Columbine copycat in Edinburgh - what does 'transgender' mean in reporting?

This young woman didn't need testosterone and lies, she needed medical support to get well.

I don't like the 'he' either, but at least they put

The student, who was born female but identifies as a boy

at the top of the story, so there's no attempt to deceive the reader.

It's really odd, that, isn't it?

[scratches chin]

IANAL, so would not be confident to say there are no parts of regulations or something else that affects the legislation. However I have extracted from the legislation what I think is relevant.

The Children's Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011 is the most recent legislation I can see.

Section 5 states that “A children's hearing consists of three members of the Children's Panel selected in accordance with section 6 for the purpose of carrying out functions conferred on a children's hearing by virtue of this Act or any other enactment.

Section 6 says: (3)The National Convener must ensure that the children's hearing— (a)F1so far as practicable,] includes both male and female members of the Children's Panel

F1 an addition for Covid.

I don’t see any definition of “male” or “female”, so I fear it is open to interpretation.

The Children’s Hearing website, www.chscotland.gov.uk, has a Resources section which includes EDI stuff. The whole Hearing system seems to be a Public Board. It is not clear to me whether each panel conducting a hearing counts as a Public Board.

It would take someone more knowledgable than me to unravel all the implications of interacting legalities.

I'd be very interested to know who many mass shooters in the US who are trans are male and how many are female. My guess is that the females will be significantly more than the roughly 5% female that is found in the non-trans grouping.

This is farcical. If the young person is under 18, they do not have a GRC and therefore should be identified according to their biological sex. As it stands we have no fucking idea whether this is a boy who identifies as a girl or vice versa… which is the impact of all of this stuff. Language no longer has any meaning and we have no idea who this report is talking about. Total insanity!!

“Since 2006 there have been 589 mass shooters who killed at least four victims,” says Fox, who presides over the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings Database, the most extensive data source on the subject. “Of those shooters, 33 were women.”

This is a real concern in today‘s climate. How can we find out?

Women's (potential) crimes being laid on men!

I just wish they would stop pretending in the media, and use pronouns naturally as we all used to. It's really confusing, and it's usually women who are affected unfairly.

I was on the Children’s Panel, the legal system for children. Panels of 3, always a mixture of men and women, would hear from the child who was deemed to be possibly in need of compulsory measures of care and any of their family, social worker, teachers etc who might be relevant and make a decision. Decisions could include sending the child to a secure unit. Places were scarce. There were only two secure units then.

I have worried since about what has happened and whether a child could be faced by a panel with no biological female at all.

Sorry, I should have been more explicit, Edinburgh only had mixed sex secure units.

It's weird though, to see all these articles saying "boy" and "he". There are lots of news articles about transwomen, in which I mentally switch "she" to "he", while thinking NOT A WOMAN!!! But it doesn't happen so often the other way round. Really though, NOT A BOY!!!

Yes, there was the girl referenced in "I don't like Mondays." I forget the details, other than that her father had given her a gun for her birthday, but you can google it if you want.

Ah thanks for that.

I was thinking that maybe all the news reports I'd seen didn't actually know.

WaterThyme · Today 20:54

Back in the 90s secure units for children were mixed sex. I don’t know how it is now.

I was in care 1984-1986 and the home I was in had a secure wing for girls only. The main home was mixed, with a girl's wing and a boys wing for bedrooms.

The local serious secure home was Aycliffe (Newton Aycliffe) and it had a main unit for boys, with a small wing for girls. I don't know if it's still operational.

Back in the 90s secure units for children were mixed sex. I don’t know how it is now.

Well, there's another variable to consider.

I think starting the data analysis from 2012 is disingenuous and skews the stats. This is potentially a much more recent phenomenon

The stats are very woolly, tbh. Depends how you count shootings, how you record 'gender' (or sex) and whether you record 'gender identity'.

'The GVA database records , opens new tab a total of 50 mass school shootings since 2012, meaning that one in 50, or 2% of the total was associated with a transgender suspect.
Limiting the search to the past two years yields one in 20, or 5%, of mass school shootings involving a transgender suspect.
Similarly, a 2023 report
, opens new tab on mass attacks in public spaces from 2016 through 2020 by the National Threat Assessment Center showed only three of the 180 attackers, or 2%, were transgender (page 19). "Only one of these three carried out their attack at a K-12 school," Alexandria Worley, a spokesperson for the U.S. Secret Service, said in an email.'

According to this, 1% of the US population is trans.

https://usafacts.org/articles/what-percentage-of-the-us-population-is-transgender/

Or 5%

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/

Who knows?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/30/data-is-clear-there-is-no-clear-epidemic-transgender-mass-shooters/

Thanks.

And of course, the absence of a particular pattern is also impossible to prove without appropriate data!

https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/most-mass-school-shootings-are-not-carried-out-by-transgender-people-2024-09-06/

Thank you. The more factual data we can access, the better chance we have of spotting any patterns, whatever they may be.

'Data from advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety finds that women constitute less than five percent of assailants across 544 school shooting incidents over the past 11 years.
Of the 197 shooting incidents in the Violence Prevention Project database of mass shootings since 1966, 192 of the shooters were male, four were female, and one was transgender. White men made up the majority of perpetrators, according to the database.'

However, I think the way they count shooting incidents in the US is a bit odd - sometimes I think they stipulate a minimum number of fatalities before its recorded as a mass shooting.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/natalie-rupnow-madison-wisconsin-school-shooting-b2665496.html