Issues with gender self ID in other countries

[totallywired]

One of the arguments I keep hearing in favour of gender self ID id that in other countries where it has been introduced like Canada and Ireland there have been no problems with access to women’s safe spaces. Is this the case or is anyone aware of any instances of men accessing women’s spaces to abuse them?

One in a thread today in FWR about a man pressing a complaint for being refused access to a vulnerable women's overnight shelter in Canada, the statistics back from Target in the US where making the changing rooms unisex between doubled and tripled voyeuristic crime against women and girls, yes it's happening despite being very early days. Bear in mind too that some countries, such as Ireland, are not interpreting self ID in the way that it would be interpreted and happen here.

There was a piece on The Westminster Hour, no longer on I-player, that also featured Miranda Yardley. On that they described a place where there were 2 night shelters, one male which was a bit rough, and one female which was tidier and cleaner.

After self-id went through, there were men sitting outside the women's shelter, smoking and drinking etc and not a woman to be seen. Both shelters were being used by men and the operators could do nothing about it. The women had vanished - no one knew where they went. I think it was somewhere in the US like LA.

This was just linked to on another thread. Not all in the countries you mentioned, but using similar laws.
nounequalrights.com/information/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/The-Threat-to-Women-and-Girls-Illustrated-1.pdf

AFAIK in Ireland trans identifying males are not allowed in women's prison - they are still segregated by sex.

That is really sad, it's a way for men to push their way in and dominate.

I think to protect vulnerable biological women, female only shelters and refuges should be based on biological sex

I think to protect vulnerable biological women, female only shelters and refuges should be based on biological sex

Christopher “Jessica” harmbrook raped 2 women in a Canadian shelter

Thanks for the links and info. So it isn’t true that women’s concerns are unfounded. I think often trans women are quite vulnerable and need protecting in prison for example and in some cases to be housed in women’s prisons, but it needs to be done on a case by case basis. There are transgender women who are in prison for sex offences against women, as I understand it after self Id comes in prison authorities would be forced to put them in women’s prion.

There are lots of bits and pieces to unpick in the question "have other countries who have introduced self-ID had any problems?"

Firstly, how would we know about problems? Who is going to tell us? I suspect in many cases women who would have accessed services that are now provided by / dominated by / accessed by transwomen are simply not accessing those services or going underground. I don't know if there's an informal women's refuge network in somewherelike Canada, but it wouldn't surprise me that something like what we had in the UK before proper refuges were set up (where a friend knew a woman who knew a woman who would provide a bedroom for a few nights so that you could leave your abusive DH) had sprung up. By its very nature, this wouldn't be reported in the mainstream press.

Similarly, are women changing their behaviours by not using public toilets / changing rooms / similar, because now that they are not single sex spaces they no longer feel safe to do so? Who is monitoring and reporting on toilet usage? (I'd bet no-one)

Secondly, there is always a time lag with things like official statistics. If as a result of self-ID there is a spike in "women convicted of rape" type incidents, there will be a delay in fully understanding what is happening as official data takes a while to be collated, cleansed, analysed and then published.

Thirdly, there is a natural lag with seeing the full implications of such a far-reaching shift. How many female NHL players are actually trans? The number at the moment (I believe) is 1, and it will be a number of years before the impact on women's sport really filters through so that sports like ice hockey are dominated by transwomen. Meanwhile, the damage to female athletes will have been done and will be irreversible. Women will miss their physical peak, their opportunity to shine in their sports. They will miss out on the college scholarships (and thus, in many cases, a college education). They will never get that time back. By the point at which the authorities see that the women's team is mostly comprised of men, they will be back to days where there were no women's teams and have to start all over again - if they even bother.

Fourthly, different countries have implemented self-ID in different ways. Notably, the legislation in Ireland excludes prisons from the scope of self-ID, so of course they won't experience the sort of issues that we fear would arise in the UK. (It also excludes transmen from becoming Catholic priests, which is not as pertinent in the UK as it is in Ireland, but rather illustrates that the legislators don't really believe that it's possible to change sex)

Finally, I believe that it shouldn't matter if "only" a few women are harmed by those who will abuse self-ID. It's entirely predictable, and I find it hard to think of another policy area where it would be OK to say that there is an "acceptable" number of victims. One victim of the policy change is one too many. Anyone who thinks otherwise is by default saying that there is a threshold that it is OK to stay below, and they should be challenged to articulate this. Is it OK if 100 women and girls are abused as a result of self-ID? 1000? 1,000,000? Where should we draw the line?

I totally agree with everything you say oleanaswimple. Women’s safety shouldn’t be compromised, even if it only a small number of women are affected it’s still not on. I do think it is useful to have concrete examples though, because I keep reading that ‘terfs’ are scaremongering or it’s all fine in Canada or what’s so terrifying about going to the loo next to a man with a penis? It’s not a big deal, etc. If you can point to things that have already happened it might give some people pause for thought.

