Trans Women Should Be Allowed In Women Only Spaces

[KiBob]

I posted a few days ago that I need help arguing a case on the debating website Kialo. Thanks to your suggestions I've got one claim accepted that I was struggling with.

I'm now trying to get a new claim past admins.

As a supporting claim to:

"Allowing anyone who identifies as female into women-only spaces makes those spaces worse for cis women".

I put this:

"Trans women are 6 times more likely to commit a crime and 18 times more likely to commit a violent crime compared to female controls as found by this study In Sweden in 2011". With a link to this study:
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885

Admin have responded:

"Hm, interesting link. However, the results don't differentiate between trans men and trans women, and also state this: "Transsexual individuals were at increased risk of being convicted for any crime or violent crime after sex reassignment (Table 2); this was, however, only significant in the group who underwent sex reassignment before 1989." - so this might be a bit outdated - 30 years is pretty long.
Further up, in the Abstract, under results it also says "Female-to-males, but not male-to-females, had a higher risk for criminal convictions than their respective birth sex controls."

Can you point me to the exact place where you get your numbers? Thanks!"

Help!

Incidentally I got those figures and link from this site:

fairplayforwomen.com/criminality/

Focusing on perceived threats related to crime statistics ignores two fundamental points.

1. 'Transwomen' is now so broad a concept that it allows any man who wishes to use - or misuse it - to enter women's spaces, thereby broadening massively the potential for assaults on women.

1. Women are concerned about privacy from men in their toilets and other safe spaces. 1. above is also significantly relevant here.

However, the results don't differentiate between trans men and trans women,

As males commit the vast majority of violent crimes (around 75% but more for the most serious violence, and sexual violence), the inclusion of trans men in the data - even with higher offending rates than other females - will tend to skew the trans offenders statistics down not up (which is what the question seems to want to imply).

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/yearendingmarch2016/overviewofviolentcrimeandsexualoffences#profile-of-perpetrators-involved-in-violent-crimes

Furthermore, the fact that "Female-to-males, but not male-to-females, had a higher risk for criminal convictions than their respective birth sex controls."
has no bearing whatever on the proposition '"Allowing anyone who identifies as female into women-only spaces makes those spaces worse for cis women".' - they belong to neither of the groups included in this specific question.

(I wanted to find stats on the M:F percentages for sexual offences ... came across this piece entitled 'The truth about female sex offenders' ...

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/truth-female-sex-offenders/

Ah. Did they mean to do that?

It's simple.

Men (adult human males with or without penises) are excluded from spaces set aside for women.

Segregation is based on sex, not something called 'gender identity'.

Transwomen are men with or without penises. They belong in the facilities and services reserved for their male sex. It is up to the male sex to stop harassing, threatening and making them feel uncomfortable.

It's not a matter for women - it's a problem for men to sort out and resolve.

@ErrolTheDragon thank you I have copied and pasted (most of) your post in the discussion for my claim.

@VickyEadie & @theOtherPamAyres I agree. The crystallisation of the debate however, on Kialo, which may or may not become the go to place to view the structure of any debate, is currently controlled by people who are of a more 'liberal' persuasion in their thinking.

The link to the public claim I am offering a 'pro' thesis to is possibly here (I'm struggling to make links to sub theses that do not require login):

www.kialo.com/should-women-only-spaces-be-open-to-anyone-identifying-as-female-18042/18042.0=18042.1-18042.42/-18042.42

Please help me!

If spaces are mixed sex they exclude many women, including Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Roma, and women with PTSD. Thats not intersectional or inclusive, its exclusive.
A breastfeeding room in the workplace is single sex. People cannot claim they are being discriminated against if they are excluded from it, or if their boss refuses to give them an identical room for their own place.
The same goes for toilets and other single sex spaces. They are an adjustment, to permit some people to participate in society.
If you remove human rights for women, you will eventually lose them for everyone.

As for Kialo, if that site is controlled by people with an agenda, it is no the go to site for debate. Its another echo chamber. I wont be joining in. I dont have the resources to spend all day online arguing with pp who don't understand basic scientific or social concepts, or support human rights.

Further up, in the Abstract, under results it also says "Female-to-males, but not male-to-females, had a higher risk for criminal convictions than their respective birth sex controls."

Contradicting themselves. It is clear that the results do differentiate between male and female. And they appear not to realise what a "birth sex control" is.

You can't argue with stupid.

They do differentiate MtF and FtM in the result section, right? (See below picture from the paper)

I'm not sure about the violent crimes, Someone from FPW might calculate from the stats in the paper.

"Transsexual individuals were at increased risk of being convicted for any crime or violent crime after sex reassignment (Table 2); this was, however, only significant in the group who underwent sex reassignment before 1989."

