James Kirkup speaks up again - 'Are female prisoners at risk from transgender inmates?' The Spectator 20/07

[BoreOfWhabylon]

Another great Spectator article
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/are-female-prisoners-at-risk-from-transgender-inmates/

Can you copy and paste? I’ve used up my article quota.

I advise against copying and pasting as that breaches copyright.

It's on the Spectator blog rather than on their website, so if you open a private browser, you should be able to click on the link, hackmum.

good article

It is an excellent article. Thank you James (I suspect you lurk on here).

Can you copy and paste? I’ve used up my article quota

Too many good articles

Very good article. Thank you James.

Ok to post small extracts, right?

Let me put that another way. In 2015, the experts we collectively trust and pay to study the issues arising from allowing people to change gender told our elected representatives that there are non-trivial risks that some male criminals exploit gender-change rules to gain access to, and commit acts of sexual violence against, women. Three years later, a person born male, has been charged with four acts of sexual aggression against women in the prison system.

Did the backbench MPs, ministers and officials responsible for law and policy on gender issues consider the evidence of the experts, the evidence that women in prison were being put at risk? Did they recognise and act on dangers that were not just predictable but predicted?

Once again, James gets to the heart of the issue.

The highly prejudicial Miller report deliberately ignored these written submissions. None of these bodies were invited to give evidence in person in the second stage of the report production. Only trans lobby groups were invited to give evidence in person. It's all there in the record.

They cannot wring their hands and say how could we have known?.

Thank you James.

These articles are so cool, logical and clear that it frightens me anyone could read them and still default to listening to the rage and froth elsewhere.

If James does lurk, perhaps he'd be interested to know that facebook will now not allow you to share pages from the WPUK website. Just squeezing that in incase....

Thank you James

thank you James

It makes me so angry that no one in politics is speaking up for some of the most vulnerable women in society.

Just because they are afraid of being called bigots.

Total political failure on behalf of women. The GEO has been taken over by Stonewall. You have no one politically able to represent the conflicting interests of women and biological males who say they are women. This needs to change.

And to be clear this needs to change because vulnerable women detained by the state are at risk of abuse as a direct result of this.

What are you going to say to them?
"Don't worry dear, Stonewall says transwomen are women."

@BoreOfWhabylon Might you consider asking MN to ammend the title of the thread to include the title of the article please? It's an important one and makes it easier for people to find it. Many thanks

Thank you for you for speaking up for women and girls, again, James.

The peculiar climate makes for plenty of related topics to blog about, at least you never have to stare at a blank page wondering what to write!

James - if you are lurking, firstly hi and thanks! and secondly, please could you investigate locked mental health wards. Sectioned women have even less of a voice than female inmates do and there has already been one instance of inappropriate inclusion on the basis of gender identity.

metro.co.uk/2018/01/14/woman-who-feared-men-accused-of-transphobia-after-objecting-to-hospital-room-with-trans-woman-7227597/

These women - prison inmates, sectioned women, women in refuges - desperately need voices. We must speak for them.

James along with Janice Turner should be recognised for their work.

Thank you James

R0wantrees. Good idea. I've asked MNHQ to amend title.

@BoreOfWhabylon

R0wantrees. Good idea. I've asked MNHQ to amend title.

All sorted.

Thank you James for standing up for women and girls! Another great piece.

Another excellent article.

These are some the most vulnerable members of our society. Their punishment is loss of liberty - the state takes their liberty and has a duty to keep them safe and a duty or care towards their safety and health.

These women are at the sharp end of this debate. They cannot remove themselves from the situation, they are literally locked into it. If we see them being harmed by a policy or decision it means that policy is harmful. it’s immediately harmful to those women because they’re literally, physically locked up with the consequences but it implies that policy will be harmful to society at large.

As *langcleg points out, women in locked wards are similarly vulnerable.

This is a nightmarish scenario for these women. I hope this article opens some more eyes.

Thank you james. this is important stuff.

Thx James for your tireless work.

The full text is on the AIBU thread towards the end:

@DawnMumsnet

When setting policy, did they take full account of the interests and views of women, including those women who find themselves confined by the state in the prison system?

Or did they fail in their duty, fail to consider the implications of their decisions for the weakest and most vulnerable among us? Did they fail women?

By way of answer, I note only that earlier this month, the Government published a consultation proposing to make it easier for male-born people to attain the legal status of women, and thus obtain access to the spaces and entitlements that the law currently reserves for women.