AIBU to think this Home Office response is a cop out? - to "Require sex of VATP & sexual offenders be recorded throughout justice system."

Yes exactly. If they pick up some middle aged white male criminal and he says he's a female Chinese 15 year old, are they going to record him as that, and put that on the description for who not too approach?

Well, let's follow through. Can we insist that they apply consistent principles here? If they can't identify the sex of prisoners, there's no way they could identify the sex of a suspect to say who they're looking for.

They need to stop stating the sex in descriptions.

It's so bizarre, this idea that we can't accurately tell the sex of someone. It'd be like saying we're not going to ask for people's birth date or age because we can't tell the difference between a child and a pensioner

Yes exactly. If they pick up some middle aged white male criminal and he says he's a female Chinese 15 year old, are they going to record him as that, and put that on the description for who not too approach?

Surely age and ethnicity must be harder to verify than sex? But somehow we manage to make a pretty good guess at all these characteristics in most cases

What happens next? What can we do to say "No thank you. Do better."

Just found it lurking on my inbox. It's full on TWAW 🙄

But I thought the prison service was able to do a thorough risk assessment before placing a male in a female prison? But it turns out they have no way of knowing when they are placing a male in a female prison? Either one is true or the other is true. Which is it?

[quote joolzfromyork]@Caaarrrl

It's ludicrous to say that only a physical examination can determine sex. Anyone in this country who is convicted of rape can only be of the male sex because of the use of his penis to penetrate a woman (usually- I know that some men are raped too).

I have no interest in disputing your basic point ... I agree with you, but ya know ...

www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/news/a38432/gayle-newland-sex-charges/[/quote]
Yes indeed. They were able to correctly charge her for sexual assault. Not rape.

@Caaarrrl

It's ludicrous to say that only a physical examination can determine sex. Anyone in this country who is convicted of rape can only be of the male sex because of the use of his penis to penetrate a woman (usually- I know that some men are raped too).

I have no interest in disputing your basic point ... I agree with you, but ya know ...

www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/news/a38432/gayle-newland-sex-charges/

Yes, perhaps she can explain to whoever is responsible for this what everyone knows what sex is over a cup of tea.

I think this response should be flagged up to Baroness Nicholson.

This looks really bad now but will look much worse when the court cases from women abused in prison start stacking up.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a case recently, and the woman lost.

So where do we go from there?

I am so, so angry.

In a recent The Mess We're In, Lisa Townsend (Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner) was talking about pushing for firmer national guidance on some related areas.

At the minute we've got a huge spread due to massive variation in how much individual forces have let themselves be influenced by Stonewall, GIRES etc.

As far as I can make out, the Home Office are being wilfully negligent here. Given what has happened recently, do we want to see the government led by our police forces when deciding on policies? Surely the police forces should be led by the Home Office, government should clearly lead the way on these important matters.

OMG who wrote that and why have I not seen it before?!

Was written by Jonah Mix (who seems to be associated with Deep Green Resistance), and was published on Medium in April 2019.

Medium account since terminated, obviously.

Archive version of original:

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190421015205/medium.com/@JonahMix/an-open-letter-to-the-guy-on-twitter-who-wonders-if-biological-sex-is-real-58d2cb4403f5" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20190421015205/medium.com/@JonahMix/an-open-letter-to-the-guy-on-twitter-who-wonders-if-biological-sex-is-real-58d2cb4403f5

(But archived medium links never work on mumsnet. You'd need to copy that link and manually edit out the "*" or "%2A" either side of "JonahMix" before following it).

'Biological sex' is an adequate description for this initial request for anyone who isn't being deliberately obtuse and obstructive.

Officials have noted that ‘biological sex’ has not been defined in the petition

I started a petition once and there was a character limit, which is probably why I wasn't asked to provide a lot of details on definitions of commonly understood words and legal terms.

I received this pile of guff too.
This looks really bad now but will look much worse when the court cases from women abused in prison start stacking up.

It’s just a nonsense that there isn’t a standard approach, and that it’s left to the individual police depts to decide how they record data. Renders any stats meaningless!

Isn't there just a database the government can look up the offenders sex on, the one where you order both certificates from. Surely this would negate the need for strip searches?

If it's apparently impractical to identify people's sex, it seems increasingly important to retain accurate records and not allow them to be corrupted.

The "don't repeal the GRA2004" view is feeling increasingly untenable to me, in the face of stuff like this.

Total cop-out along the lines of 'we didn't think of these issues at the start and so have no intention of redressing the balance now." I'm sure with 'joined up' Government, medical records could be merged....are they really saying it is not an issue medically to know someone's actual birth sex?

It seems this guy from Twitter has ended up in government and apparently still hasn't read this.

An Open Letter To the Guy on Twitter Who Wonders if Biological Sex is Real