Fed up of the suicide blackmail trotted out by some in the trans community.

[CosmicCanary]

Watching GMTV this morning and apparently male sex offenders/prisoners who want to become women and threaten suicide if they are not transfered to a womens prison should be allowed to, so they dont kill themselves.

Basically their threat of suicide is way more important than the physical and mental safety of female prisioners.

I am fed up of being threatened with none exsistant suicide rates.
I am fed up of the emotional blackmail used just so men get their own way.

We are being held hostage by men who have a very clear and selfish agenda.
If women behaved in this way they would be called hysterical, mentally unwell and sectioned.

I'm not sure how robust the statistics are but the suicide threat is emotional blackmail.

It’s wrong, but I find that gender politics is swarming with it, anytime somebody says X, somebody comes a long and plays their Trump card Y

It certainly contrasts with the treatment of other groups whose elevated suicide risk is well-documented. People disabled by chronic mental health conditions, for example, who are put through brutal and demoralising fitness-to-work tests regardless of the impact on their mental state.

I'm not suggesting that anyone in distress should be treated poorly or cavalierly. But we could do with some sort of (preferably evidence-based) conversation about how such risks should be responded to in general.

Threatening suicide is an abuser's move.

But actual suicide and self-harm stats? Women in prison, despite being only a tiny proportion of the prison population, are much, much more likely to self-harm in prison than men are. In 2016 women, despite being only 5% of the prison population, accounted for 21% of all incidents of self-harm in prison. 46% of women in prison have attempted suicide at some point in their lifetime. This is twice the rate of men (21%) and more than seven times higher than the general population. In 2016 twelve women in prison took their own lives.

But they are just women, and they aren't screaming and threatening, so their distress doesn't count.

This makes me very uncomfortable. Let's say there's a story about a trans teenager and politics and the background circumstances are interesting. I might want to investigate and publish something but I'd have a theoretical risk of suicide in my thoughts. It would be a real constraint on what I'd do.

I worry that if the stakes continue to be raised there'll be an "I'll show THEM!" moment from a distressed young person. And these days you could well expect social media to be used to make the biggest impact.

Me too. I have been tweeting the Prison study a lot. It does shut people up. That and the Target poster.

Plus, threatening suicide is abusive. And suicide is fucking cowardly. I speak from experience

I think some young people don't really understand that death is permanent. It's as if they think they could try being dead for a bit and then come back.

My own consciousness of mortality didn't really hit until I was in my early twenties. It's one thing to know that one day you'll cease to exist; it's another thing to really feel it.

I’ve said it before on these threads, DH used the threat of suicide repeatedly when he was in the pink fog stage of his crossdressing fetish. But EVERYTIME would make Lazarus grade recovery whenever I capitulated and agreed with whatever horrible and self centred delusion/ sexual demand he was making.

It is abusive, and to use these threats in woo statistics, as reason and evidence to sterilise children is grotesque.

The traditional response to somebody becoming suicidally distressed for any reason at all was to call in the crisis team to help them stay safe whilst assessing the need for psychiatric or psychotherapeutic intervention.

It seems ironic that crisis services and MH services including camhs should have been cut to the bone at a time when public concerns about potential suicidality in growing numbers of young people are so high.

Or maybe there's some cause and effect there, who knows

Perhaps if a trans person is suicidal then maybe, just maybe, they have had an awful realisation that they are not trans at all. And that they've gone through all this torment and mutilation for nothing. And maybe they don't feel that they can face the reaction of their family and friends, particularly friends who are very invested in trans ideology. And that the realities of 'living as a woman' (whatever the hell that is), isn't all that they imagined it would be. And maybe they are lonely as the pool of people who might be interested in forming an intimate relationship with a trans person is small.

In prison, if a convicted rapist wants to move to a women's prison, then I hope that nobody would suggest that this man is morally above pretending to be suicidal in order to secure the switch.

