Karen White case - how MN can help build political pressure for change

[PotsofJam]

Jess Phillips MP has commented on the Karen White case, saying anyone convicted of VAWG should be excluded from the women’s prison estate.

See her tweet here:
twitter.com/jessphillips/status/1038350610163265537?s=21
This could be the start of a media-political process. Jess has raised a question here. Do other MPs agree with her? Does the Government agree?
Thanks to the wonder of Twitter, email and the rest, you can help make them answer that question.
So if you’re on Twitter and have some time to spare this weekend, why not send Jess’s tweet to some MPs and ask:

Do you agree with the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Violence that prison service rules should be changed to exclude all VAWG offenders from the women’s estate, no matter what gender they identify as?

I think this politician wants to be respected and elected, giving the open approach by Momentum to remove all centre Labour politicians from re selection.

Throwing women openly under a bus isn't going to work. Either tackle the situation straight on and deal with it or fudge around the issue. Oh wait, the latter has already been taken as a compromise.

When it comes to sex based rights for women, there are no compromises.

Oh and if anyone thinks the Tories are any better then think again. Acceptance of a cheating husband, who displays dishonesty at all times? Perfectly acceptable. He might even be the next Prime Minister.

No fault divorces? Let's ignore sex based rights for women and push this through as a radical approach to show how woke we are.

The LibDems haven't got a clue. The Green Party are dust.

Jess is tying herself in the inevitable knots that result from trying to hold two mutually exclusive positions.

1. Transwomen are always women. No question, no challenge, no dissent.
2. These women should be treated as men.

These two positions are incompatible.

Jess needs to have some integrity and consistency of position. Otherwise she lacks all credibility and actively undermines women's rights completely.

Her current position is seemingly "let my judgement of goodness or badness be the arbiter of which men I can force you to pretend are women"

It's bullshit, Jess.

You can never square this circle. Let us know when you realise this.

BarrackerBarmer

Spot on. But how do politicians get out of this hole that they've dug for themselves? We need them to recognise this and face down the baying misogynists. Maybe we need to write them some scripts.?

Jess Phillips is not a feminist, she is a career politician. She will play the feminist card when she has something to gain from it, but she will never take any action that isn’t at least 90% selfish.

That’s not restricted to Jess TBF, it’s how politicians stay in office, but I wouldn’t trust any of them as far as I could throw them.

Jess is mistaken if Jess thinks this willingness to throw women under the bus will be sufficient to prevent Momentum or dudebros from working for her de-selection.

It is, however, possibly enough to make some potential women voters reconsider any support for her.

If Jess or any other politician wants an exit strategy I suggest they come and read Mumsnet. There are thousands of threads full of women who have chosen to stop pursuing an unsustainable ideology and have reverted to telling the truth.

Jess Phillips is not a feminist, she is a career politician.

Exactly.

FWIW, I do think there is a difference between Jess and Stella. Stella has genuinely drunk the Kool Aid and is as pomo-addled as the worst of them. But she will cavil and prevaricate to hide that to protect her career. Jess, I think, is actually gender critical. But she will equally cavil and prevaricate to hide that to protect her career.

Neither is a friend to women in any practical way.

This idea doesn’t help women prisoners avoid risk from male bodied prisoners. How could it avoid that risk.. unless it kept all men out of all women’s prisons?

Why does there need to be a prior criminal record of VAWG before men can be kept out of women’s spaces? We don’t currently say to men, you are all welcome to use the women’s toilets, but not if you’ve committed VAWG. We say to men, keep your penis out of the ladies.

Male prisoners should not be housed in women’s prisons, regardless of how they identify. If a male prisoner identifies as trans and feels that this means that they can’t be housed with other male prisoners, then they can be housed in a special part of the men’s prison estate.

Why does there need to be a prior criminal record of VAWG before men can be kept out of women’s spaces?

^^ Yes. Stress, proximity, and opportunity would encourage behaviour that might otherwise seem unthinkable.

It's the same reason given for ticket turnstiles to protect train revenues. They're not that to prevent the determined fare-dodger, they're there to keep honest train users honest.

The very reason why this is happening is all because of the proposals of the GRA. The GRA is in direct conflict of the Equality Act. The two intersect and the TRAs believe there can only be one winner because no debate will make it so.

Well, get this. Debate is on the agenda!

