300% increase in sex offences after implementation of gender inclusion policy

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

This may have been posted about before but the search didn't show it up. Summary of research:

The only published longitudinal study, i.e. professional standard research, that has been undertaken on the impact of the implementation of gender inclusion policy at a large retail chain, Target in Canada, saw an increase of 300% in sex offences against women and girls. All the sex offenders were male:

The most likely hypothesis to explain our findings is that Target’s policy signaled to sexual offenders that voyeuristic offenses would be easier to perpetrate in their stores than elsewhere. We believe that this study shows that gender-inclusion policies can bring about increased harm to women and children.

womanmeanssomething.com/1034-2/

More detail from that study:

February 2, 2018
A new study will be published February 3, 2018, analyzing the effects of the gender inclusion policy implemented by Target Stores in April of 2016. Independent researcher Paul Dirks, who provided testimony to the Senate Legal Committee on Canada’s Bill C-16, analyzed 220 media-reported sexual incidents starting in 2003 to determine whether there were any increases in sexual offenses related to the policy.
The study, available at www.womanmeanssomething.com/targetstudy, shows that voyeurism-related offenses increased significantly after the publication of Target’s policy—doubling or tripling according to all measures, while other sexual offense categories changed little. The findings are consistent with the “sex-predator” theory which has posited that sexual offenders may use gender-identity policies in private spaces to gain access to women and children in order to perpetrate sexual violence. This study is the first longitudinal analysis of risks related to gender-inclusion policies. The incident database is open-source and is available for further exploration and analysis.

Key Findings:

• Sexual incidents increased across the entire timeframe, with 44 incidents in the four pre-policy trimesters (Jan ’15-Apr ’16), and 80 in the four post-policy trimesters (May ’16-Aug ’17).
• Females were the victims in over ninety-four percent (94.5%) of the incidents, and children the victims in thirty-four percent (34%). All perpetrators were male.
• The three-season forced-category measurement found a 2.3x increase in the amount of upskirt incidents after the policy, and a 2.9x increase in peeping tom incidents after the policy.
• A Poisson regression found the 4-year pre-policy to post-policy rate change to be 3.03 for Upskirt and 3.14 for Peeping Tom, and the 2-year to be 2.16 for Upskirt and 2.34 for Peeping Tom (both using Trimester as a variable).

Quotes:

• Joyal (2016) found that no less than 60% of men in his population-based sample reported a desire for voyeurism, and that 50% had engaged in it.
• Leclerc (2016) says, “The immediate environment in which crime is committed is not a passive backdrop to events, but actively shapes the offender’s behaviors” and cites Wortley (2001) as identifying four precipitators; prompts, pressures, permissions, and provocations.”
• On Monday, July 11th, 2016, at the Ammon Target store in Idaho Sean/Shuana Smith, a transgender individual, recorded an 18-year old woman changing inside a Target dressing room. At Smith’s sentencing in July 2017, Judge Joel Tingey stated, “I, perhaps along with others, thought that Target has now adopted a questionable policy (and wondered) is someone going to come in and victimize someone because of that… You took advantage of that and victimized this young lady.”
• In the 16 months since the policy announcement there were 29 Peeping Tom offenses in the media reports, of which 28 were in bathrooms and changerooms.
• While it is possible that a general rise in voyeuristic sexual offenses relative to other offenses may account for some of this increase, the magnitude and precise timing of the increase suggests that Target’s gender-inclusion policy accounts for the bulk of it. The most likely hypothesis to explain our findings is that Target’s policy signaled to sexual offenders that voyeuristic offenses would be easier to perpetrate in their stores than elsewhere. We believe that this study shows that gender-inclusion policies can bring about increased harm to women and children

I've seen this mentioned but it's the first time I've actually read the findings, thanks for sharing

That thing that never happens that actually happens even more when the politicians and corporations strip women of their right to privacy and dignity when in various stages of undress.

Thank you for sharing. I am still staggered that people don't think this would be the obvious result.

This is not the first longitudinal study of professional standard research at all.
Thats a ridiculous claim, Paul Dirks is an anti lgbt pastor. Who has rallied against all lgbt, and has set his sites on the trans community.

There are no studies, except by an anti lgbt pastor, who has made a career of attacking trans people.

www.newwestrecord.ca/news/new-westminster-pastor-behind-anti-transgender-rights-posters-1.9716118

Or are we supposed to believe that target's have a problem, when for instance the whole of California that has it stated on all bathrooms they are all-gender, has had no problems, not to mention many states and countries around the world have had no problem with trans access, least of all the UK that has had trans access to preferred facilities enshrined in law since 2010.

