To be depressed and angry that sex offenders will be able to “change gender”

[Ramblingnamechanger]

Following last nights vote by MSPs to reject an amendment to forbid sex offenders from accessing easier access to a GRC, it seems that womens rights to privacy and decency , same sex care , etc is not important. They are still to vote on the whole bill but until the legalities are clearer, surely this cannot be acceptable?

But why should changing your GENDER impact your rights to access SEX specific spaces?

Well quite. Let people change their 'gender'. They're protected under the gender reassignment characteristic (which doesn't require a GRC) in the EA from discrimination because of their 'gender'. It should be completely separate from sex, which is a different characteristic and isn't mutable. Anything where we know there is good reason to divide men and women - sport, prisons, hospital wards, changing rooms - should go back to doing it by sex, as was the original purpose. There is no good reason for dividing anything by 'gender'. The latter is impossible anyway given the existence of 'nonbinary' and 'agender' identities.
With that in place again, if there are problems for people with the gender reassignment characteristic then those need addressing in their own right, not by destroying women's rights.

Is there any actual evidence that allowing sex offenders to change their gender results in people doing so in order to gain access to women's prisons for example? In countries where people are allowed to change gender more easily there hasn't been a significant problem.

reduxx.info/canada-female-prison-guard-diagnosed-with-ptsd-after-being-forced-to-monitor-a-trans-identified-male-in-a-womens-prison/

As someone pointed out further up the thread, a recent investigation by a journalist in Belgium revealed that there is no official data being gathered but there are plenty of reports from prison inmates and guards about the harm done to female prisoners. Lack of "evidence" if you don't gather data is not proof that everything is fine, it just means you can pretend you don't know everything isn't fine.

I've linked to just a couple of examples but there are many more.

It's always worth looking at the women's rights record of any country which claims the introduction of self ID has been problem free.

It's very interesting that women need to prove there's no issue to resist this change rather than those who promote it having to prove that there are no negative consequences.

In countries where people are allowed to change gender more easily there hasn't been a significant problem.

I suggest you do some digging on 'Barbie Khardashian', currently serving time in Limerick women's prison for violent crimes against women.

To mitigate the obvious threat this person poses, they are in solitary confinement. You won't hear about this stuff in the media, but a freelancer on Twitter did some digging and had prison guards and social workers open up, off the record, about how stressful this situation is for everyone involved and there have been breakdowns among the staff.

This individual, though in solitary, roars sexual threats from their cell.

So, you may not have heard of this situation or consider it a serious problem, but the staff and inmates in Limerick prison may not see it like that.

How cares about them though?

It's always worth looking at the women's rights record of any country which claims the introduction of self ID has been problem free.

Quite. Ireland has significant form for screwing over women via patriarchal power structures.

Why wouldn't a convicted sex offender declare they had changed gender?
As far as I understand nonces aren't well regarded in the male prison system.

jellyfrizz · Today 14:23

^Why wouldn't a convicted sex offender declare they had changed gender?
As far as I understand nonces aren't well regarded in the male prison system.^

They have wings and even entire prisons to themselves. They're very safe places for the scumbags, as, as you know, they're cowards who don't attack other men.

They have wings and even entire prisons to themselves so no need to put them in women's prisons for "safety" then.

I didn't mean trans prisons, sex offender prisons. My BiL is a maintenance worker in the one which held Max Clifford. He was transferred there from an ordinary unit and he said the difference is stark; he's no longer afraid at work.

if the record-keeping system breaks down when someone changes their gender identity, it will break down just the same if someone changes their name

Nope. Becase it isn't the same system. People with a GRC are exempt from the usual process for recording name changes when getting a DBS (or Scottish equivalent) check. To protect their privacy.

I ran Alternatives to Violence weekend workshops as a volunteer in our local prison for about eight years, with both male and female prisoners. They have a sex offender unit there which is quite highly thought of, and we used to get occasional groups from it. I stopped volunteering after a weekend in which my inmate co-volunteer (who had been through the programme himself) gave me incredibly creepy vibes. I had never done this before but I looked him up online when I got home and found that he had been imprisoned for an offence which was identical to the offence that was committed against me when I was 5/6.

I'm currently listening to an audiobook of "The body keeps the score " by Bessel van der Kolk, and I can vouch for the fact that my body clearly knew there was something here I needed to keep away from.

So how are other women supposed to react or behave in a situation where they literally can't do that, and if they try they are legally in the wrong?

If women's prisons can't protect against assaults, sexual or otherwise, then they are not fit for purpose.

The best way to do that - particularly sexual assaults - is to not put men in there.

Limerick prison: open.spotify.com/episode/1Q6XWtPg4wYL4HPUptUCcx

If women's prisons can't protect against assaults, sexual or otherwise, then they are not fit for purpose.

Ditto men's prisons. TQ+ male prisoners can and should be perfectly safely catered for in the male estate.

There is no human right of males to have access to females. Female humans are not therapeutic resources for males.

The other amendments that were voted against were those proposing research and data being recorded accurately. No why wouldn’t they want evidence, having stated there is no evidence to prove anything( well there is but they don’t want to look at it )
there’s a good new thread here in AIBU that explains it all very clearly

Can I just say that the brave people turning up with their "arguments" for the Righteous Genderism side are doing a fabulous job? Namely, giving the awesome and knowledgeable posters the perfect opportunity to answer all the specious faux-talking-points with actual facts and logic! Thus helping any undecided lurkers to truly understand what an utter shitshow has been sneakily unleashed on women in not just Scotland, but in many other parts of the world under the guise of being nice/kind/progressive/right side of history.

Keep 'em coming, please!

Slightly off topic - sorry!- but relating to earlier posts. Do we know of any cases where people have not been accurate on sex on their passport but rather used their trans identity and been refused entry to another country? It is no longer an accurate document after all and a passport should reflect the individual exactly. I can easily see boarder controls thinking it is fraudulent.

I can easily see boarder controls thinking it is fraudulent

So, it's in guesthouses too? 😉

Lol.
You may rightly jest at my incompetence bus sadly it is a problem there too - places like youth hostels where you might choose to be in a single sex room are no longer single sex.

Sorry, can't resist a typo 😁

Women provided evidence of the harms this would cause and has already caused.

They didn't read it. They didn't show up to hear from detransitioners. They just don't care.

Entirely fair.

I expect it’s been mentioned here, but there is a relevant petition live that needs more signatures

www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4668426-petition-update-the-equality-act-to-make-clear-the-characteristic-sex-is-biological-sex