Over the last couple of weeks, anti-trans activists have been targeting and bullying the women who work in various rape crisis centres. The Survivors’ Network, the rape crisis centre for Sussex, is having none of it.

predatory men are already able to enact their abuse with few repercussions, including entering changing rooms and public toilets – they do not need to pretend to be part of a marginalised community to break the law and to violate women, and suggesting that they would do so is entirely unsubstantiated.

There is no safe or survivor-centred way to police the anatomy of someone accessing a service or using a bathroom/changing room. This will impact on gender non-conforming cisgender people, particularly cisgender women, as well as transgender people. Policing gender expression and defining someone’s womanhood by her conformity to state-sponsored specifications is an archaic practice that should not be considered in 2020 and is certainly not a feminist principle or one that will protect vulnerable women.