Trans woman objects to contract requiring her to act female to stay in B.C. women’s prison

[EweSurname]

This is what happens when you legislate "woman" into merely being a costume. And this is how TRAs will keep pushing boundaries.

www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/04/26/trans-woman-objects-to-contract-requiring-her-to-act-female-to-stay-in-bc-womens-prison.html

VANCOUVER—A trans woman in a B.C. women’s jail has filed a human-rights complaint after being asked to sign a contract obliging her to continually “demonstrate” her gender in order to stay.

Since September 2018, Hayden Patterson has been held at the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women as she awaits extradition to the United States on a murder charge. Before arriving at the women’s facility, she was being detained in a men’s jail; she requested a transfer so she could be in an institution consistent with her female gender identity.

However, before it would accept her, the women’s jail required that she sign a special behavioural contract that, among other things, said she must continue to “demonstrate gender expression that is consistent with (her) current gender identity (as a woman).”

Patterson’s lawyer, Laura Track of the Community Legal Assistance Society, said Patterson feels she is subject to conditions that other female inmates are not and that the contract’s requirement is vague and discriminatory.

“On a plain reading of that term, she doesn’t know whether if she didn’t shave for a couple of days, didn’t wear makeup or decided to cut her hair really short — or otherwise wasn’t performing her female gender to the standard that corrections deems appropriate — that she could face consequences for that, including return to a men’s institution,” Track said.

And massive irony alert, further on in the article:

Patterson also has an ongoing human-rights complaint filed against Surrey Pretrial Services Centre, the men’s prison where she was held before the transfer to Alouette. She alleges that the prison discriminated against her based on religion when it refused to provide her with kosher meals. The jail denies the allegation and argues that Patterson could not sufficiently prove she was Jewish.

The jail denies the allegation and argues that Patterson could not sufficiently prove she was Jewish.

That pesky penis is proving to a bit of a giveaway in every sense isn’t it?

Always is it very wrong I laughed?!

Apart from the very convincing arguments about the vulnerability of the female prison estate and the loopholes that some people will see and self-define to exploit those loopholes... I feel very uneasy at the prospect of human life bring conceived in prison. I think the prospects of a child would be incredibly disadvantaged. This is a tragic and preventable outcome. Please don't even invite the possibility of babies being born in prison. This is something that prison authorities should safeguard against as an absolute priority.

Quotation from the news report linked in the OP : "Before arriving at the women’s facility, she was being detained in a men’s jail; she requested a transfer so she could be in an institution consistent with her female gender identity."

This suggests to me that the complaining prisoner does not have the legal fiction status of "female" in the USA or Canada, i.e. a North American equivalent of a GRC (UK Gender Recognition Certificate). The news report also confirms that the complaining prisoner still has a penis.

Quotation from the news report linked in the OP : "In 2016, the B.C. human rights act was amended to protect trans people from discrimination based on their gender identity or expression."

The Canadian authorities neither understand nor care about the difference between gender, gender identity, sex role, and sex. This has led them to go so far down the transgenderism ideology rabbit hole that they now segregate their prisons partly by gender identity and partly by sex, instead of only by sex. This makes their prisons mixed sex institutions. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that female prisoners will be the lowest priority in this mess.

I think that the Canadian authorities may not even have their own version of the UK legal fig-leaf in equality/discrimination law (Equality Act 2010) that means that a male transgender prisoner who does not have the legal fiction status of "female" (i.e. no GRC) is male and must therefore be compared to male prisoners who are not transgender, not compared to female prisoners. (Admittedly, transgenderism ideology, propaganda and bullying scares many institutions in the UK from applying the UK equality law).

I see no evidence that the Canadian prison rule would apply only to male transgender prisoners but not apply to male prisoners who do not have a "female" gender identity or "female" gender expression.

They need to go back to the apparently old fashioned idea that whether people are male or female depends on biology. Not the postmodern idiocy that being a woman is a set of behaviours or a costume which can be worn by anyone regardless of sex.

Indeed.

If the person concerned wins this case, what is being established in Canada (and potentially elsewhere) is this: any man can claim to be a woman and be guaranteed a move into the female estate. The ramifications of this have been on their way for a whole, but are massive.

Why would any man not make this claim?

This is another own goal. It will only encourage those responsible to apply more critical thinking to this issue, which is always a win.

The ramifications of this have been on their way for a whole, but are massive.

Indeed. And yet it still gets framed as no one's business and just about tidying up paperwork.

Also worth noting that while men can identify in and out of a women's prison depending on preference, the women can identify nowhere to escape the men, or to avoid being used by them, or to find a more beneficial and privileged situation.

And that tells you all you need to know about what is really underneath all this, and which group is actually oppressed.

I can see why the authorities are trying to distinguish between someone 'genuine' or not, but they are going to tie themselves in knots defining this. When all is said and done its not possible to make a distinction of this kind when you are talking about safety and disturbing this could extend to sharing a cell and all other facilities. I cant see many people asking to transfer to a male prison because they recognise their vulnerability in terms of male prisoners. Transferring from a male to female prison leaves women at potential risk in exactly the same way.

I believe it's set policy that a born female transferring to a male prison is out of the question as they would be too vulnerable.

There is a very sane and sensible MNetter I've seen post occasionally who has talked about their time spent in a male prison although they are intersexed and for example menstruated while in prison. They've described how the prison service handled it, that they had access to secure and discreet provision and their safety managed, and shared that any TW's needs could be effectively met in this way within the male estate. (If anyone knows the threads please link, their posts were v interesting.)

Michelle especially your 2nd para, which I'd highlight if my pesky mobile would play ball - you really nailed it there. Nowhere for female-bodied people* to escape from male-bodied people.

• Zealots would forbid us from using such terms as they are transphobic.

Why would any man not make this claim?

This has been recognised by people working with prisoners. This is from the evidence given by Dr. James Barrett, President of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists, to the 2015 Parliamentary Transgender Enquiry, chaired by Maria Miller:

It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case. There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this. These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system and even (in one very well evidenced case that a highly concerned Prison Governor brought particularly to my attention) a plethora of prison intelligence information suggesting that the driving force was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier, females being generally perceived as low risk in this regard.

data.parliament.uk/WrittenEvidence/CommitteeEvidence.svc/EvidenceDocument/Women%20and%20Equalities/Transgender%20Equality/written/19532.html

The Jewish blag was done in Scottish prisons if I recall correctly. Apparently the kosher food service provider was vastly superior quality. They had a ridiculous number of prisoners pretending to be Jewish.

They probably mean no flaunting of their man bits and associated acts.

There was a trend of prisoners converting to Islam, too. More breaks for prayers and special food. There's an independent article about it from a few years ago.

The 'womaning right' point is so poignant when you read Storme' s account of the Stonewall riots and how at that time, you could be arrested in NY for being a woman who didn't wear the correct number of 'feminine' items of clothing...

Dear God this violent and manipulative man is laughing his cotton socks off at the ridiculous laws that allow him to serve his sentence in a woman's prison, and if he plays his cards right, even share a cell with a woman. And he won't even need to bother with the wig and make-up shit.