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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to think a male paedophile rapist should definitely go to a male prison?

430 replies

HermioneWeasley · 04/03/2016 18:52

And it shouldn't just be "likely"?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-35726292

FFS.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
7
VinceNoirLovesHowardMoon · 04/03/2016 22:38

Wanda - I recently spoke online to a woman who is in a mental health unit with a tall, well built male trans identified person. This woman is scared of them and it's affecting her recovery but she has been told to suck it up more or less.

merrymouse · 04/03/2016 22:39

I would never be intentionally rude or unkind to anyone, and I don't care what anybody wears. I am happy to identify anybody by whatever name or pronoun they prefer because that is polite.

However, while I can see reasons to segregate prisons by sex, and also to protect vulnerable groups I can't see any reason to segregate by gender. If biological sex doesn't matter, why are prisons segregated?

The issue of self identification raises the question of why women have different services and spaces, and why they compete separately in sport. These questions need to be answered by Maria Miller et al before they barrel forward with their proposed changes to legislation.

Perhaps more importantly we all need to understand exactly what the word 'gender' means, why we are all supposed to have one, and why it apparently overrides biological sex. Because I honestly don't know.

DianaTrent · 04/03/2016 22:42

Studies on the brain are good at picking up the differences between the average composite brain of a large number of the brains of men versus the average brain from a large number of women. The same applies to studies on the division of stereotypically gendered personality traits and types of intelligence.

How that translates to the individual, however, is very contentious, and trying to predict these characteristics based upon a person's sex turns out to be unreliable in the extreme, and a large minority of men have a 'female' brain and vice versa. Much, much higher than the proportion of the population who are trans. Whatever the aetiology of transgender, it's not as simple as having a brain of the type slightly more commonly found in a body of the opposite sex.

On a personal level, by any of the popular 'brain sex' tests - left/right brain abilities, mental rotation, systemising type etc. etc. I come out as having a very strongly 'male' type brain. I am still not trans, however.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to dress and act in the way that's usually expected of the opposite sex. Adults with informed consent are welcome to alter their bodies if it improves their quality of life. However, arguing that they actually are exactly the same as the opposite sex irrespective of biology, that gender stereotypical personalities and norms are innate and pushing for doing away with sex based protections and psychological support prior to life-changing surgery and the acquisition of legal rights to be treated as the opposite sex for all purposes imo does nobody any favours.

Italiangreyhound · 04/03/2016 22:45

There are some wonderful trans women writing on line who are really thinking about the whole subject of 'gender' and being able to logically think about how all this affects them.

One big shame is these very extreme cases are not helping ordinary people.

Trans activists make it difficult for even ordinary trans people to talk openly about how they feel. Anyone who says anything away from the narrative that is being presented risks a load of verbal abuse, for their stance. I think it is probably much more helpful to have these debates openly but it is actually very hard to do so without being labelled transphobic.

CoteDAzur · 04/03/2016 22:48

"So you think being transgender is a mental health disorder?"

It doesn't matter what I think.

Here is what WHO thinks:

World Health Organisation's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems - 10th Revision:

Chapter V - Mental and behavioural disorders (F00-F99)

F60-F69 Disorders of adult personality and behaviour

.... F64 Gender identity disorders

............... F64.0 Transsexualism
A desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one's anatomic sex, and a wish to have surgery and hormonal treatment to make one's body as congruent as possible with one's preferred sex.

................ F64.1 Dual-role transvestism
The wearing of clothes of the opposite sex for part of the individual's existence in order to enjoy the temporary experience of membership of the opposite sex, but without any desire for a more permanent sex change or associated surgical reassignment, and without sexual excitement accompanying the cross-dressing.
Gender identity disorder of adolescence or adulthood, nontranssexual type
Excl.: fetishistic transvestism (F65.1)

............... F64.2 Gender identity disorder of childhood
A disorder, usually first manifest during early childhood (and always well before puberty), characterized by a persistent and intense distress about assigned sex, together with a desire to be (or insistence that one is) of the other sex. There is a persistent preoccupation with the dress and activities of the opposite sex and repudiation of the individual's own sex. The diagnosis requires a profound disturbance of the normal gender identity; mere tomboyishness in girls or girlish behaviour in boys is not sufficient. Gender identity disorders in individuals who have reached or are entering puberty should not be classified here but in F66.-.
Excl.: egodystonic sexual orientation (F66.1), sexual maturation disorder (F66.0)

