to think if you have a penis, you do not belong in a woman's prison

[RickRoll]

There is to be an appeal tomorrow, at Bristol Crown Court, regarding the decision to send violent criminal Tara Hudson, who works as a transsexual prostitute (still has a penis, as 80% of transsexuals do), to male prison. Tara wants to go to a female prison.

AIBU to think that if you have a penis, you should go to male prison?

People are arguing that Tara is at risk of sexual assault, but Tara is not unique in this - lots of (non transgender) men are vulnerable, and the prison service has a responsibility to protect them.

I would love to have an idea on how to sort it out if only for the sake of my dds

When they're old enough, give them the classics of 20th century feminism/s. Germaine Greer, Simone de Beauvoir - even John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women. Hell, get them reading Mary Wollstonecraft! An understanding of the way that our society is structured via oppressive binaries such as gender (masculine or feminine, nothing between) or sexuality (either straight or gay, nowt in between).

And that it's not them it's the patriarchy.

SettlinginNicely That's really interesting. And I vaguely recall that Plato's Symposium describes three sexes (or possibly three genders; I don't know if Ancient Greece observed a difference between sex and gender). Even modern biology acknowledges that biological sex is more complex than a simple binary. I suppose that's why I feel rather uncomfortable with the penis=man equation.

What human biological sexes are there in addition to male and female?

I don't think penis should necessarily be criteria of being a man or a woman.

This has to be the daftest thing I've read on here. What exactly do you think should identify a man or a woman?

I think the problem that's created the "peak trans" mentality is this.

I absolutely support LGBT rights. I support the right of people not to be mocked, vilified or otherwise discriminated against because their sexuality or gender identity makes them "different". I think it would be totally wrong if a person who transitioned from one gender to the other was dismissed from their job because of it, like gay people used to be, or women used to be when they married.

I support gender reassignment surgery being funded by the NHS, because it alleviates a huge amount of mental distress and as I understand it the outcomes for people's quality of life post-surgery are overall very good.

One of the really important things equal marriage achieved is that if a person transitioned to the other gender and was in a marriage already, they wouldn't have to divorce and then become civil partners, if their spouse chose to continue the marriage.

This stuff is really important - it's about supporting people's rights to live a free and happy life, free from bigotry and discrimination.

However, supporting all those things doesn't mean accepting that a person's self-identified gender automatically defines the biological sex they are and always have been. It just doesn't. Overall, I have no problem with trans people having access to the women's fitting room in Topshop, or women's toilets, or even in some cases women's schools and universities, especially if they've fully transitioned (ie have no penis).

There are a few areas where I do have a massive problem. Women's prisons is one. Given Tara's choice of career, she must be pretty capable of handling herself in situations with potentially violent men. But she has displayed violence to women, and she has a functioning penis. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, she should be in a male prison with all the protection and support she needs - as any other vulnerable person with a penis should be.

I've also got a problem with transwomen competing in women's sport. Their physicality, even after transitioning, is different. They will have benefited from the socialisation and the training in sport that boys receive to far greater advantage than girls. It's not, as far as I can tell, a level playing field.

I also have a problem with trans equality and women's equality being conflated. Let's say tomorrow David Cameron and George Osborne both came out as trans. Should we suddenly be celebrating the fact that we have a woman PM and Chancellor? Obviously that's absurd, but when we have the achievements of transwomen like Caitlyn Jenner, Kelly Maloney and Martine Rothblatt being celebrated as women's achievements, that actively disadvantages women by skewing the inequality that currently exists for women.

Tara is a female and as such should go to a female prison.

What human biological sexes are there in addition to male and female?

Well, obviously the many, many intersex conditions, which may undermine the binary distribution of biological sex. The question is: do relatively rare conditions undermine the binary sufficiently to reconceive philosophically our social understandings of sex? After all, biology has to be described in terms that make sense within society. For many people the answer is no, as long as intersex conditions occur in a very small minority of cases. For others, the lack of clear statistics on prevalence of intersex conditions is enough reason to question binary explanations of biological sex.

"Tara is a female"

How do you determine that?

Tara is a female and as such should go to a female prison.

