by Jo Bartosch, spiked
A BBC presenter wants ‘allies’ in schools to escort trans people to their preferred toilets. What could possibly go wrong?
If there’s one thing predators are good at, it’s spotting soft targets. Thanks to Dr Ronx Ikharia, this could soon be easier than ever. Ikharia – a BBC children’s presenter and NHS emergency medic who identifies as ‘trans nonbinary’ – has launched a new scheme called ‘Safe With Me’. It involves distributing large yellow badges, which signal that the wearer is available to escort ‘trans+ people’ to ‘their preferred facilities’. In other words, it is to help men in frocks breach the law on single-sex spaces.
More than £10,000 has already been raised to flood institutions, offices and events with these free badges. Most alarming is the potential involvement of schools. Ikharia now denies claims that the badges will be sent to schools, even though ‘schools’ are still, at the time of writing, explicitly listed on the Safe With Me GoFundMe page as places where the yellow badges will be distributed. Several outlets, including a pro-trans blog, have quoted her as saying she wants them to be ‘everywhere. At schools, in NHS settings, at festivals, in shops.’ Badge-wearers – potentially including children – are asked to pledge their loyalty to ‘trans+ safety, dignity and joy’, and to act as chaperones to shield deluded law-breakers from reality.
Those most likely to don the badge will be the young, the idealistic and the terminally naïve. Given that around 70 per cent of men identifying as trans in UK prisons have convictions for sexual offences and violent crimes, this scheme isn’t a harmless gesture. It is a set of grisly headlines and court appearances waiting to happen.