I have noticed anything that positions itself as attacking the trans community is posted in this forum. There is absolutely no burden of proof required except a sophisticated misdirecting opinion piece such as the paul dirks article.
He admits himself, it is based on MEDIA reports. Not facts or evidence, someone only has post something up on facebook, and boom, it's in the study!

Whatever your position on trans rights, to claim there is no misinformation or lies pushed forward is a huge stretch, there are lies and misinformation in every single sphere of debate such is the nature of modern media.

Why did paul dirks not reveal the court details and charges, and the result of the court cases??
Its supposed to be 'professional standard research' but it's vaguely based on media reporting??? Really??

People actually believe this? And are they the same people that dismiss every single study that supports trans rights no matter how robust? Hmmm, something smells fishy.

For the record Paul dirks also has written studies claiming gay and lesbian adolescents grow out of same sex attractions.

he also makes claims about other 'longitudinal' studies...

" “In a large, longitudinal, population-based US study, found that 83% of same-sex behaved adolescents became exclusively heterosexually behaved in 6 years.

“The instability of same-sex romantic attraction and behavior (plus sexual identity in previous investigations) presents a dilemma for sex researchers who portray nonheterosexuality as a stable trait of individuals” (emphasis mine)

It’s associated with a number of sexual partners amongst adolescents, Garafalo 1998, with early-onset of sexual behavior again, Garafalo 1998 with drug use the same and criminality says, Beaver 2016.

Now the interesting thing is that most informed people, including educators will recognize many of the associated risks with same-sex behavior and same-sex identity. However, they will continue to support, and by support, I mean normalize and celebrate these kinds of choices and behaviors and identities due to what they feel is the immutability of the orientation.

I remember when I brought this up with our school board, they were blown away that the best research, and it’s very clear in the data, by Savin-Williams (2007), who was a gay researcher, there is no bias here, found that “In a large, longitudinal, population-based US study, found that 83% of same-sex behaved adolescents became exclusively heterosexually behaved in 6 years.”

Okay let that sink in. 83% of same sex behaved adolescence became exclusively heterosexually behaved in 6 years. This is what he says and I quote, “The instability of same-sex romantic attraction and behavior (plus sexual identity in previous investigations) presents a dilemma for sex researchers who portray nonheterosexuality as a stable trait of individuals.”

What?

The conflation of a study that finds an increase in sexual harassment after the introduction of gender inclusion policy with an attack on the Trans Community is very curious. No mention was made of the sexual orientation of the perpetrators. The only conclusion drawn was that they were male.

As repeated ad infinitum, the safeguarding issues of women and children are the priority to most women. That concern is mirrored here. I note there was no comment on those.

Thanks for your opinion.

From my two posts, the likelihood of paul dirks findings to do with bathrooms, is about as likely to be true as 80%+ of gay teenagers becoming straight.
Its another desistance myth, this time about lesbian/gay people from an anti-lgbt pastor.

Yes, posting nonsense from homophobes does no one any favours. These people are no friends to social progress and certainly no friends to women. I’ve noticed with despair people cheering on the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg and even Rod Liddle here. Agree that the implications of replacing sex segregation with gender segregation haven’t been properly thought through, but boosting the voices of misogynists and bigots is awful, please stop.

There appears to be an ad hominem attack in the comments here.

I've looked at the study. The article uses newspaper reports as its source of data. The same search terms were used for media reports made before and after the change in Target policy.

Count data is a pain to analyse because you can't do fancy statistics with it. It does follow a Poisson distribution, so his use of Poisson regression is appropriate.

The Poisson regression results underline the upwards trends in the graphs, particularly Figure 10.

The part of the study that is particularly interesting is where the majority of the incidents occurred. Only peeping tom voyeurism tended to occur in change rooms or wash rooms. Of the other types of indecent behaviour - upskirt voyeurism, indecent exposure, sexual assault - these mainly occurred on the floor of the store.

This means that women and girls were subjected to indecent assault, anywhere, any time in a Target store. And these assaults have significantly increased post-policy.

Media reports are not in themselves an inappropriate focus of research, but that research would normally investigate how events are reported rather than how many events took place etc. For statistical analysis you'd need official figures (e.g. supplied by police) and confirmation e.g. by peer review that the statistical work had been done correctly. Without these, you've basically got a bloke who's saying: 'news reports of this crime have increased.' It's impossible to draw meaningful conclusions.

I think it would be useful for more studies to be conducted that explore male offending against women. For that to happen we'd need reliable police recording of reports - and we already have problems with this, even without the additional difficulty of gender self-ID.

This means that women and girls were subjected to indecent assault, anywhere, any time in a Target store. And these assaults have significantly increased post-policy.

No, the most it says is media reporting of them has increased.

Its also significant that when Target's policy was announced, it was not the start of the implementation. Many of their stored#s had been refurbished over many of the previous years with new changing layouts. The announcement of the policy was the last steps of something that had been happening for years.

