Defence lawyer says that the Gender Recognition Act has placed the State in an impossible position with regard to transgender prisoners

I’m really pleased that these questions are being asked in public. It’s all so naïvely put together as a legal fiction and leaves women in an untenable situation. I almost wrote that it ‘has so many unintended consequences’ there- but actually it can only be pure thoughtlessness on the part of the powers that be, and pure misogynistic intent to continue to ignore the risks to women of men encroaching on their spaces, services, sports, prisons, hospital wards, everywhere. They know that women object.

In the past men have gone to the lengths of training as teachers, priests, doctors, setting up entire charities all so they can gain access to women and children and abuse them. Yet somehow it is unthinkable that the same sort of men would go through all the hassle of filling in a form for the same purpose?

@arnoldshatshisknickers This is the best skewering of the whole debacle I have ever read.

It might be a small number of people, but if they all need two guards 24/7 they are going to cost the prison service an absolute fucking fortune (especially when you consider that women in prison are generally pretty well behaved and don’t need extreme security measures, unlike men).

YY Barracker on the which fools do the rubber-stamping comment. Because Maya is right.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/male-born-transgender-sex-offender-20051834.amp

The same story appears in the Mirror, only they conveniently omitted the 10 counts of sexual assault and child cruelty. Quelle surprise.

Irish penal reform trust:Out on the inside, lgbt people in prison.

www.iprt.ie/iprt-in-the-news/round-up-out-on-the-inside-lgbt-people-in-prison/

My mistake. The are indeed similar names and Similar ideas.

No, Lammy was 'whats the big deal about men in women's prisons'
and Lansley was 'whats the big deal about men in women's wards'

TBF, easy to mix up the various men who are all 'whats the big deal, women'

they all start to blur into one repulsively homogeneous, misogynist mass.

Sorry, that should read ‘Lammy’ but the iPad thought better.

Re David Lammas not seeing a problem in 2003.

Is that the same person who signed off the single gender = single sex nhs ward policy?

Just Rubber stamped by fools or not

💪🌟🌟

I think his position isn't unusual.
People assume that expressing any concern about 'self-ID' suggests an understanding of women's rights, but the reality for a lot of people is more "I'm actually ok with the giant abusive lie, but let's keep numbers under control lest I look too ridiculous to keep up the pretence further"

Or for Barrett it seems more "I am the God who grants the crown, none but I shall declare it so"

People believe that Gender recognition panels, or certificates, or diagnoses of unhappiness, or even castration give a veneer of acceptability to the lie that men can become women. But all of these contrived nonsenses are worth nothing. It's all self-ID in the end. Just rubber-stamped by fools, or not.

Thanks for those links Barracker.

I thought he'd started talking sense at the time of the transgender equality inquiry, but clearly he's gone back to his original views. Disappointing but not particularly surprising given his line of work. His business interests depend on keeping the trans lobby on side.

The lack of ethics and integrity in the medical profession is appalling.

2009: put this rapist with the uppity women
2015: some male criminals are only pretending to be women
2019: Barrett sums up the attitude that he thinks health care workers should have towards trans people: “Trans men are men and trans women are women.”
2019: “The differences between men and women are a lot slighter than everybody thinks they are, and training can easily overtake them,” women would run as fast as men if they just trained harder

He's not evolved.

Barracker

Doesn't the screenshot you posted of the James Barratt quote pre-date his submission about GRA reform? I'd assumed he'd recognised the problem and changed his mind. I realise you may have evidence to the contrary.

Thanks, Barracker, so it was Twitter, not MN.

twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1049289194370002945?s=19

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

The thing is, the esteemed James Barrett, he of the 'how very dare uppity Female prisoners object to my rapist patient being placed with them', is also the very same esteemed James Barrett who submitted to the Transgender equality enquiry:

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

In other words, James understands perfectly that women are genuinely put at risk by placing men in with them.
But James is absolutely still in favour of putting male rapists and murderers in female prisons in unlimited quantities, so long as HE gets to handpick, personally approve and rubber-stamp their definitely-a-woman/not-a-real-woman status.

God complex.

Of course they should. I can't remember which indefitable FWR regular dug out extracts from Hansard and posted them here a few months ago, or maybe last year - but what an eye opener that was. A small number of MPs asking awkward questions and being fobbed off on all points with patronising variants on 'This will never happen, but even if it did we're talking tiny numbers here'. The warnings were all there and were ignored in the interests of pushing the GRA through with minimum discussion. Professional advice also ignored.

It sticks in my craw to say so but from what I can recall of the thread the critics were largely Tory MPs I can't stand, e.g. Norman Tebbit, Anne Widdicombe, no doubt motivated by social conservatism, religion and a deep loathing of New Labour, but tribalism is of course how we got into this mess.

In my last post my point was that they may have thought that it was so unlikely that it would never happen. But they should still have thought about what they would do if this extremely unlikely (in their view) event did actually happen.

riven with castration anxiety

PREACH.

They considered the prison problem in 2003. They just didn't care much.

They expected a tiny number of people to apply for and get GRCs. With only about 3000 male born GRC holders in the country, assuming they offend at the same rate as the general population, how many of them might we expect to be imprisoned at some point in their lives?

Once you expand this population to the entire trans umbrella obtaining GRCs, even without considering those who transition with the intention of accessing victims, the prison issue becomes an enormous problem.

That last quote, Barracker!

What's the matter with these men? Are they totally incapable of thinking about women's feelings, dignity and safety at all? Stupid question.

Have there been any cases of women transitioning after conviction and being moved to men's prisons?