Police Chief Labelled ‘Transphobic’ Over Biological Male Rapist Comments

A Police and Crime Commissioner has been officially reprimanded after speaking out about transgender rapists.

Lisa Townsend, the Conservative’s police and crime commissioner for Surrey, was ruled to have not been “dignified or respectful” by Surrey’s police and crime panel when supporting J.K. Rowling’s tweet that suggested transgender rapists are not female.

Crispin Blunt, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Reigate, as well as two other male complainees reported Townsend to the male-dominated panel, who ruled on International Women’s Day that Townsend had breached the code of conduct of her office, and reprimanded her.

Townsend upon hearing the verdict said that the panel “is saying you should not speak about this [transgender rapists], but if you do, we’ll police the language”, the Daily Mail reports.

The backlash on Townsend came after she engaged with a tweet from J.K. Rowling that called out a policy from Scottish police that allowed male rapists to identify as female, even if they have a penis.

“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman”, Rowling said in December 2021, in an effort to compare the Scottish police to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

Townsend responded to this by tweeting, “It’s not a ‘niche’ issue, it’s not ‘hysterical’ of women to be taking to the streets about it. We will not accept this gaslighting from men who keep telling us they are women, or from those who enable them. #IStandWithJKRowling”.

After being apparently offended by the communication Crispin Blunt MP — who is also the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on LGBT+ rights — complained to Surrey Council that Townsend’s “messaging propagates dangerous myths”.

Speaking in response to the panel Townsend said on Tuesday she was “disappointed that on this International Women’s Day Surrey’s Police and Crime Panel have found my tweet in support of a J.K. Rowling post about women who have been raped by ‘women’ with a penis, not to be ‘dignified or respectful’ and to explain myself to the [three] men who complained”.

“These three men who complained, and a panel full of men who investigated it, have decided they must police a woman’s language about an issue of great concern to many women… That is the issue of the safety and rights of women to go to female-only spaces such as domestic abuse shelters. I will not stop speaking out about these issues”, she later told the British paper.

The panel opted to rule against Townsend despite her highlighting in January that she was merely trying to “stand up for women” with her initial tweet as well as highlighting she does “support the right of trans men and women to live how they choose”.

The decision against Townsend came on the same day that Rowling accused the Labour Party of branding International Women’s Day as “We Who Must Not Be Named Day”, after Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, was repeatedly unable to define what a woman actually is.

However, Townsend’s treatment also appears to highlight that the Conservatives are also unwilling to stand up to the radical trans-lobby: Surrey Council is currently controlled by the Conservative Party.