I think often trans women are quite vulnerable and need protecting in prison for example and in some cases to be housed in women’s prisons

Firstly, about half of the TIMs currently in the male estate are sex offenders so they can bloody well stay where they are.

Secondly, this is all very kumbaya and yes, some trans prisoners are highly vulnerable. But it's based on a complete lack of understanding of the prison estate.

The female estate is TINY. Capacity is about 5,000. There are minimal places for highly dangerous prisoners or even prisoners vulnerable to bad treatment by other prisoners - women prisoners are rarely dangerous or at risk from other prisoners. In fact, there is only one female prison in England and Wales capable of accommodating Cat A (most dangerous) prisoners and in Scotland and Northern Ireland, they have to be housed in special areas of male prisons.

The male estate has a capacity of about 90,000. Most prisons have wings for vulnerable and dangerous prisoners. The male estate has this capacity because of its size.

In the end, the authorities would have to rebrand a male prison as a female prison and accommodate all the trans prisoners there. Visits would be hard because of travel distance. What's the point of this when male prisons can already accommodate TIMs in special wings?

That's the problem, though - how do we actually know what is happening?

Yy LangCleg.

There are all kinds of prisoners who are vulnerable and have to be treated in a different way to the majority of prisoners, either because they are at high risk of harm from other prisoners (ex-police officers, paedophiles etc) or at high risk of self-harm. This is even without thinking about the potential harm to other inmates.

Well, there were 6 rapes by females in 2016.

Since in UK law you can only rape with a penis, we already know that 100% of the rapists currently in the female estate are actually men.

ONE. RAPIST. IN. A. WOMEN'S. PRISON. IS. ONE. TOO. MANY.

Langcleg, trans women are already housed in women’s prison on a case by case basis, I was describing what is already happening. I don’t believe rapists should be in women’s prison, where do I say that?!

Lang - I don't think we know whether the "female rapists" are being held in the male or female prison estate?

totally - I dont' think Lang's comment was aimed at you, more general frustration with having to say out loud that rapists shouldn't be in a women's prison. I mean, it's fucking ridiculous that it even needs saying, isn't it?

Isn't there a stat that says that an abusive man / rapist has x number of victims? So if only one self-ID-not-really-just-faking-to-harm-women case slips through.....

Not that I believe only one would occur

All the countries who have done it, have made the changes relatively recently. Also some of them, such as the Scandinavian countries have much better equality than the U.K. already, much better prison services and so on, so no problems in Norway (for example) does not mean that will mean there will be no problems in the U.K. where austerity is already hitting hard.

I haven't heard of any issues in Ireland, but of course it may be that it just isn't reported. The activists seem to be taking a very different approach though. E.g. there seems to be quite a push for 3rd spaces which have been rolled out across a lot of the universities. There was a trans rights march recently and from what I saw on the news it seemed to be predominantly young trans men. The main item on the agenda seemed to be access to medical care (extremely long wait times to see a specialist and access hormone treatment etc.)
There isn't a lot of coverage in the media in general though. I would imagine most people in Ireland are not even aware of self ID

Here's a problem a women's shelter is having with a self-identifying trans in Canada. It sounds incredibly messy.

mustreadalaska.com/transgender-files-complaint-shelter-abused-women/

AFAIK Canada has also instituted a ruling against deadnaming (Not allowed to mention/publish a transperson's former name). Which means that in conjunction with misgendering being a crime, how will the public know the reality behind crime stats?

Therefore, it will be easy to say that all is going hunky-dory on the surface, when in reality there could be all kinds of problems with self-id, etc and we'll never know.

torontosun.com/2014/02/15/a-sex-predators-sick-deception/wcm/127b4003-d06d-489d-9679-861651dd3160

Here is a link to the Hambrook case. I have an issue with the way that the article says 'he claimed to be a transgender woman called Jessica'. Sorry, but according to your stupid laws, he WAS a woman called Jessica. You don't get to call people 'fake transgender' when they commit a crime but keep up the pretence the rest of the time. The fact is that Hambrook is a biological man who assaulted women in a shelter and that is why biological men should not be in women's shelters, regardless of what they say about their inner gender feelings. That is the only important point.

I think often trans women are quite vulnerable and need protecting in prison for example and in some cases to be housed in women’s prisons

Then build a freaking prison wing for them to be housed in. Would you say that a fox that was lame and might be attacked by other foxes would feel safer being housed in a hen-house where the other foxes couldn't get to him? Well yes, he would definitely be safer there. But surprisingly, the chickens wouldn't. They would be at enormous risk, even from a lame fox. And that is exactly the same as prison.

There are relatively few women in prison for violence. There are many in there for drug offences and prostitution and not paying their TV licence. Often they will have had a lifetime of being abused, assaulted and pimped out by men and now people are genuinely proposing that they should be housed alongside rapists and sex offenders.

Hulo's link on Alaska leads with this:

[Editor’s note: The transgender individual in this story is referred to as a male for purposes of clarity, because he is a biological male who presents as a female, and because no legal record of his female identity or name change could be discovered through research.]

What a breath of fresh air to read something like that.