Can someone talk me through the suicide/social contagion argument, pref with references? Thanks

This article on 4thwavenow is a good starting point:

4thwavenow.com/2017/09/08/suicide-or-transition-the-only-options-for-gender-dysphoric-kids/

I worked in a men's prison and occasionally we would have transgender females in there. I will say, they were incredibly vulnerable prisoners, and were often segregated with other vulnerable prisoners which includes sex offenders, rapists, gang leaders etc, plus anyone else who declared themselves vulnerable. It's a tough call- that's a horrible place for a genuine transgender person to be (for example identified as a woman, partway through the process of gender reassignment- one prisoner had breasts and wore 'women's' clothes for example) but I don't know what the answer is, and it's a judgement call isn't it as to how to accurately decide if someone is a threat to women in a women's prison, or if indeed they are in more danger themselves as a 'woman' in a men's prison?

I'm sure there is a variety of opinions on this, but I personally believe that prisoners- all prisoners- have a basic right to safety while inside, (and yes I know that's controversial but that's what defines us as a society- we are fair) and that includes women in prison with a transgender person IYSWIM. It appears that we cannot adequately protect the rights of either party in this system as it stands, so something needs to be done if we are going to have an increasing number of transgender people (either genuine or not) entering the prison system.

thenewaveragebear I have seen a transman suggest that a third space is needed, particularly because if you are going down the "you are what you identify as" road (something I don't agree with), where do you put prisoners who identify as nonbinary?

This transman had been in prison (a women's prison) when young, before transition, and was understandably not keen on the idea of transmen going to men's prisons. And of course it's pretty obvious why all the stories have been about male prisoners claiming they are women in order to get into women's prisons, and not women claiming they are men in order to be housed in the male estate. (But the men claiming to be women wouldn't want to go to a third space, as there would be less women to prey on, and it wouldn't validate their own sense of power over women.)

It's the same as loos - men's loos are for men. Women's loos are for women, children, teenagers of both sexes, nonbinary people, transwomen, and perverts who claim to be one or all of the above.

Oh, and women's loos are also for transmen, who ASTONISHINGLY ENOUGH (not) often don't like using the mens.

Annie I do agree to an extent, and obviously, as a system the prison service do need to crack down on false claims of people pretending to be transgender, either to be relocated, or also the other reasons such as extra protection, support, attention etc etc inside. Somehow, and I don't profess for one minute to be able to begin to do this, but somehow we need a way of determining the 'truth' of these claims, because not all transgender (male to female) will be a risk to women in a women's prison. Same as not all transgender people (male to female) will be a risk to any females in any other female designated spaces. There will always be predatory behaviour exhibited in prisons, indeed women are at risk from other women in a women's prison, and men from men etc.

Prison gives people time- literally. We are talking about a sub-population of potentially dangerous, manipulative, calculating people (some, not all) in a hugely underfunded and under resourced system, that is growing daily. To open a 'third space' prison is complicated, because a) you'd need at least 2 because of transgender males/females being at risk from each other , b) the training and support required for officers and civilian staff would be tremendous, and it could be argued would be better used elsewhere, and c) there would be repercussions regarding the rights of those prisoners regarding family visits, locality etc. Aside from the fact that d) there are prisons literally full to the rafters with 3 men cells and being run into the ground due to underfunding. Women's prisons tend to be, not always, but tend to be- newer, better equipped, less capacity, etc. There are lots of reasons why a prisoner would want to go there, and probably not all would be motivated by a desire to prey on females. I cannot see it being a viable option to open or recategorise 2 existing prisons which will largely stand empty.

This would only penalise the genuine transgender prisoners, of which there must be some. I think the key to it is to improve facilities and services in all prison environments so that there is no great motivation for transgender prisoners to move to a women's prison. The system needs a shake and a huge injection of funding, not just focussing of rehabilitation but on improving conditions. This is never high on Parliamentary agenda.