Agreed, I should have said a significant increase in media reporting of the incidents.

The huge problem is that there is not any other data. How many girls and women report this type of indecent assault, in order for it to be recorded? Are victim surveys collecting this information (victim surveys being a much better indicator of incidence than police report)?

I did bold the bit I found horrifying, that many of them are happening on the shop floor. This is pre- and post-policy.

Thanks crispbuttyfan for highlighting this is not independent research published in a peer reviewed journal, but a blog piece published by a homophobic pastor.

Given the enormous publicity around Target's policy, I would expect there to have been an increase in reporting of offences. There may also have been some some displacement of offending. By which I mean criminals who would have committed their offences elsewhere, chose to commit it in Target as they viewed is as an easy place to offend.

Thanks for posting this. Really informative and helpful. Shocking that female-identified men are using women and girls as human shields and putting them at risk in this way.

Aggregating information from state county province and municipal police reports is common practice with regard to crimes. It does not suddenly become bad and wrong if a questionable person does it.

It has been my observation that no matter how many examples of problems are raised they are dismissed and the claim that this never happens is repeated. It makes you look a bit of a fool.

Time to grow up methinks and stop this madness, perhaps a little self reflection as opposed to narcissism is the answer?

Aggregating information from state county province and municipal police reports is common practice with regard to crimes. It does not suddenly become bad and wrong if a questionable person does it.

Ok, this is true although court convictions would be better. However the important point is this study did none of that. It was not based on police reports. It was based on MEDIA reports and the key research tool was Google That is about as junk science as you can get unless its a study of google indexing or media reporting.

@IWearPurple
There appears to be an ad hominem attack in the comments here.

Yes that's what struck me. Some comments don't demonstrate a sufficient/any lived experience of a woman's perspective - and don't empathise at all with the distress that we all feel at having this harassment and harm to live with all of our lives - at the hands on men. It's almost as though they want us to believe that it doesn't go on at all.

That some commentators don't even reference the harm, preferring to launch ad hominem attacks, is very telling.

He admits himself, it is based on MEDIA reports

Who do you imagine aggregates and disseminates the police reports from various precincts if not the local MEDIA?
In my community it is called "Lights and Sirens" and is in the paper every week, along with the lists of emergency responses by fire and ambulance.

I can't speak for others, but for me the problem with the piece we're discussing is that it's really a blog masquerading as science. The argument for protecting women's spaces is undermined if we try to support it with unreliable evidence.

If someone conducts properly designed sociological research using appropriate data, draws meaningful conclusions, and publishes it in a peer reviewed academic journal, then I will of course accept it as legitimate sociological evidence. But that's not what happened with this 'report'.

I absolutely believe that women are sexually harassed in shops (I've been sexually harassed in shops) but actually I prefer evidence such as #MeToo over the 'report' linked above. It's a different kind of evidence but it's more useful than an official-looking but deeply flawed study.

There is no collation of these figures and transactivists, frankly, gloat about that and exploit it. In the UK attempts to count count sexual and violent crimes by trans-identified males and publicise the results are shut down. I wonder what they are afraid of.

As for who publishes data: in the UK the Office for National Statistics and the Crown Prosecution Service would be typical sources for national data. It's harder to get specific data, e.g. on individual locations such as all the Target shops in Canada, but not impossible, although it would take a very long time because you'd have multiple sources - dozens of police authorities or courts - and the data might be presented in different ways. It's actually very difficult to get reliable data on this, which is why Googling media reports seemed like a good idea to this author: so much quicker and easier!

But the problem with using media reports is that you only have access to what journalists/editors have decided to publish, and their priorities can vary. So it's useless as the basis for understanding how frequently sexual harassment in Target shops occurs, and especially useless for comparing frequency before and after a change in store policy. The change in policy might result in more harassment but also in more interest from the media in reporting harassment in Target stores. So you end up with too many confounding factors and insufficient hard data if you rely on media reports. It is, as a PP said, junk science.

Again, this isn't a matter of what I believe happens, but about what constitutes the best approach for making a strong argument in favour of protecting women's spaces.

Gosh, I hope that didn't come across as dismissive. I'm just really frustrated at the lack of good quality scientific evidence on this whole topic.

The Home Office could collect data on crimes by trans-identified offenders. It chooses not to, so we must make do and mend.

Cardsforkittens

But the person that did survey the newspapers reports said that very clearly, that this was the only option available because it has been made
deliberately impossible to do it any other way. Junk science is all we have been permitted. Which is then dismissed as junk. This is the fake news phenomenon. MSM is forced to lie, we only have lies to measure, which are then dismissed as lies.

Pratchet - spot on.
Also I'm repeatedly struck by how people who deny any evidence we do have never ever mention women and girls.