Males in female prisons

[WankingMonkey]

I have noticed a fair bit of support for 'identification' over sex on MN. I am just wondering what peoples opinions are on males wanting into female prisons because they are 'trans'?

If possible, have a think, write out a reply...and [i]then[/i] read this

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/soham-child-killer-ian-huntley-9626220

As I have seen many defenses along the lines of 'noone would pretend to be a woman' and such. But here we have a clear example of this in action. And it is impossible to let 'some' do it and not others, isn't it. You can't make laws without clear boundaries of course.

I actually can't believe it has taken someone like Huntley to wake up a fair few of my friends, this is all over my facebook today with people suddenly u-turning on their previous stance...

I've opined, based on the evidence (which isn't certain) combined with my own professional observations.

I'm not certain but am fairly sure.

Many on this thread are absolutely sure I'm wrong though.

And yet you want to celebrate these unproven and uncertain differences between boys and girls. The most recent meta analysis (I read the New Scientist article about it) describes how brains are in fact mosaics with wide mixture of features, which cannot be predicted by sex. Is it right to discount this analysis?

I'm not certain but am fairly sure.

So how is it that women were dominant in computer programming to the extent that it was seen as a 'female job' until the 1960s if they are innately not attracted to this area?

ailpartout
You're correct, we're on AIBU. I clearly took a wrong turn on the boards somewhere. My apologies.

Since I'm here though, I'm going to suggest that if you have a position of influence over the lives of young children and adolescents, you owe it to them to examine yourself for preconceived ideas about the "innateness" of differences between the sexes.
The fact you feel comfortable stating that you've hit 'peak feminist' would worry me hugely if either of my children were in your care. The position you take on innate vs societally cultivated differences is going to influence your expectations of the children's potential.

May I suggest you read from two authors who take opposing positions on the neuroscience and see what you conclude?

Simon Baron-Cohen believes in innate differences.
Cordelia Fine summarises the evidence against.

Worth a try, if you are open to examining your own belief system and find yourself persuaded by robust science rather than passionate rhetoric.

In fact, whilst I've read summaries and articles and extracts, I admit I've not read the full published books of each author.

If you're interested, I'm happy to read both and then discuss?

"So how is it that women were dominant in computer programming to the extent that it was seen as a 'female job' until the 1960s if they are innately not attracted to this area?"

Isn't this a matter of hiring as much as anything? If the male hiring managers say 'we want female secretaries & computer programmers', they will get female secretaries & computer programmers.

I don't think we can conclude that women were 'attracted to the area', so much as the job was seen as routine, mechanical (punch cards), and feminine and women were therefore hired for it.

There are today many factors deterring women from computer science.

I will read them...

My preconcieved ideas weren't pulled out of my arse though. I'm educated, fair, well read and reasonably intelligent (more educated than innately intelligent, for what it's worth!).

As I've tried to explain in previous posts, my ideas as to innateness are regarding huge generalisations. I don't begin by thinking a particular student will be good or bad at a subject. They are analysed on their particular merits.

The position you take on innate vs societally cultivated differences is going to influence your expectations of the children's potential.

Absolutely, but I have got to where I am by proving my fairness and ability to ensure the best education for all my students. Equally, an opposing position would influence my expectations.

I'm a great believer in children (and adults) rising to meet high expectations and falling to meet lower ones.

Despite what may be bandied about as fact on the feminism board, typically male and female traits and brains may well be a thing. Science is a very long way away from having an answer.

I know I have nothing more than an opinion, I treat it as such. You and others are adamant I'm wrong yet don't have proof you're right.

SpeakNoWords

Celebrate was perhaps the wrong word. I was after an alternative to denying their existence or possible existence.

Is it right to discount this analysis?

No, it's something else to add to the debate. It sways me neither one way nor the other at the moment.

Do you accept that neither of our standpoints is provable and the balance of probability is fairly unbiased too?

I'm going to say that the weight of evidence from neuroscientific studies now falls in favour of brain differences NOT being innate, and that the plasticity of the brain is both proven and demonstrably explains any of the minor differences that develop through a lifetime.

But then, it's a very very long time since I studied any of this stuff, and whilst I like to keep myself up to date with any major developments that hit the news I would definitely benefit from a more concerted effort to review and critique the major studies as a whole.

AA would you be okay with it if the TW was in for a white collar crime...like fraud or something, and had absolutely no history whatsoever of violence or sex crimes then? I suspect you wouldn't.....in which case the 'violent crime' part of your argument is disingenuous. If you would be fine with a non-violent TW prisoner in a female prison, then I apologise for doubting you!

Well, the basic problem is that a small number of prisoners would have knives. If I'm going to be a criminal locked up with other criminals I don't want to be locked in a small room in a highly stressful living situation with anyone who has been given a knife when knives have specifically been denied to the rest of us. It's just the cherry on the cake that statistically at least - although there will be exceptions - those prisoners given knives will be taller, stronger, more socialised to dominate others and get their own way, and yes, statistically more likely than the other prisoners to have committed a violent crime.

Yes roseshippy! Which is why you can't just point at women-dominated 'caring' jobs or pink craft toys aimed at girls and say that this is what women have chosen. Choice is not always free.

Just so I am clear AA the knives are really penises right? So you are viewing a penis as a potentially offensive weapon, that a minority of prisoners would have that the others wouldn't?