Tara Hudson has a string of convictions for violence. He boasts of having an extra long cock. ( It's a great selling feature in his job as a ...er...model.) He has complex mental health, substance misuse and anger management problems.

He's suing the Home Office this month because they hurt his feelings by putting him in a man's prison.

Presumably Jess supports Tara. She might even have been one of the 150,000 who petitioned for a transfer to a woman's prison for Tazzy.

You see, he hasn't been found guilty of violence against women.

He's just an extraordinarily aggressive and violent thug. So he gets a free pass to bully women in prisons.

The theme on that thread is dreadful.

Wanting to make the crime (which has to be on an individual basis) the marker, rather than the likelihood in terms of sex.

So even if, even IF the likelihood of a woman committing the category of crime they're talking of, is virtually zero, they still want it set in stone.

Just so they can still claim that violent, raping men are the same as a fictitious violent raping woman.

Jess Phillips. Grow a fucking backbone.

You're not on this earth very long. For godsake woman, at least use some of the time to look yourself in the eye.

He's just an extraordinarily aggressive and violent thug. So he gets a free pass to bully women in prisons.

Exactly. It's unworkable.

The very reason why this is happening is all because of the proposals of the GRA.

Wrong.

Self ID is public policy ALREADY. A loophole in the Equality Act (gender reassignment) emboldened the government and the EHRC to advise public and private bodies that transwomen should be treated as women.

That's why police forces record male crimes as female crimes. That's why Trans Identifying Men go to female prisons. That's why Stonewall and Gendered Intelligence train police leaders and new teachers.

We've been shafted already.

In a way, I think that's working in our favour Pam. Because it means the public are seeing the likes of Huntley and Ponting and White exploiting what is supposed to be a kind and liberal position. And that means if FPFW can get enough people to complete the consultation, people will come out much more strongly against it than they would have done.

They can no longer argue that self-ID affects no one apart from transpeople. Because it already has

So what do we do?
Write to MPs/MoJ?
Write to newspapers etc.?
Protest outside prisons?
Protest outside parliament?

What I’m most angry about here is the cabinet minister who is GC but is too scared to speak up. It was either Andrew Gilligan or James Kirkup who wrote about it recently (sorry newborn brain fog) and it has me utterly livid that people in high powered positions are “too scared” to speak up whilst women are being housed with rapists and sexually assaulted in prisons.

Bowl exactly, no prisoners born male in female prisons, end of.

Own trans wing and the PS needs to meet their needs that way.

“Do you agree with the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Violence that prison service rules should be changed to exclude all VAWG offenders from the women’s estate?

This would be convicted offenders?
Given the known statistics with regards reporting of VAWG and then the succesful prosecution rates?

It is the start of an important discussion though.

Barracker spot on.

Either self identification is a thing - which means no checks, no case by case, every man who self declares in with biological women, and you are thereby accepting the huge damage that will inevitably and unavoidably hit those biological women as collateral damage to your lunacy

OR 'some cannot be trusted in this situation' - which means you're acknowledging that their self ID cannot be the only factor and that transwomen are transwomen, not women. Some separation HAS to be kept between the two groups on the grounds that they have penises and some will use them to harm women.

Trans specific prison provision. Get on with it. Privacy, dignity and safety for all , not just the ones with penises.

Honestly, watching certain career politicians trying to square the circle and people attempting to frame it as a step forward is a bit like watching people seeing Andrew Scott appear in a Bond movie and not realize he's going to be a baddie.

It's all posturing. There is no good reason to think any steps towards securing women's safety are likely to be taken without sustained campaigning from the likes of the gobshite women here. No more than there is any ambiguity about the appearance of Moriarty in front of Daniel Craig.

Jess Phillips needs to be pressed, and pressed and have it made clear that male individuals in the female estate is NOT a case by case issue, it should be a blanket rule. She will not come to that conclusion publicly without consistent pressure.

Sorry if I spoiled Spectre for anyone.

No people born male should be allowed in women only spaces full stop.
If some people born male do not want to use male-only spaces, they can campaign for their own spaces.
Experience to date shows that any compromise by women on this will lead to abuse and harm to women.

UK signed CEDAW in 1981 but ratified it in 1986: CEDAW in UK

Not sure if prisoners in US are housed in female prisons, I don't think they are?