Karen White sentenced to life

[failingatlife]

From the BBC [https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-leeds-45825838]

Agree guardian article weird.

This bit

"White entered the UK prison system as transgender. However, despite dressing as a woman, the 52-year-old had not undergone any surgery and was still legally a male"

What is all this faux shock "no surgery!!!" business.

Guardian has been fully suportive of self ID ahead of any changes to law, twaw, and all it takes is to say it. No change to clothes or name required, let alone hormones or surgery. Most tw do not have "bottom" surgery, and I don't blame them tbh. But still, guardian KNOW that, they support all this stuff. So it's a bit late to start pearl clutching about dicks now, surely?

Stupid disingenuous fuckers.

I think the point here is to try and say karen is a rare, very rare "fake" case and must be completely ignored by everyone lalala didn't happen.

Plus the person saying lalala it's all fine:

"The case boards are a good way of doing things – you can’t say the system is wrong when it goes wrong once."

This is from the perspective of the PRISONER.

From my perspective and that of most women I'd imagine, it went wrong 4 times as there were 4 assaults ( guardian only mentions the 2 he was prosecuted for/ found guilty of/ some of the assaults were on same woman/ not sure what happened to the other 2).

I just noticed this little gem on Paris Lees Twitter twitter.com/parislees/status/1050453589230014466

^Jeffrey Dahmer raped and murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. That was a case for making sure he was supervised closely in prison and kept away from other inmates. It is NOT a case for banning all gay men from men-only spaces.

Please don’t fall for their false logic.^

Reaching much? Not only drawing comparisons to Jeffrey Dahmer's incarceration but also referencing a 2015 article with the tweet thread

I don't want to live in a country that discriminates against certain people purely because of an imaginary threat they pose. Some white women hated sharing toilets with black women in the 50s claiming they'd catch diseases from them. They were in the wrong

www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/11/10/anti_trans_bathroom_propaganda_has_roots_in_racial_segregation.html?via=gdpr-consent

"Imaginary threat"?!? This MAN gamed the system for (a) a "cushy life" in a women's prison, and (b) as an opportunity to abuse vulnerable women.

Jesus, I thought Harrop was bad. Just stop the world, I want to get off. Where does this logic come from?!? Please somebody explain it to me... it's worse than deluded.

Agree with everyone.
The Guardian article makes it clear to me that mistakes were made precisely because everyone is too shit scared of the consequences of not taking someone's inner feelings as real and questioning the veracity of their dysphoria/desire to transition.
Even Jenny-Anne Bishop says White was always demanding their rights and reporting people to the police for hate crimes if misgendered, whilst making no real effort to look any different. Given the recent actions of West Yorkshire police, I can imagine police would have turned up and issued cautions to anyone crossing Karen White. No surprise that people were scared and White was able to go ahead feeling that no one could contradict or stop them.
Apparently 20% of sexual assaults on women's prisons in 2017 were committed by Karen White.
If self-ID does come in and the current climate of silencing, compelled pronoun/police cautions for misgendering/deadnaming continues to make people worried to speak up, then I really don't see how the same thing won't happen again. Saying how rare it is etc just doesn't cut it for me either.

I'm not sure that the beard picture is before ..... has anybody checked to see if its a prison picture

I saw the Guardian's classification of the story, too, @cheminotte Completely disingenuous to tag that as Crime but leave off the Transgender tag....

Are gay men statistically a sex and murder threat to straight men?

Are gay men typically kept segregated from straight men to protect those straight men in situations of vulnerability with one proposed exception being made for Dahmer?

It's so silly, so childish, it's outrageous.

I actually admire Paris Lees for sticking to their guns on this one. I don't think they are right and they're using analogies I don't think work at all, but they are being consistent at least.

Bringing up Jeffrey Dahmer is a really weird way to make people worry less about male violence.

And I can never get over how dim the comparison to race segregation is. One more time for the gallery:

Racial segregation was something imposed by the dominant class (white) to oppress the disadvantaged class (black). It was of benefit to the dominant class.

