Would You Like to Share a Prison Cell with This Person? **MNHQ edit, this post contains rather graphic material**

So the convict is pre op? Well that's reason enough. Secondly there are very very few women that commit a crime like this so where would she be housed?

I really, really hope it's been saved somewhere.

I'm really confused as to the point of this thread. Can you break it down for me?

Have you read any of it?

I'm really confused as to the point of this thread. Can you break it down for me?

Oops xpost but works in response to briar as well!

No idea. Clearly an extremely fucked up individual.

What I don't understand is why this organisation have chosen this individual as the "cover story" for their cause. There must be other transgender people in prison in the US who have stories that people would feel a lot of sympathy with. Choosing someone as repugnant as this is clearly not going to garner the maximum amount of support.

So why have they done it?

Mind you they want to "abolish the prison system in the long-run and provide immediate safety measures to reduce the harm faced by those presently incarcerated" so not sure their motivations for anything are going to be particularly understandable.

Wow why the fuck would you use your celebrity status to defend a child rapist and murderer...

A male pedophile rapes and murders a child, then fancies call himself a woman while a transgender actor campaigns on his behalf.

Frankly the sensitivities of this murdering raping man/woman don't matter a damn and the fact that some transgender actor appears to think they do just confirms to me that the world appears to be going mad.

Utter utter bullshit.

Has anyone looked at the petition?

I don't know if people tend to read petitions before they sign them, but in the opener it has this bizarre statement:

"While we were not surprised to read the horrors outlined in the Solitary Watch articles, we hope the publicity will bring attention to our work to abolish the prison system in the long-run and provide immediate safety measures to reduce the harm faced by those presently incarcerated."

That's just utterly random.

The thing also outlines the treatment of the prisoner they are focussing on - which I am sure has been poor - as is the treatment of all sorts of people in many US prisons. Prisons are notorious aren't they and the US ones have had a lot of reporting about atrocious conditions for various groups of people etc etc etc

However at no point do they mention or even allude to what her conviction was for in the first place. Which is a bit of an oversight isn't it.

This part is also particularly offenisve: "Because of stories like Synthia’s, the Department of Justice, through the Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations, has specifically identified safer housing for transgender people as necessary to the prevention of sexual violence in correctional settings across the country." While I am a sort of nicey lefty person who is abhored by the popular idea that sex offenders will "get what's coming to them" in prison, by linking the provision of safety of trans people in prison (as should be the case for all people in prison) by citing this person's story they are taking the fucking piss.

She may be currenty high profile, as was April Ashley MBE in her day, but that does not mean that either is/was right about everything.

And what might or might not be the right issue to campaign about in the USA does not necessarily translate as equally correct, or otherwise, for other countries.

Thanks CK.

That makes it even odder - big star types are usually very careful about what causes they support and what the speak out about aren't they.

I may do some more googling.

I think that it comes across as petty

I don't think that being bullied into lying is "petty." Horses for courses though, I suppose.

I can understand both your points but for me personally, I think that it comes across as petty and distracts from the matter at hand.

I also think that insisting on calling trans people by their birth sex is mean, and calling some trans people by what they prefer and others not, based on whether you agree with them or not is inconsistent.

I also think that it is extremely important that stats etc capture that people are trans, so as to avoid diluting stats around things like male violence and women being under-represented in certain areas.

However like I say I know people disagree with me. I just read the comments and they made me flinch a bit. That's all.

On the topic of the article, I have no idea who Laverne Cox is. Does she have form for this sort of thing? Is it possible she doesn't know the extent of the crimes of the criminal? I just find it a bit surprising that of all the things to pick to speak out about she chose that one. As per what the OP said in her post just now.

Calling someone "she" doesn't harm anyone

I know I sound like a precious tool but I feel that it does actually "harm" me. Being forced to lie distresses me. I really dislike being told that I have to claim to believe something when I don't actually believe it at all, and that's what the whole pronoun thing feels like to me - like the "how many fingers?" passage from 1984. I genuinely find it deeply objectionable that people can demand that I effectively lie for their benefit.
That being said I would never do it to anyone's face and I don't actually do it in public online forums either. It's easy enough to get around using "she" without using "he" if you want to.

Get a grip. This report is about a transactivist supporting a child rapist and murderer trying to get into a woman's prison and you're going on about pronouns.

Some gender critical feminists have made a political decision to use the pronouns that correctly relate to a person's sex. Many of them used preferred pronouns in the past however it has become apparent that vocal transactivists will accept nothing less than complete capitulation to the "transwomen are women" mantra as it relates to every aspect of being and living as a woman. Now some transactivists are rejecting the term "preferred pronouns" and, in fact, calling that term transphobic. There's no reason to call anyone any pronoun other than the correct one unless you believe that transwomen (including those who simply declare themselves women with no other intervention) are women.

Oh in the comments the actor is referred to as male a lot (I have never heard of the show or the actor but that's another story!). For some reason it opened on the comments for me so I read them a bit confused, then realised that I wasn't in the right place.

I don't like it though. I really don't. I don't like it when people call me something other than what I want them to.

Someone's name / pronoun is the least of anyone's worries with all this IMO and it can distract from everything else. Calling someone "she" doesn't harm anyone. Putting a male bodied person / someone convicted of rape in a female prison might well do.

Just my opinion though, I know others don't share it.

Child killers are in solitary in all parts of UK for their own protection.

The chances of anyone sharing a cell with someone convicted of that are approximately zero.

How many transgender convicts are currently incarcerated (for any offence) in the home jurisdictions of UK?