Do you know what female means? Or is this an example of the newspeak in this brave new world that we are all supposed to accept?

None that I know of culturesucks. I was using the language that an anthropology professor used over 20 years ago.

I didn't mean to derail, just couldn't help remembering it, because it seems the Lakota had a much more harmonious way of living together on this issue than we do. Obviously, we are a completely different culture and will have to find our own way through this.

Thanks Blackbirds I will start on those first so I'm fully armed and keep them in my bookcase ready, GG came to speak at my school when I was young and I feel like what she said must have imprinted somewhere on my subconscious as at the time I couldn't give a toss who came in to 'bore' us.

Thank heavens for mumsnet and posters like you, without it I wouldn't have realised how much more I want to learn.

Also OP - YANBU.

Settlingin your link is fascinating!

Fantastic post IShouldBeSoLurky.

What's 'peak trans'?

"Tara is a female and as such should go to a female prison."

Should another inmate at the women's prison be forced to share a cell with her?

I also have a problem with trans equality and women's equality being conflated. Let's say tomorrow David Cameron and George Osborne both came out as trans. Should we suddenly be celebrating the fact that we have a woman PM and Chancellor? Obviously that's absurd, but when we have the achievements of transwomen like Caitlyn Jenner, Kelly Maloney and Martine Rothblatt being celebrated as women's achievements, that actively disadvantages women by skewing the inequality that currently exists for women.

YES!!

www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943

This link suggests that 1% of the population is likely to not fit into a clear cut biological sex category. That's actually an awful lot of people.

In terms of gender identity, it's not a modern phenomenon at all. Google 'third sex' and look on Wikipedia. It's massively common amongst many many cultures, not just the Lakota.

AdjustableWench, my understanding is that humans are sexually dimorphic - there are two sexes, male and female. The occurrence of a small number of intersex people doesn't change that fact. It would seem prudent to treat each intersex person as an individual and make no assumptions about which sex (or neither, or both I suppose) they would want to be identified as.

Fantastic post Lurky.

verystressed it was mentioned earlier (hilariously autocorrected to "peak trains", which make me very stressed ).

It's the idea that we have reached a point where accommodating people's self-identity is resulting in completely bonkers situations that make no sense, and that now is perhaps the time to take a good look at all this and decide what's real and what isn't, and how important not hurting people's feelings and being open-minded is versus protecting people who are unaware of and possibly vulnerable to all this stuff.

Avocado yes trans women are men. They may identify as female, that does not make them a woman.

I'd like to add another area of concern to I shouod be so Lurky's excellent post.

My concern is the control some Trans Activists seek to exert over women's issues and women's dialogue - a denial of women's spaces. For example, discussion of reproductive rights as a women's issue causes calls of bigotry becuase Trans Women don't get pregnant.

I don't know if the report in this blog is 100% accurate but it's a very extreme example of women being denied the right to a safe space by transactivists. gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/who-are-the-males-who-sneak-into-michigan-womens-music-festival/

I also think it's disgraceful to no-platform Germaine Greer. She fought in the 1970s against sexism so blatant it's hard to believe. That should count for something.

It's taken me ages to get through this thread but I didn't know where I stood on this issue beforehand so it's time well spent...thanks for the contributions on both sides!

The way I see it, Tara herself isn't really relevant to the argument. The actual argument here is whether the prison system should segregate based on sex or based on gender. We currently divide the prison population based on sex for reasons of both safety and practicality. Should we reform the prison system in order to accommodate for gender rather than sex, there would theoretically be a need for prisons specifically for trans men and women in order to maintain levels of safety for the wider prison population.

Though as many have already said on the thread, if I were a trans woman, my incentive to not go to prison under the current system would be great enough that I'd bloody behave myself.

I must - I have seen numerous tweets that we aren't allowed to say vat on sanity products is a woman's issue. It is cis sexist.

FFS. It is a woman's issue. You may be a man by gender, but I'm not going to pretend that there is such a thing as male menstruation.

My concern is the control some Trans Activists seek to exert over women's issues and women's dialogue - a denial of women's spaces. For example, discussion of reproductive rights as a women's issue causes calls of bigotry becuase Trans Women don't get pregnant

This