Sex segregation has many different functions and is often put in place at the request of the disadvantaged class (women) to protect them from the dominant class (men) for reasons of safety from predation or violence, dignity and privacy. It is of benefit to the disadvantaged class, although many members of the dominant class also prefer sex segregated spaces (though broadly for different reasons).

Also, racial segregation is not universal - we've never had it in the UK. The UK is not America or South Africa. We have no history of race segregation in law so it's completely irrelevant. Whereas some form of sex segregation is far more widespread and to this day organisations such as WaterAid and Unicef note the importance of sex segregated facilities as an important facilitator of women's safety and independence. Women wanting facilities separate from men when they are naked and/or vulnerable is near universal.

Paris Less certainly has form for comparing apples to oranges, fear of assault to fear of escalators, enjoying looking attractive to enjoying being cat-called etc, so definitely consistently wrong and dismissive.
On the plus side, good that the Karen White conviction is on the front page of The Metro and The Guardian this morning.

Great, now where will White's sentence be served out? Because if the answer is a women's prison then a culture war is about to kick off.

I want to say they wouldn't fucking dare, kittens, but...you know...

would they, though?

I hope Karen stays in a men's prison, and i hope Karen sues. It could be a precedent setting case invoking the Equality Act protections.

Share token for today's Times article. What is so good is that they link two of Janice Turner's articles and one by Debbie Hayton about self ID / trans issues.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-predator-karen-white-who-targeted-women-inmates-is-jailed-for-life-l3nvvn0sf?shareToken=263a71eb166e3ddca526178409a77e56

Thanks for the share. Christ, didn't realise one of those women he raped was pregnant at the time too.

Maybe, if nothing else, the fact that the female prisoners he attacked in prison can sue, the prison service may think twice. Maybe only money will force them to question it. Ethics, safety and biology certainly aren't stopping male prisoners being housed in women's prisons.

Apparently 20% of sexual assaults on women's prisons in 2017 were committed by Karen White.

Mail having none of it and referring to ‘Karen’ as he.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6265187/Transgender-prisoner-sexually-assaulted-inmates-female-prison.html

That photo is the photo of White in custody. That is the woman who was sent to prison.

I am not normally interested in the details of a strangers genitals or surgery but I would put money on it White’s surgery referred to in that article is top only.

"I would put money on it White’s surgery referred to in that article is top only."

Well, considering that reference has been made to "her penis" and "rape" I think your money's safe.

Excellent posts, LittleLebowski and SophoclesTheFox. Both of you put forward arguments that make clear what the issue (safeguarding women and children) is.

Thank you, both.

Christopher Dunn, for the prosecution, told the court: “White is allegedly a transgender female. [I] say allegedly because there’s smatterings of evidence in this case that the defendant’s approach to transitioning has been less than committed. The prosecution suggest the reason for the lack of commitment towards transitioning is so the defendant can use a transgender persona to put herself in contact with vulnerable persons she can then abuse.”

Now now. We have been told that this will never happen.

Sophocles: "And I can never get over how dim the comparison to race segregation is."

Indeed. But also disingenuous. If they really believed that sex segregation was like race segregation, then they would be calling for an end to sex-segregated spaces altogether. Hey, let's not bother with separate men's and women's prisons, or men's and women's changing rooms! We're all the same, after all!

But they're not calling for that. What they're calling for is to retain segregated spaces but to allow some men - those who call themselves trans women - into the women's spaces. So they don't actually believe the shit they spout.

Exactly so, hackmum.

I've been shocked at just how little regard many people have for safeguarding women and children disrespectful. I always re-centre on that.

Good point, hackmum.

From the Times article
‘Female prisoners who were assaulted by White in jail will be eligible to sue the prison service for damages.’

I really really hope that they do.

No - this isn’t a mistake. It is a logical consequence of creating policy without due process.

This person was locked into spaces full of vulnerable women. More than once.

But ‘it never happens’ and ‘this was an aberration’ and manipulative men already have access so won’t take advantage of laws that make women more available to them.

It's no mistake, this is how they treat self-ID, noone thinks about the women impacted...the situation would have been the same if White had a GRC, no surgery or hormones needed.