TW in Women's prisons - Zoe Williams' Take

More holes than a Swiss cheese in her reasoning, as others point out above.

I've read and reread, trying to approach it as objectively as possible... and each time finish wondering how it got published. Content aside, there's the ambiguous language, chaotic structure, and such blatantly problematic use of statistics that it feels pretty generous to attribute this to the usual selective misrepresentation, but does rather come across as if she's just a bit confused. It adds up to being a very weak piece indeed, to the extent that, for any thinking reader still on the fence, I honestly think it may be more likely to convert them to our way of thinking than her own...

I think her reasoning is

a) but they want to be there

b) but they want to be there

c)but they want to be there

The reasons why someone accused of a sexual offence would claim that they are a woman and demand to be accommodated in the womens estate seem to have passed her by.

I have always thought she comes across as a snob, the sort of guardianista who believes themselves inherently benevolent but loses patience with anyone who dares disagree.

She's not a nice person. I remember seeing her lolling about "terfs" with abusive Twitter troll CursedE.

That blithe disregard for vulnerable women. The fact I'm nostalgic for the days when ZW was just thick and boring.

Did anyone watch Rain Dogs, with Costello and her friend doing OnlyFans for men with a battered-woman fetish?

She doesn't care enough to inform herself.

the midwittery of useful idiots virtue signalling

The blithe, dumb privilege of women like Zoe seriously gets on my tits.

Yes, it’s meaningless waffle. I don’t think I’ve ever really got the point of any of her articles tbh

There isn't much to understand. Women, however vulnerable, don't matter to Zoe, and she's not good with statistics, is all you can really take from it.

I don’t understand what she is trying to say in this article at all

Now, given how tiny the population of UK residents with a GRC is

Figures from KPSS suggest that a disproportionately high number in relation to what would be expected from the number in the population are in prison.

I don’t think you can extrapolate figures in the general population to figures in prison. I’d guess there are a lot more inmates studying for an open university degree than would be the case in the same population when not incarcerated. The same may be true about applying for a GRC. Who knows what people are likely to get up to when they have so much time in their hands and a clear benefit to getting one?

This has been bothering me for a while but people (Zoe included) keep talking about "the number of transwomen in women's prison" etc etc. As I understand it those statistics DON'T refer to the number of transwomen/trans people - but to the number of people whose identity doesn't match their legal sex - so those WITHOUT a GRC in other words. Now, given how tiny the population of UK residents with a GRC is, that probably doesn't make much overall difference to the prison numbers but it is frustrating because if Zoe and the TRAs got their way and passed self ID laws then we could see the number of "prisoners whose legal sex doesn't match their identity" drop to 0. But of course that would be bollocks.

Why a chicken-identifying fox should be put in the chicken coop because he’s scared of the other foxes just makes no sense. Find somewhere else for him to go!

Heh, good analogy, although I doubt the TRAs would like it.

can it really true that there were 6 trans women in the female estate and 7 assaults by them over a shortish period? in other words, crudely speaking, even assuming a 100% reporting of assaults, the average TW prisoner in a women's prison is likelier than not to carry out an assault/will carry out 1.17 assaults each? I'm at a loss to articulate the level of madness that we're dealing with here.

It's the exact same argument as used in sport isn't it?

"It's only a few men pushing women off podiums so why does it matter and what about all the other abuses happening in women's sports why don't you care about those and look there's a squirrel"

Logic really isn't her strong suit, is it?

I'm not sure anything is.

A response to Zoe’s article in the Twitter responses makes the excellent point that, even if all the 90 assaults were by women ( and we don’t know that they are, they could have been by male officers, males with GRCs,) then that 90 is a small number out of thousands of women prisoners, whereas 7 assaults by a single-digit handful of males with trans identities is a huge proportion, showing that male trans prisoners are a vastly, vastly greater risk to women prisoners than other women. So the figures actually evidence the opposite of what Zoe claims they do.

And of course, those are only recorded assaults. That says nothing about the fear or intimidation women prisoners may feel.

Logic really isn't her strong suit, is it?

I assumed, furthermore, that the figures would ultimately speak for themselves, but that was wrong. There were 97 sexual assaults in women’s prisons between 2016 and 2020 – seven involved trans prisoners.

Surely those figures do speak for themselves. As far as I'm concerned, 7 assaults by male prisoners in female prisons is 7 too many. But not for Zoe. If male trans prisoners weren't in women's prisons, then 7 assaults on women wouldn't have happened. That's 7 women who wouldn't have been assaulted and traumatised. Why don't you care about what happened to those 7 women, Zoe? Are there not enough of them for you to care about? How many would be enough?

Since the prison regulation on trans prisoners was reformed in 2019, (which made it more difficult for those convicted of any violent crime to switch between estates) there have been no assaults by trans prisoners on women in prison. It seems pretty obvious that if the majority of sexual assaults in the women’s estate are committed by prisoners who are not trans, then a relentless focus on trans prisoners is not going to keep women safe.

On the contrary, it seems pretty obvious to me that if keeping males out of female prisons means that they can't assault female prisoners, then continuing to keep them out of women's prisons is a good idea. It's certainly not a good argument for letting them back in.

Although the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply, the UN has rules stating that male and female prisoners should be segregated: https://womansplaceuk.org/2023/03/01/new-moj-transgender-prisoner-policy-wpuk-statement/