Scottish Hate Crime Bill: Andrew Doyle asks all the right questions of Barrister Sam Fowles

I hate being funnelled into right wing media by this issue. My country is teetering on the brink of Facism and I'll not allow myself to get on board with their side, even if they are the only ones platforming common sense on this issue.

I'm not having a go at you OP - it's not your fault.

But these people don't give a shiny shit about women. They're just playing culture war and having fun with the outrage.

I hate being funnelled into right wing media by this issue. My country is teetering on the brink of Facism and I'll not allow myself to get on board with their side, even if they are the only ones platforming common sense on this issue.

I'm not having a go at you OP - it's not your fault.

But these people don't give a shiny shit about women. They're just playing culture war and having fun with the outrage.

Well, @Joolsin ,there followed a conversation that was hilarious to me, frequenting these pages as I do.

She was really flustered and said she could not believe a bloke was in the loos. I said how did she know it was a bloke, she said it looked like one.

How do you know it wasn't a trans woman?!

Because he didn't looook like one!!!

What does a trans woman look like?

You know, they make the effort, with the hair, the clothes!

What was this person wearing?

Jeans tee-shirt.....

What, like half the women in here!!??

But you can tell when it's a trans woman!!

How?

Etc....... And no, she did not immediately admit she was wrong, or that it would actually impact her, but she was not at all vocal about trans rights after that....

I hate being funnelled into right wing media by this issue. My country is teetering on the brink of Facism and I'll not allow myself to get on board with their side, even if they are the only ones platforming common sense on this issue.

I'm not having a go at you OP - it's not your fault.

But these people don't give a shiny shit about women. They're just playing culture war and having fun with the outrage.

Are the MOJ figures that Andrew Doyle a sample or are they a population? That is, are those figures based on a sample(s) of prisons and prisoners, or are they a direct count of all the (self-styled) trans prisoners in UK (or do I mean English?) prisons? Because if this is a count of all of them, even if they're a small number, that doesn't make them unrepresentative. They can't "represent" anything, they're not a sample of the population of trans prisoners they are the whole population of "transwomen in prison" who need to be risk assessed. And if the proportion of self-styled transwomen in prison who are sex offenders is higher than the proportion of other prisoners or other male prisoners who are sex offenders then it's not a sampling error it's just a fact. A plain, ugly, hard to swallow fact.

As for "prisoners must be assessed individually" well they aren't now, they never have been, and they never will be. Risk assessments are based on group characteristics, like is a prisoner male or female; a known sex offender or not; violent or not; etc. This idea that prisons do some delicate identification of who poses a risk based on profound psychological insights (that prisons have and the rest of us don't) is somewhere between naive and dishonest.

It is true that the MOJ figures don't say anything about transwomen in general, outside of prison. Prisoners are not a representative sample of the population who are not in prison, trans or otherwise.

But those MOJ figures should affect a prison risk assessment. That's how risk assessment works.

I might have remembered it wrong but I think he said more trans people are raped than ‘cis’ people. Does he mean transmen? I’d be interested where his statistics come from when he was arguing the toss about MoJ data about transwomen prisoners.

I thought it was interesting that he apparently believes that trans women are raped in greater numbers than women.

The legal equivalent of Hilda Baker and Arthur Millard singing "Your the one that I want' (one for the teenagers there)-the only recorded instance of an appearance on top of the pops leading to a catastrophic collapse in record sales

My toes were curling for Sam at the end there. Do people actually pay him for legal advice?

And the total garbage about a man having to go through the process of self ID and get all the paperwork in place before he can go into the women's loos - we all know, noone requires paperwork. A man just says 'I am a lady' and noone will challenge him.

Why do TRAs stick with these weak ass points? Why does noone call them out?

I know two or three women who were all for full inclusion into their spaces, defended it and trotted out all the tropes 'most vulnerable, be kind, a sign won't stop them, don't label a whole vulnerable community just because of a few rotten apples.' I watched in real time as they changed their minds when confronted with creepy blokes in the pub loos. Once, my all inclusive pal actually called me from the ladies loo saying there was a bloke in there, peeing with the door open -' what shall I do!? What can I do!?'

Haha. I took more satisfaction than I should have in replying 'just be kind. She just wants to pee.'