I find it very interesting that people will, at one and the same time, argue that women are no less violent and dangerous than men are so trans women prisoners pose no additional risk, and then go on to say that trans women must be in women's prisons, because the men's ones are too dangerous. Those positions contradict.
I think we probably need some actual numbers here.
98% of jailed sex offenders are men. Women commit a vanishingly small proportion of sexual crime. 95% of violent jailed offenders are men. Most women are in prison for property crimes. Most men are in prison for violent offending. That's just the reality.
So in 2018, the Ministry of Justice gave the following figures.
There were 13452 jailed male sex offenders, from 33 million men in the population.
There were 128 jailed female sex offenders from 33 million women in the population.
There were 60 trans women sex offenders from an estimated 200,000 population.
Clearly, trans women are no more likely to offend than anyone else male. But they are, very clearly from those stats, far, far, FAR more likely to offend than anyone female.
Today, there are 1 in 50 male prisoners claiming to be trans. Clearly, many will be lying. But who determines that?
Evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee in 2016 from gender specialist clinicians stated:
The converse is the ever-increasing tide of referrals of patients in prison serving long or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences. These vastly outnumber the number of prisoners incarcerated for more ordinary, non-sexual, offences. It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case... 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. I am sure that the Governor concerned would be happy to talk about this.
80% of women prisoners have suffered serious sexual abuse and harm in their lives, more than half as children. There's actually research on sexual abuse being causative for women ending up in prison. Most women in jail won't have known a nice man in their lives, according to all the data we have. We're talking about women who have been prostituted out, beaten, often abused by their own fathers or stepfathers as children. Rates of PTSD are incredibly high. And then these extremely vulnerable women, most of whom are jailed for non-violent offences, and who have appalling experiences of men, are locked up in a very confined space with male criminals, if those males identify as women. And they are harassed and abused by trans prisoners, yes, according to Rhona Hodgekiss, former women's prison chief, now an MP. There's not just one case of a transwoman assaulting women, either, but seven: statistically, a trans woman is five times more likely to assault a woman prisoner than another woman is. And that's not the only issue.
The Chief Executive of the Howard League, Frances Crook, stated that she had 'personally witnessed female prisoners visibly "intimidated" by a male-bodied trans inmate in their midst. "The trans prisoner was dominating the space and the women were round the edges," she said.'
I would add that if a transwoman has a GRC, then there's a legal right to be placed in a women's prison. Which is one of the things that makes self ID frightening.
The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners state that 'Men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women, the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate'.
Trans women are males. They should not be in a women's prison. Ever. We do indeed need a trans wing, or given the 1 in 50 stat possibly a whole prison, because trans women aren't safe in a men's jail either, and freedom from that sort of risk is a human right for all prisoners (I'd argue that nobody is safe in a men's prison, actually, but that's another issue). What we don't need are male people placed in with some of the most painfully vulnerable women in our society, and it takes my breath away that anyone can suggest otherwise - do people realise, too, that some women's prisons have mother and baby units? And are they aware that Karen White, the rapist and paedophile who sexually assaulted women prison (while on remand for raping a vulnerable autistic girl, in a woman's psychiatric ward - no red flags there then, no reason to question how effective 'safeguarding' can be considered to be) did so in New Hall, which has such a unit?
I'm absolutely supportive of people's right to live as feels right, safe and comfortable to them. We very much need laws to ensure discrimination, abuse and hate crimes are sanctioned. Nobody should suffer avoidable, forseeable harm, that we as a society can prevent. And that also applies to women: it's appalling for anyone to suggest that we treat women as disposable. Women have single sex spaces because we commit far less sexual crime, and actually far less violent crime. 90% of sexual assaults in changing rooms happen in the 30% othat are unisex. Just 10% happen in the 70% that are single sex. Women are safer in vulnerable situations when entry is restricted solely to other women. There's no evidence at all that trans women are significantly less of a statistical risk than any other male. Are most trans women no risk to anyone? Yes, of course. Are most men no risk to anyone? Yes, of course. But SOME are. And as we have no way to tell who is who, no men access women's spaces.
Single sex provision is a trauma-informed necessity for women who have been harmed by male violence (which is almost all women in prisons, and homelessness shelters, and by definition all women in rape crisis provision, or domestic abuse shelters). I'm aware Stonewall promote those willing to claim that there's no problem. They don't promote the people who say that yes, there absolutely is a problem. Nor do they ever for a moment acknowledge that those women traumatised by men need - not want, NEED - a single sex space in which to heal. And gender identity is personal, and inward. Bodies are outward, and what others can see. Male bodies around traumatised women are harmful, no matter how lovely the owner might be.
I do wonder sometimes what people think feminism is for, or about. Women are oppressed because of our biological sex. Across history, and across cultures, women are abused, killed, harmed and controlled as a means of ensuring our reproductive and sexual potential is not our own. That's why female genital mutilation exists. Why little girls are married to old men. Why period huts exist, and why 70% of modern slaves are women - most of whom are forced to submit to commercial rape. Why in most countries, until recently women couldn't vote, or own property. It's not done because of gender identity. It has nothing to do with dress or hair or behaviour, unless the behaviour threatens that control in some way. Sex is the foundation and that remains, through transition. To pretend that a man can say a form of words and magically morph into a woman, and pose no further threat to women and be literally one of us... I'm sorry, that is simply a lie. A self evident, obvious lie. And the demand that female people subjugate their own needs, rights, ease and even safety, to please a group born male, is not feminism. I's not new, or progressive, or kind. It's just more of the same old shit, and I'm standing for, and with, my sisters - especially the most vulnerable, who most need protection and support from male violence. I stand with women.