Highlander says anti-trans news coverage surrounding Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif contributed to assault
A trans person in the Highlands says negative media coverage contributed to abuse he suffered earlier this year.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, was subject to verbal, physical and sexual abuse in the bar of a hotel he was staying at overnight.
He has previously had to deal with inappropriate questions and shouts as a result of his trans identity, but the latest incident took things a step further – and he suspects it was a result of headlines over the summer.
At the Olympic Games in Paris, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was the subject of a gender eligibility controversy, despite not being trans and receiving full backing from International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach.
Fifth-seed Khelif, who comes from a country where being transgender is illegal, would go on to win a gold medal amid a furore of criticism online – regarding which she has filed a criminal complaint in France for cyberbullying, naming the likes of JK Rowling and Elon Musk in the suit among others.
The media attention that went on to Khelif helped set the scene for the incident in the Highlands, according to the trans man speaking out.
“This one person just started shouting really offensive stuff at me and came over and started pawing at me and kissing me,” he recounted.
“He then asked me to go outside with him, and then started talking about the boxer at the Olympics that was in the news.
“I hadn’t said I was trans, I was just trying to laugh off what he was doing, and I was supposed to be staying there that night so I was just trying to safely get through it and hope he got kicked out.
“Everyone else just kind of ignored him and laughed it off. I don’t know if they thought he was just off on one, because they were treating me like a bloke.
“For me, I feel like this person would have been different to me if there hadn’t been so much in the news.
“The fact that he specifically wanted to talk to me about that boxer told me that. I still wasn’t saying I was trans, but I think there was a part of him that genuinely wanted me to answer his questions.
“I think there was a part of him that knew I was different and wanted to understand what I thought about this person on TV, and he was quite offensive in his way of asking about that.
“If that hadn’t been in the news, I think I would have been safer.”
There is always a question, though, of whether that is because there are more incidents, or whether confidence in reporting them has improved.
In this case, previous experience of going to the police for serious incidents dissuaded him from reporting it, as he did not see the benefit of going through the legal process.
“I had a doctors’ appointment the day after, and my GP asked me if I wanted to get in touch with the police, but I didn’t want to get anyone else involved,” he explained.
“It wasn’t an issue with the police, my head was just so full with trying to process someone’s hands being all over me.
“Re-living it felt like too much, and with the police you have to re-live things over and over and over again.
“The process was just too much and I didn’t really see the benefits of going to the police. The likelihood of the police doing anything, or the guy getting charged with anything felt so small.
“He was so drunk, is his behaviour really going to change? I just couldn’t see the benefits for me or for anyone else in going to the police.
“Individually, I’ve had interactions with a lot of nice officers over the years, but I’ve been involved with the police a few times about being assaulted in the past and I have had varying levels of experiences with them.
“On one occasion when I went to them for advice, the person took it massively out of my control and it snowballed, so I didn’t feel like I wanted to go back to them about this because I thought the same would happen again.”
While there may not be any legal recourse for what happened in the hotel that night, the effects of it have been layered and long-lasting.
“Each time these incidents happen it makes me feel far more visible than I like to be,” he added.
“I felt really vulnerable on each of those occasions. I think I had felt quite safe in my male identity, but the most recent incident really caught me off-guard.
“What is interesting to me is that I would never have gone to that hotel before I transitioned. It would be ridiculous, as a woman, to walk into a pub in a small town I don’t know at midnight and stay in a hotel.
“I don’t know any woman who would have done that, so the fact that I did it is because I felt a certain safety in the masculinity that people read in me.
“This is the first time that I’ve been assaulted as a trans person. I felt I would be safer if I was more masculine, and generally I have been, but I guess that highlighted the vulnerability that I still have.
“The other thing is that all of these incidents have really played into my own internalised transphobia and homophobia. The language he used was all of those really horrible things that I have already heard from society, and that I tell myself.
“I want to be more positive about myself, but it’s hard to have any confidence. These events destroy that feeling of safety and security in my identity.”
