Justice4Harvey (Part 2/2): The impact of the 377A law on male-on-male sexual assault, and how gender ideology messes it up
Part 2: The Criminal Convictions. A tragic story that of course deserves justice, but which is not helped by gender ideology confusing the narrative.
Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece. I am not a legal adviser, nor a lawyer of any sort. I admit that I may be misinformed on some facts, in which case, please feel free to correct me and I will update my post. I have done my due diligence on the facts of this case to the best of my limited abilities otherwise.
I will be using biology-based pronouns (male pronouns) to refer to Harvey throughout this piece. This is not to be unkind, but because female pronouns will continue to confuse the narrative on exactly WHY Harvey was unable to pursue a case against his rapist (male-on-male rape), as well as the reasoning for why biological males should not be placed in female prisons regardless of their gender identity and/or behavior.
I want Harvey to be safe. I also want women’s rights, and safety and dignity preserved.
Part 2: The Criminal Convictions
This is a continuation from [Part 1: The Civil Lawsuit], which explains the background for this case, especially what 377A (a Singaporean law that prosecutes male on male sex) had to do with it.
I will be pulling quotes from the following main sources:
[1] Harvey’s change.org petition (Archive)
[2] Harvey’s carrd.co campaign detailing the case (Archive)
A Broken Table
2020, Feb - While waiting to attend the trial for his civil suit, “Harvey had experienced a flashback caused by [his] condition of PTSD (which [he] had developed as a result of the rape and repeated molestation), and accidentally damaged a marble table. Harvey was arrested for this act, and is currently still being prosecuted by the Attorney-General's Chambers for Mischief.” [1]
I experienced a PTSD-induced flashback during which I had attempted to cause death to [REDACTED], (i.e. the man who raped me on Monday 24 February 2014 and then repeatedly molested me over one week), under the brief belief that he was physically present.
[…] If [REDACTED] had physically been in front of me on Monday 3 February 2020 in the physical environs of my flashback, his chair would have been flipped over, and he would indeed have been propelled down a flight of steps, hopefully to his death;
Harvey was advised to plead guilty of intentional destruction with regards to the damaged table in order to avoid incarceration (in a male prison, as Harvey is biologically male and Singapore does not recognize trans-identified men who have not had The Surgery as “women”). However, Harvey’s assertion is that the table had been accidentally destroyed, so the charges stayed.
2021, Mar - Harvey’s lawsuit is struck out due to 377A.
Suicide attempt and hospitalization
2021, Nov - Harvey attempts suicide in public. He is apprehended for an offense of Attempted Suicide. (Yes, it WAS a criminal offense to attempt suicide here. However, this is no longer the case as of 1 Jan 2020, and I do wish the officers in charge of the arrest had handled this situation better.)
Harvey was brought to the Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (NTFGH), but upon hearing that the doctors wanted to transfer him to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), the same hospital where he was previously sexually assaulted by another man in 2014, it triggered another episode.
[…] the doctors at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital decided to admit me to NTFGH itself rather than sending me to IMH, but I was placed on Saturday 6 November at [REDACTED] – which is a MALE ward. I consulted the doctor there at 4:00pm, and raised my issues to him, but he stated that I would have be warded at least until Monday 8th November 2021 (so that a psychiatrist could assess whether I am mentally fit for discharge), and the hospital's hands were tied in regard of placing me in a male ward, as unless my sex marker is updated in my NRIC (which is impossible because of the State's refusal to recognize non-operative transgender women), NTFGH cannot legally place me in any female ward.
Subsequently, I had to sneak out of [the ward], and then break out of the building by jumping over a security gate, in order to avoid remaining in the male ward until Monday or longer; there was no certainty as to my discharge on Monday either.
I was then sought by, and successfully evaded, police for 17 hours, before the police visually verified my physical safety, and then agreed to stop pursuing me to return to the NTFGH; although the hospital itself still needs to assess me before it can discharge me, but has no authority outside its premises.
Harvey’s trauma at being kept in a ward with members of the sex that violated him is understandable and upsetting. He was SO traumatized by his assault, and desperate not to be placed with other males at all, that he basically voided the psychiatrist assessment for his discharge. I do think the hospital should have perhaps allowed him a private ward of his own, for his security and safety.
But the solution should not be to place a male alongside females because he asked so. Harvey’s wish for other people to see him “as a woman” ends where women’s rights to their privacy and safety begins.
It matters not that Harvey was a victim of assault himself, or that he would have posed no danger to the women there, or even if he had no sexual interest in them. You could apply the same logic to Harvey’s situation: do you think someone like Harvey would have been okay staying on in that male ward, if he was told by the male nurses and patients, “oh, don’t worry, we’ve all suffered sexual assault before, we’re all heterosexual, castrated, AND we won’t hurt you! You’re perfectly safe with us.”
If you can understand why Harvey would still have the right to decline this hypothetical situation for his safety, then you should be able to understand why a woman saying “no” to Harvey in her space on the sole basis of his being male is valid. More so if the hypothetical situation had a woman who was just as traumatized by males as Harvey was, that even the mere presence of them (including Harvey) would cause an anxiety attack.
Women deserve to have their single-sexed, female-only spaces. Fullstop. Not what a piece of paperwork says, or whatever surgeries a male person has gotten. And this is my issue with Singapore’s law allowing trans-identified people to legally change their gender markers on their documents - it was quite literally the only thing that kept the female wards from having one male in their spaces on that day.
If Harvey had been legally allowed to be placed in the female wards because he had gotten his legal markers changed as a transwoman - despite still being biologically male, even with surgery, because humans can’t change sex - the women in the female wards would not have been able to speak out. Situations like these have already happened overseas in the UK, to the detriment and anger of many women who were not aware of this; the rules are currently being reviewed.