With regards to 'non binary' spaces in public places, perhaps going forward this will be facilitated- but there will still be the fact of needing multiple non-binary facilities to accommodate the different types of transgender people. I know very little about this, but surely transgender female and transgender male are 2 groups, not one?

Please understand that I am not minimising the risk to females in female spaces, nor the unfairness that surrounds this, because it is true that female only (true female only) spaces are becoming diluted by this issue. I just don't what the solution would be, but from having worked inside HMP I can offer a small insight into the logistics which might be of interest.

The social contagion idea arises from the observation that suicide or suicidal behaviour in young people often occurs in 'clusters'. If somebody in a (adolescent / very early adult) social group commits or attempts suicide, others connected to that group are more likely to do the same. Bridgend in wales provided a famous example a few years ago.

The media can also 'spread' suicidality: reports of suicides, especially detailed ones, have been shown to trigger copycat attempts and completed suicides amongst young viewers. Even fictional suicides in soap opera etc can have this effect. Survivors have reported either that the media gave them the idea in the first place or that it helped them select a method.

I've pasted a couple of articles below: the first is about adolescent suicide generally but positions contagion as a key factor, the second is a more specific summary of contagion research.

comprehensive review by leader in the field

Review of social contagion more specifically

And young people who think they may be trans are told that their only choices are transition or die.

Thanks Doc and Genghis

This is the WHO recommendation for responsible and deglamorized media reporting:

Recommendation(s)

At the population level, responsible reporting of suicide (such as avoiding language which sensationalizes or normalizes suicide or presents it as a solution to a problem, avoiding pictures and explicit description of the method used, and providing information about where to seek help) is recommended for the reduction of suicidal behaviours.
The health sector should assist and encourage the media to follow responsible reporting practices related to suicidal behaviour.
Strength of recommendation: STRONG
Quality of the evidence: MODERATE

Thanks Cosmic for the thread - I didn't know about the GMTV discussion this morning. I thought Nicola Williams from Fair Play for Women did a brilliant job of explaining why g.i. is problematic in general and specifically in relation to women's prisons. I was cautiously encouraged when India Willoughby was expressing reservations with the proposed move to gender identification away from the current medical/legal process (I've mainly seen transwomen expressing these concerns in print or online rather than on broadcast media). But then my heart sank when she brought up the issue of puberty blockers - which Nicola responded to very well, imo - and then the suicide stat. For a split second I was hopeful it would actually be discussed on live TV but then Piers Morgan drew the item to a close. I know from other threads on here there's been discussion about questioning the robustness of the 48% / 1:2 stat via e.g. More or Less, but has anyone on here seen the topic (robustness) actually being debated on TV?

Hmm. Think I've answered my own question there!

Totally with you OP. I have worked in crisis counselling and lost my brother to suicide, so I know the reality and the quite reasonable fear it provokes, especially in parents. I watched Lily Madigan's 'bathrooms' video last night and it was straight into the so-called statistics...4/10 of us in my school will attempt suicide. I think this is a juggernaut of a movement, funded and backed by some very powerful people and it is sacrificing our children's physical and mental health, and women's rights to serve the interests of god-knows-who. As others have said, the vast majority of these suicide threats are an abuse tactic. I totally support the human rights of genuinely transgender individuals, but not this identity trumps everything rush to eliminate biology and the real inequalities and problems that arise from it (for men as well as women).

partystress

And to everyone with personal experience of this devastating issue. To see it used as a political bargaining chip in such an careless way leaves me speechless

thenewaveragebear what you say sounds very sensible, on the whole. I disagree with you inasmuch as I don't think even "genuine" transwomen should be in women's prisons, at all, ever, but I do agree that safety for all prisoners should be sorted out.

Assigned - the Samaritans' media guidelines on reporting suicide are a useful resource.

I might start sending them to outlets like the Guardian every time they publish a puff piece by Paris Lees about how hundreds of teens will kill themselves if everyone doesn't immediately fall to their knees in support of their transition