This claim is for comparison between transsexuals and controls, not for MtF and FtM.

For the last claim, I totally agree with Ereshkigal

But isn't a key point that transition does not alter the rate of offending in males, so that trans women offend at the same rate as men in the control group.

Thanks everyone. I've made the case using your suggestions. They've gone very quiet again. Watch this space...

Their reply to you is just... wrong.

FPFW do mention both FTT and MTT.

^ mind you they compare both to female controls rather than birth-sex controls.

A birth sex comparison would be interesting for MTT.

Ultimately, I wouldn't focus on crime stats to make a case for retaining same-sex spaces. It's simply a matter of privacy, dignity and consent.

Agree with Serf. That is an argument they can't refute because it's about personal boundaries, comfort and feelings.

Maybe you should turn around their misuse of the stats:

so, the statistics clearly support the proposition that '"Allowing anyone who identifies as female into women-only spaces makes those spaces worse for cis women".', but when you point out '"Female-to-males, but not male-to-females, had a higher risk for criminal convictions than their respective birth sex controls."' the implication is that in addition, you think^^ 'allowing people who do not identify as females could make women-only spaces worse for cis women'? Are we reaching a consensus on the need for a third space in addition to single sex spaces? (we know that purely mixed sex spaces increase risk to women).

The main author of the study you pointed at said: "As to the criminality metric itself, we were measuring and comparing the total number of convictions, not conviction type. We were not saying that cisgender males are convicted of crimes associated with marginalization and poverty. We didn’t control for that and we were certainly not saying that we found that trans women were a rape risk. What we were saying was that for the 1973 to 1988 cohort group and the cisgender male group, both experienced similar rates of convictions. As I said, this pattern is not observed in the 1989 to 2003 cohort group."

The author of that paper said that in the TransAdvocate, so it's quite clear that their career was under pressure when she said it - the manner in which TRAs bully academics is very well-documented.

Retroactively dividing the groups into two cohorts like that (and lumping transwomen and transmen together only for that one results table which uses the two cohorts) is statistical gerrymandering to whitewash unpalatable results.

Yes, the author successfully managed to dispel the political pressure on her by fucking with the data in a way that made the results on violent crime nonsignificant for the later cohort, but it's not a very good figleaf.

Oh, another interesting thing about that paper is the comparison with "birth sex controls". They were controlling for psychiatric issues, which you need to do when trying to estimate the impact of treatment, but it's not relevant when you're trying to estimate the risk of allowing transwomen into female spaces.

There are way more psychiatric issues in the trans population than in the population at large. Transwomen were not significantly more violent than men who have a similar degree of psychiatric issues, but they are significantly more violent than men on average. (i.e. you don't need the adjusted hazard ratio for these purposes, you need the raw hazard ratio.)

Thanks all for the continued input.

I would very much like to get a specific 'pro' thesis approved under this specific thesis:

"Allowing anyone who identifies as female into women-only spaces makes those spaces worse for cis women".

There already exist a number of other 'pro' points for this thesis but none that specifically mentions the increased criminality rate of trans women as compared to 'actual' women.

See previous admin comments above. My most recent comment in the discussion (ripped off from @ErrolTheDragon, thank you!) was:

Also, before that I posted:

there is no mention of a vastly higher criminality rate for trans women in the study, and I don't know where they found the data to interpret it.

the data comparing trans women to "cis" controls for criminality is in Table S2. aHR in this context is (likelihood of a transperson having outcome x)/(likelihood of a cisperson having outcome x), adjusted for demographic characteristics. CI is confidence interval and if this person doesn't know what that is they really, really shouldn't be arguing with FPFW about how to interpret statistics.

Your original claim is completely fair and understandable. I think this person just didn't see the table in the Appendix.

Regarding their "concern" about the data being old, the specific comparison between transwomen and ciswomen on criminality has only been done for the entire group, not for the two separate cohorts.

It's a politically charged area to research (and data as good as this study has is very hard to find), so there aren't any more recent studies that either confirm or contradict the findings.

I read this bloody thing a while ago, and am very annoyed at all the political obfuscation surrounding what are actually extremely clear findings. Once more, with feeling: a TWENTY TIMES HIGHER risk of being convicted of a violent crime. This has very important implications for the safety of women and girls. Why was it buried in an Appendix? Why has no one researched this further? I mean, I know why, but I just wanted to rant for a moment.

there aren't any more recent studies that either confirm or contradict the findings.

quoting myself to add that although this is the case, the little data that exists on trans prisoners points in a similar direction. FPFW has articles on that too.

Thank you @HomeStar - reply sent.

HomeStar that is not evidence she has been nobbled, just your inference, and it’s a pretty serious allegation against a well respected academic. Do you have any direct evidence?