................ F64.8 Other gender identity disorders

................. F64.9 Gender identity disorder, unspecified.
Gender-role disorder NOS

LyndaNotLinda · 04/03/2016 22:52

"I wouldn't have a problem sharing a dressing room or toilets with a genuine trans woman (even pre-op, as I know they have to live as a woman for several years, having therapy and hormones, before being allowed surgery), but I would have a problem sharing with a man who thinks he can just say he's a woman but keep a fully male body with no intention to change."

And how are you going to know which camp the person with the penis in the women's changing room falls into MetalMidget?

I've been very liberal about trans* rights until quite recently. Until I realised that under the proposed legislative changes, any bloke can say he 'feels like a woman' and will be able to waltz into women's changing rooms and strip off. Or just gawp at naked women. And we won't be able to complain about it because that would be transphobic.

We're sleepwalking into a perverts' charter.

merrymouse · 04/03/2016 22:53

It has not been clearly established that brain structure is particularly different between men and women.

Even if there are small differences, it's still not clear why people with different brain structures would need to go to separate prisons purely in the basis of their brain structure, or why a particular brain structure would lead you to believe that you were missing breasts or a penis.

Italiangreyhound · 04/03/2016 22:53

Something on brains (which are very plastic and develop as life goes along, learning some things, unable to make connections if some of that learning is left out - which is why child abuse and neglect is so bad because it affects how a brain develops, but that is by the by...)

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/04/male-female-brains-same-but-people-all-different

VioletVaccine · 04/03/2016 22:55

THIS is what the asinine acceptance of 'if I identify as a woman I am one' leads to. Male child rapists being considered for women's prison because they identify as a woman.
Identifying as a woman doesn't make you one.

^this.

If you truly identify as the opposite sex, it takes years of continued psychological and surgical treatment, more than a dress and an uttered, "I identify as a woman".

If I commit a crime, then just slap on a collar, and roar loudly, can I serve my time in a Zoo?

jeremyisahunt · 04/03/2016 22:56

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

Tabsicle · 04/03/2016 23:00

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

Yeah, but rape and battery isn't normally considered a reasonable punishment in UK law. And that's what trans women are effectively being sentenced to if they are sent to a male prison.

BarefootAcrossHotLegoPieces · 04/03/2016 23:03

Tabsicle, then that is a problem of supervision in male prisons.

I assume that a number of groups of prisoners - older men, fairly young men, first offenders, disabled men, I don't know - are more vulnerable to rape and battery than other groups too. Aren't they?

merrymouse · 04/03/2016 23:03

Whereas trans women won't be abused in female prisons because?

attheendoftheday · 04/03/2016 23:04

Whereyouleftit just on the off chance you aren't taking the mickey:

This study is one example which talks about brain imaging and transgenderism.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889852913000509

But to be honest I got my info from a BBC on how life develops in the womb, I forget what it was called.

BiologicalCrayon · 04/03/2016 23:04

Then the problem is male violence Tabsicle

And putting men in women's prisons is not a solution to male violence.

PunkrockerGirl · 04/03/2016 23:06

We're sleepwalking into a perverts' charter
This.
I repeat. A bloke in frock is not a woman. And therefore has no rights at all in women's private spaces.

Tabsicle · 04/03/2016 23:14

BarefootAcrossHotLegoPieces - not based on the stats I've seen. 59% of trans women report being the victims of sexual abuse in jail. This compares to less than 10% for anyone else.

The stats say this doesn't happen in female prisons. I can't find any stories about trans women sexually assaulting cis inmates in women's prison but I'd be open to any studies that give different numbers. Right now what I see is a real and proven risk vs scare stories and hypotheticals.

LurcioAgain · 04/03/2016 23:19

ATtheend: Further to Diana's point upthread about the spread of the distributions, it's worth reading Lise Elliot's Pink Brain, Blue Brain (she's a neuroscientist who specialises in brain plasticity in infant brain development).

