A woman has been fined for grabbing a transgender man’s genitals after asking about his gender.
A 53-year-old woman named Karen Waldron was convicted of sexual assault after she groped a trans man at Yates Cheltenham, a sports bar in southwest England, on February 6.
She approached the unnamed trans man on the bar’s dance floor and asked his gender. When he replied that he was a man, she asked, “Are you sure?”
The man replied, “It’s none of your business.” In response, Waldron placed her hands between his legs and squeezed his genitals.
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The man then responded by asking what she was doing and telling her that it was inappropriate, prosecutor Graham Dono told the BBC. She reportedly replied, “I don’t care.”
However, she started to care after the man reported the groping to the bar’s security staff. The staff contacted the police. Waldron later told police that the touching wasn’t sexual and was “more of glance with the back of her hand that only lasted a second or two,” Dono said.
“Waldron was extremely intoxicated, and this was a drunken and gratuitous touching of the man’s genitals,” he added.
In court, Waldron said she had been enjoying a night out with friends and was trying to protect a friend who had found the trans man attractive.
Despite her excuses, the court found her guilty and asked her to pay a legal fine of £300 ($368.15 U.S.).
The man she groped says he started transitioning in 2016.
Approximately 47 percent of all transgender people have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Comparatively, 20 percent of cisgender women and 1.4 percent of cis men have experienced sexual assault during their lives.
Even worse, 57 percent of trans and nonbinary people said they feel uncomfortable asking the police for help. The same percentage said they had experienced mistreatment from law enforcement officers.
