StrangeAdventure
Shame the only link anyone has provided was to a US-based forum that is primarily for cross-dressers (= cis-men who dress up as women) rather than UK transsexuals.
You seem to be a bit out of touch on this. All the definitions of trans I have read in recent years include cross dressers as well as a huge range of other GNC people. Here's Stonewall's definition:
Trans – an umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth. Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) Transgender, Transsexual, Gender-queer (GQ), Gender-fluid, Non-binary, Gender-variant, Crossdresser, Genderless, Agender, Nongender, Third gender, Two-spirit, Bi-gender, Transman, Transwoman,Trans masculine, Trans feminine and Neutrois.
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Last year, the Women and Equalities Select Committee (nine women, two men, no trans) published the results of its inquiry. It took evidence from lots of people, including police officers, academics, civil servants, medics, lawyers, trade unionists, and women's rights activists.
Anyone could have contributed written evidence, and many did so -- on both sides of the fence.
Are you seriously transplaining Miller's report to MNers? That is priceless! You're right, many contributed written evidence from all sorts of viewpoints.
This evidence from the British Psychological Society was ignored:
psychologists working with forensic patients are aware of a number of cases where men convicted of sex crimes have falsely claimed to be transgender females for a number of reasons:
- As a means of demonstrating reduced risk and so gaining parole;
- As a means of explaining their sex offending aside from sexual gratification (e.g. wanting to ‘examine’ young females);
- Or as a means of separating their sex offending self (male) from their future self (female).
- In rare cases it has been thought that the person is seeking better access to females and young children through presenting in an apparently female way.
Such strategies in no way affect risk an indeed may increase it. Some people falsely believe that taking oestrogen and blocking androgen in males will reduce risk of offending, however this is not necessarily the case.
Consequently the Society recommends that the Government give appropriate assistance to transgender people within the criminal justice system; while being extremely cautious of setting law and policy such that some of the most dangerous people in society have greater latitude to offend.
This evidence from the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists was ignored:
The converse is the ever-increasing tide of referrals of patients in prison serving long or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences. These vastly outnumber the number of prisoners incarcerated for more ordinary, non-sexual, offences. It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case. There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this. These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system and even (in one very well evidenced case that a highly concerned Prison Governor brought particularly to my attention) a plethora of prison intelligence information suggesting that the driving force was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier, females being generally perceived as low risk in this regard. I am sure that the Governor concerned would be happy to talk about this.
Evidence from women's groups was wholesale dismissed as '“extraordinary” hostility from a minority of women “purporting to be feminists”.' And Miller still has no answers to the difficult questions raised by those groups. It's all just 'very difficult' but never mind, it's Justine Greening's problem now.
You know who was listened to? Who was asked to give verbal evidence and who is referenced heavily in that report? The wonderfully sane and non-violent Action for Trans Health.
I suggest you go and read the many threads on here where posters have analysed the contents of that report and what its recommendations would mean in practice. Then go on Site Stuff and read the many requests for Miller or Greening to come on for a webchat because many of us think they have questions to answer.