Alex is a professor of law at Keele and a trans woman. This is Alex's response to the concerns raised by feminists:
inherentlyhuman.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/foxes-in-the-henhouse-putting-the-trans-women-prison-debate-in-perspective/
I don't want to go through it point by point because I have had a long day and I am already feeling a headache coming on. However, some general observations:
-Seems to suggest that the figures cited of numbers of trans prisoners are false. Did they not come from a freedom of information request from the BBC? Why the hell would they be inaccurate? Is Sharpe suggesting the prison service gave inaccurate information? Suggests that lots of them might be trans men, which skews the stats. The 27 trans people convicted of rape are definitely trans women, because rape requires a penis. Also, given the very small total number of women in prison compared to men in prison, I would venture that the number of trans men in prison would be absolutely minute (as in fewer than 10 or so). I also highly doubt any of them are in there for sex offences.
-Sly little dig about how it's ironic that GC feminists call themselves feminists at all. What, because we don't want to adopt a philosophy that would place the needs and rights of the rapist above the victim? So dismissive of women's concerns.
-Uses the argument that this is such a small problem as to be almost irrelevant.The thing with prison is that you only need one high-risk person in there to create a risk to numerous other people. Karen White assaulted four women in New Hall in a very short space of time. Had he been in there longer, the number would no doubt be much higher. If the 27 convicted rapists were all placed in different prisons, the number of women at direct risk would be substantial. Let me be clear: ONE incident of this is one too many. There should be no guidance whatsoever that allows this to happen.
- Suggests that this was simply due to a lack of proper risk assessment and there is nothing wrong with the basic policy of placing trans women in female jails. No- the point is that we do not have mixed sex prisons due to the risk this would place female prisoners at (plus a whole host of other reasons). Trans women like Karen White are fully intact males. Yes, they claim to feel female, but they have male genitalia, male bodies etc. It is not feasible to do a risk assessment in every case. In any event, a male prisoner who has not been convicted of a sex offence can still be high risk to female prisoners. We simply cannot have a system where we say it is okay to let males onto the female estate if they feel female. It's illogical and utterly nonsensical. If we did, we should abolish sex-segregation in prisons full stop.
- Suggests that this is not a problem because guards abusing women is a worse problem. Ridiculous argument imo. Yes, it is disgusting how many women are exploited in prison. So you want to add to that by introducing even more danger? That makes sense...
- The 'women do it too' argument, citing a case of a teacher who had a lesbian relationship with a pupil. While it is always wrong to have a sexual relationship with someone in your trust, the case Sharpe has cited is absolutely nowhere near the same as the horrific violence that Karen White perpetrated against his victims. Emily Fox is highly unlikely to be a risk to any woman in prison just because she is a lesbian who had a relationship with a girl aged 15. It's actually disgusting to place them in the same category- it has really made me angry and upset reading that.
From that article, I can see that Alex utterly dismisses the concerns of feminists, questions our status as feminists (because we can apparently only be feminists if we centre the interests of natal males), and engages in misogynistic comparisons that utterly downplay the seriousness of what happened in New Hall Prison. I hope to God this ends soon. I keep wondering whether I am living in a parallel universe and I can't understand why some female academics are applauding this. Maybe fear. I don't know.
It makes me appreciate the brave and amazing feminist scholars who do dare to stand up to Alex Sharpe and co even more. 