'Gender folly in women's jails' Sunday Times, Jeremy Coid Emeritus professor of forensic psychiatry Queen Mary University of London

[frazzled1]

Letters page: Prison staff are powerless to oppose policies that defy logic and common sense.

Thank you professor Coid . Wonder if you tried writing to The Observer?....

I suppose it depends on whether the offender actually believes they are a woman, or whether they get off on presenting as one, and making others respond to them as one. One of these is a delusion, the other is a fetish.

I would guess it’s something to do with positioning themselves out with the norm, that once they have convinced themselves that one set of rules for behaviour are nonsense and don’t apply to them, it becomes easier to accept that those other rules don’t apply either, and that they have transcended the rules that the boring people follow.

They read too much Nietzsche. Trans is the new Übermensch.

One of these is a delusion, the other is a fetish.

Both of these are considered to be mental disorders (I think). But we are told that 'being trans' is not a mental illness.

It's the idea that 'being trans' is a sort of variation of being gay which has got us to this idea that 'being trans' is perfectly normal, and not a delusion.

I just don't know how the world can get back to some sort of sanity following the wholesale belief that if a man believes he is a woman, then he is a woman. Totally ignoring biology.

I hope he doesn't face any professional or personal consequences for speaking out.

So do I but I don't think he will. He's male, massively senior and respected, and retired.