’t saying no.
If your legs remain open…. you aren’t saying no.
What this reporter is saying, is that these two “victims” were fully consensual to sex during their relationships with these “boys” and that all of a sudden, now they’ve found out it was actually a girl, they’re crying rape.
Whether or not that girl was happy to take her clothes off when laying in bed with someone she had been dating from November to May time, as stated in the doc, has no bearing on her right to say no at any stage of intimacy. And when at the stage of wearing very little, it is not difficult to conceive of someone continuingto be forceful to that end. No means no, no matter how consensual things may have been or seemed up until that point.
Conversely. If it had been a man, pretending to be a woman in order to have ‘gay’ relationships with a woman, how does that phase in your ‘crying rape’ scenario?
I gather there’s been a documentary out since the time I published this post. I haven’t seen the documentary, this was written from news reports back in March. As I said in the very first paragraph, it seems that the two victims gave willing consent to sexual contact with the male alter-egos ‘Aaron’ and ‘Connor’ but that they would not have given such consent had they known that the person they were with was actually a woman.
If that’s not the case and they did not in fact give consent then that is undoubtedly assault. Everyone has the right to say no, whether they’re halfway through oral sex or not, and I would never accuse anybody of “crying rape.”
The point stands though: at least some of the sexual activity was reported as being consensual. If consent is nullified by fraud, then the fraudulent sexual activity of the police officer deserves just as much of a thorough investigation, as it would likewise no longer be consenting.
The two girls only reported their ‘boyfriend’ when they thought he’d been cheating on them. Their belief that she was a boy is nonsensical. I know a few FTMs who bind, pack and take hormones, and still occasionally get mistaken for females. Yet ‘Aaron’ managed to fool them by wearing a hat and a baggy hoodie?
No means no, and if assault took place then Gemma needs chastisement.
But as pointed out, if two genuine paedophiles, who rape an 11 year old girl, get just ten months longer than a female who allegedly sexually assaulted two girls just 2 years younger than herself, then you need to consider if transphobia is at play here, regardless of whether the girl herself is trans.
Transphobia or just old fashioned homophobia – “ewww they turned out to be someone of the same gender” sort of reasoning.
The most distressing aspect of this case for me is the fact that Gemma Barker was diagnosed (albeit by the court psychologist) as being on the autistic spectrum. I’ve just been dealing with my girlfriend’s sister who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s at the age of 30 – a diagnosis instigated by my partner who’s been concerned for years and whose parents have repeatedly denied a problem and put her lack of friends, sexual experiences and acceptance of adulthood down to being “a bit slow to develop”. The similarities between her and Gemma in terms of behaviour in many areas are striking. Female Asperger’s sufferers often slip below the radar because their obsessive behaviour is just put down to being a teenage girl and the whole fact of wanting to give these friends of hers “the perfect boyfriend” is very similar to the mimicry that arises in a need to conform that Aspergers causes. Except that one of the main facts of autism is a lack of empathy and understanding of how ones behaviour affects others. I can see how Gemma could have become obsessed with wanting to be friends with these girls by providing them with perfect mates but couldn’t grasp the consequences of her deceit. Whilst the sexual aspects of the case bring up important questions, I don’t think she was targeting younger girls deliberately and the sexual acts seemed to be fairly consistent with teenage fumblings. Perhaps she was gay but couldn’t grasp the reality of what that meant? The judge kept mentioning her cruelty and lack of empathy. I say the length of sentence shows a disturbing double standard. Of course I have no proof of her psychiatric state other than the press reports but her mental capacity seems to have been pushed aside in favour of this issue of consent and a revolting preoccupation with girl-on-girl paedophilia by the gutter press. On the matter of consent, I can’t help seeing homophobia and transphobia stamped all over the case.
Lamb, Gemma does NOT meet the paedo criteria, interested in pre pubescent kids at at least 5yrs younger. Gender identity issues are very common in asd girls.
And her disabilities would probably mean that her mental age was much less than the younger girls she dated.