Doxxing and Terrorist Threats
2021, Nov - A few weeks after Harvey’s self-discharge from NTFGH, Harvey then publicly doxxed his assailant's home address on social media, called for him to be castrated, and then sent terrorist threats to the local police. He was predictably arrested for this.
The Assailant's home address, which he had disclosed to me during the week he had repeatedly molested me is [REDACTED]. I shall be very grateful to any vigilante who is willing to hunt down and castrate the rapist... I am aware vigilantism is uncommon here in Singapore, but I hope someone will step up!
He also wrote, directly tweeting the local police force for this: (archive)
Although I am not personally involved in or capable of such an action, I sincerely hope that terrorism will occur in Singapore targeted at the police, the Bedok Police Divisional HQ come to be levelled by such a terrorist act, and the pigs therein (especially [REDACTED]), are roasted in the burning building. May your porcine ghosts never find rest.
Like on the list of Things That Are Very Super Not Okay To Do Here, those two are at the top. I'm sorry that Harvey felt so let down by our justice system with regards to his rapist that he had to resort to this.
Harvey’s arrest resulted in him being strip-searched by three female officers, under the supervision of male officers. Again however, he is unfortunately triggered by the presence of other men during the entire ordeal:
As I vociferously and violently objected to being searched or even touched by male officers, I was considered to be quite emotionally unstable, and thus detained inside a padded-cell; wherein I experienced a few panic attacks and broke down.
Harvey is eventually released on bail, but not before this happens:
[...] I am grateful to [REDACTED] just insofar as she had agreed to correct the gender stated in the charge sheets, failing which I would have refused to sign or otherwise acknowledge the allegation of being male, and so would not have been able to give Cautioned Statements.
Here again we see yet another conflation between sex and gender, and again, why I stress on using biological pronouns for Harvey throughout this piece. Harvey IS biologically male whether he acknowledges it or not. He will STAY biologically male even if he has “gender affirmation surgery”. Male = the sex which body is structured around the production of small gametes i.e: sperm. Harvey being male is not an “allegation”. It is the truth, and there is nothing wrong with it. If you understand why a “cis female” cannot identify as a transwoman, and that therefore only “Assigned at Birth” males can be transwomen, then you understand why this statement is problematic.
You cannot say “well, male/female is also used to refer to gender” when it is simultaneously used to refer to biological sex. The two become confused for the other, and the words become meaningless.
Which leads me to:
#StopPuttingTransgenderWomenIntoMensPrison
Harvey is now asking that all current charges against him that would incarcerate him are dropped, because everything he did was due to the trauma of his male-on-male sexual assault in 2014 that was never brought to justice. [1]
Drop Criminal Charges against Traumatized Transgender Survivor of Multiple Sexual Assaults
Please sign the petition if you agree that I should not be put into a male prison and forced to detransition for longer than the sentence period itself, and in addition also be subjected therein to severe gendered violence and sexual humiliation.
[...] Please help to persuade the Attorney-General's Chambers to spare me from the fate worse than death's peaceful finality.
The criminal offenses Harvey committed (public property broken by accident, then intentional doxxing, and terrorist threats) are arguably not in the same scale of offenses such as murder and rape. And Harvey IS a victim of rape, and one where his rapist still walks free. He claims he did everything he did because of it.
But how did Harvey’s story go from "I want to press charges against the man that raped me, it's not fair that I can't simply because it was male-on-male assault that wasn't legally recognized" to "I'm a woman, therefore I shouldn't be in men’s prison!"
I'm truly sorry you were sexually assaulted, Harvey. I'm angry and enraged that the courts invoked 377A against you to prevent you from pursuing your justice, and that male-on-male rape was only officially recognized as a criminal offence too late after the fact. It is deeply upsetting that you attempted suicide and that the trauma from the event haunts you to this day, and I wish you healing.
I will support getting your rapist on trial and jailed for what he did to you. I will support you having a safe space away from other males if you had to go to prison, be it your own private ward or cell or to be around other males who have no history of assault.
BUT NOT BY PRETENDING THAT YOU ARE A WOMAN.
You are not a lesbian (a homosexual adult human female).
You are not a woman (an adult human female).
You are NOT FEMALE (the sex capable of producing large gametes i.e. eggs).
If you were FEMALE, 377A would never have applied to you in the first place. You were discriminated against solely because you ARE male!
Your petition [1] and campaign [2] both argue that the courts did not believe you because you didn't seem capable of making a solid argument. THIS SOLIDIFIES THAT BELIEF. You are HARMING and sabotaging your own cause by denying that you are male, not helping it.
Neither do I wish you to be forced to undergo a “sex change” surgery that is permanent and irreversible, but which above all still will not literally change your sex.
You experienced first hand how terrified you were having to deal with other males. You don't get to decide that because it affects you that badly that you can therefore make other women feel that way for your own comfort. There are women who have been traumatized by other males too and that includes ALL MALES, even trans-identified ones like yourself.
We cannot pick and choose our lived truths, Harvey. Truth is truth, no matter how much it hurts. It stays, even if it has been re-written or denied.
Further Reading:
4W: Fighting for The Rights of Our Vulnerable Sisters In Prison
Scotland: Female prison staff ‘uneasy’ about intimate searches of trans inmates
UK: NHS trans row as men get access to women's wards if they identify as female
UK: Women prisoners who call transgender inmates ‘he’ or ‘him’ face extra jail time
USA: CA Women’s Prisons Anticipate Pregnancy After Forcing Women To Be Housed With Men