I'm not sure that analogy holds. The ability to commit sexual violence, or just plain violence is not limited to men. So some of the women have 'knives' or maybe 'forks' which I guess can do some damage if you want them to!

In the case of TW prisoners with no history of violence or sexual violence, why would you expect them to be more likely than the general female population (which would almost certainly actually contain prisoners with a record of either violence or sexual violence) to use the weapons at their disposal?

Men are ON AVERAGE more likely to be violent, and certainly more likely to be in prison for violent crime than women, but once you have someone who actually specifically doesn't have a record of violence, the averages aren't important any more?

So do you have a problem with specifically non-violent TW (guilt of non-violent crime) being in a female prison?

ouriana well indeed.

So I have a problem with people like Huntley being in an enclosed space with basically anyone, and if it is people they are physically stronger than, I have an even bigger problem with. But that is because they've been convicted of a violent crime in which they used their physical superiority to offend.

I am not sure I have a huge problem with the prisoners convicted of tax fraud hanging out together regardless of genitalia.

Why can the prison service not build suitable places for all prisoners.

Italian Money is the simple answer, sad as it makes me.

ail I'm not ignoring your questions, I intend to come back and answer them, am just rather tied up. Hope you're still around when I return.

Yes, "knives" was an analogy.

I don't agree that averages aren't important for worrying who you will be locked up with. It's reality that counts, and while it's possible the male prisoner you will be locked up with is a seven-stone pacifist who comes up to your armpit, if you look at the reality of males in prison, and what they are in for, that really isn't very likely.

Male violence is a thing. #NotAllMen and so on, but when you are talking about two groups of prisoners, one of whom is very, very vulnerable and very likely to have been victims as well as criminals, and one group which is bigger, stronger and has a much higher incidence of violence, then you have to err on the side of not making already-vulnerable women even more vulnerable.

(And the white-collar crime thing is a red herring, anyway. Just because someone doesn't have a conviction for violence doesn't mean you can depend on them not to be violent.)

Males in female prisons

The answer is so very simple.
Offender with penis > male prison
Offender without penis > female prison

If a man wants to treated as a women, he has the necessary surgery and hormone treatment. Otherwise he is a man.

ail you have argued more strongly than anyone else on this thread that there are both physical and mental differences between males and females as a class and yet you are also the most forceful in terms of arguing there should be no segregation in almost every case and to exercise such segregation in even the case of prison is pandering to "special snowflakes". I find this logically inconsistent. In this vein, if we are so different our ability to "win" is going to be highly dependant on the way the framework of the action in which we are participating has been developed. As females have held lower status in our society until relatively recently, that framework is likely to be skewed towards one that suits males as default and the females who do "win" are those who exhibit characteristics more akin to males (and are going to be outliers in terms of the general characteristics of their class which you argue most females adhere to). So in most spheres that matter, females won't win.

If the differences are mainly down to socialisation, we can work on that to achieve equality. If the differences are innate as you say then we either have to alter the societal framework or put up with being second class.

Morphene with regard to your delicate mythical trans woman, well, according to me, if a trans woman had had the op to remove testicles and invert penis or whatever, if they had transitioned long before committing a crime, were no larger or physically imposing than the average woman and had not had any kind of conviction for sexual or violent offences, then I would probably be fine with them being in a woman's prison! I still would not want to share a cell with them.

But then I doubt I would want to share a cell with anyone in prison (if that is an option RochelleGoyle?)

But...

I am not in a woman's prison currently so it is not for me to say!

The no penis rule is fine but what about the case of a trans woman who has no penis but keeps hold of a very male viewpoint, the one that says 'what I want and sod anyone else'. YES of course you get plenty of females like that too.

But I find this behaviour from one transexual woman (that is how the article describes this trans woman because she is post operative), to be very worrying and I very much doubt an isolated incident.

She kept a rape crisis centre tied up in litigation because they did not want her to volunteer there. I cannot imagine any woman ever doing that!

thetyee.ca/News/2007/02/03/Nixon/

That is so fucking entitled of this bloke.

No woman would ever have the fucking narcissism to damage rape victims in that way.

And if she did, she'd be vilified for it. Because people would be staggered by how self centred and self important a woman was.

Lastly, Morphene, I doubt you would find many trans women who would fit the bill since according to Dr. James Barrett (President, British Association of Gender Identity Specialists) in a letter dated 20 August 2015 (as I posted before but for any new to the debate) "...the ever-increasing tide of referrals of patients in prison serving long or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences. These vastly outnumber the number of prisoners incarcerated for more ordinary, non-sexual, offences. It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case. There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this. These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system and even (in one very well evidenced case ... that the driving force was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier..."

As I said before the letter is ref TRA0149 and can be found at

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/transgender-equality/publications/

Once you click on the web page, go to bottom, it says "Written evidence", click“View all”, order by reference number to easily find ref TRA0149.

So how are you going to say yes to the one not offensive or dangerous person and no to the others. I believe some trans women may even be housed in women's prisons at the moment, but maybe in special wings. Women's prisons are not, as far as I know, set up to cater to multiple violent offenders but if those who wish to see trans women, with or without their penises, in women's prisons get their way, then those prisons will need to gear up fast.

And, once again, who is asking the female prison population on their views?

It is pretty shocking isn't it askbasil.

Paris Green was housed in several women's prisons. was moved from one prison because Paris was having sex (so it was reported) with several inmates.