She explains the d-value (the difference in means of two populations divided by the product of the standard deviations) - roughly, whether you have two very broad distributions which mostly overlap, or two sharp, distinct distributions. Insofar as there are any measurable and statistically significant differences in cognitive performance between men and women, most of them have very small d-values - meaning that you can't look at a test score for, say, maths ability at age 6, or reading ability at age 6, and say "well, that child's almost certainly a boy/girl" on the basis of it (small d-value). Whereas if I said to you "This person is 6'1" - do you want to take a five pound bet on them being male, I'll give you a fiver if they're female", you'd really be onto very good odds if you took that bet (despite the fact that 6'1" is comfortably within one standard deviation of the average male heigh for a man - i.e. it's not an extreme height for a man).

Further to the point about d-values, Elliot also goes on to explain that because of brain plasticity, even if you can find a small but measurable difference in, say, reading ability at age 6 between the average performance of the boys and the average performance of the girls, you'd be unable to decide how much of that difference was down to nature and how much down to nurture - because we as adults (and she has lots of examples of psychology experiments which demonstrate this) start treating children differently from infancy onwards.

So really the "male brains" and "female brains" claims are not well substantiated in the scientific literature. Of course you can cherry-pick and find the odd study - but when it comes to a meta-analysis of all the studies, there really is very little difference. And, as Diana says, the populations of trans people are so very small its very hard to get statistically significant results.

For what it's worth, I think there may well be some very subtle differences in brain structure - but much more subtle than "lady brains". And that doesn't remove the central problem with "self-identification", namely that you can't use self-identification to separate out genuine trans people from people (Davina Ayrton being one) who are just taking the piss or outright dangerous sexual perverts.

BeyondTellsEveryoneRealFacts · 04/03/2016 23:26

"Any of us could have been born in a different sex body."

I am yet to see someone explain what exactly they mean by this, given that sex is decided loooong before sperm even meets egg. If, for eg, you agree with the idea that "something happens in utero" not vague at all... then its the brain that has the error, not the sex. Just like every other mental disorder in the world. And yes, i believe that anyone who has sex dysphoria has a mental disorder, luckily both the DSM and ICD agree with my non-expert opinion. (That is not to say that a person who does not follow gender norms is mentally ill btw, transgender people often have no sex dysphoria at all.)

LyndaNotLinda · 04/03/2016 23:27

Tabsicle - are you seriously suggesting that a rapist presents no danger to female inmates? Really?

BeyondTellsEveryoneRealFacts · 04/03/2016 23:30

Those who are generally pro-trans but not in this case, do you think Davina could potentially share a cell with the sex offending transwoman Claire Darbyshire?

LyndaNotLinda · 04/03/2016 23:35

Female bodied persons are at a much greater risk of harm from male bodied persons than vice versa. It therefore makes sense to separate the two.

TW should be housed in a separate wing. I don't want them to be at risk from men but equally I don't want women to be put at risk.

There is also a massive issue in the stats between men and women prisoners. If only 3 transwomen are incarcerated for sexual crimes and those crimes are reported as being committed by women, it doubles the number of women in prison for sexual offences.

That's just mad isn't it?

Valanice1989 · 04/03/2016 23:41

MtFs commit crimes (including violent crimes) at the same rate as men, not women:

Second, regarding any crime, male-to-females had a significantly increased risk for crime compared to female controls (aHR 6.6; 95% CI 4.1–10.8) but not compared to males (aHR 0.8; 95% CI 0.5–1.2). This indicates that they retained a male pattern regarding criminality. The same was true regarding violent crime.

The study found that MtFs are 18 times likelier to commit violent crimes than "cis" women are. If you allow MtFs into women's prisons, you'll need to build new ones anyway, because there won't be room for all of them. If you're going to do that, you might as well just as build separate prisons for MtFs. That eliminates the possibility of prisoners impregnating each other.

Tabsicle · 04/03/2016 23:56

LyndaNotLinda - I'm not really talking about this specific case. My feeling is that this particular person probably isn't safe in the general population anywhere. What I'm saying is that statistically trans women are far more at risk of being victims of sexual assault in prison that being perpetrators.