Telegraph - Women prisoners who call transgender inmates ‘he’ or ‘him’ face extra jail time

[OvaHere]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/08/women-prisoners-call-transgender-inmates-face-extra-jail-time/

This is an utterly disgraceful abomination of human rights. First they put male rapists and murderers in women's prisons then the women are punished if they won't go along with the despicable pretence.

Extract

Women prisoners who call transgender inmates by the wrong pronoun could face extra time in jail under equality rules, says a justice minister.

Female inmates who deliberately call a transgender woman “he” or “him” could be punished under rules barring “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”.

The penalties will be decided by an independent adjudicator, a visiting judge, who has the power to impose additional days if they feel the abuse merits such a punishment.

The disclosure comes amid a growing debate over the policy of holding male-to-female transgender prisoners in women’s jails.

This summer, the High Court rejected a legal challenge to prevent transgender inmates with convictions for sexual or violent offences against women being imprisoned alongside other women.

In 2019, there were 34 transgender women who were still legally male detained at the 12 women’s prisons in England and Wales.

We can't post archive links now but the full article is out there if anyone wants to look.

*But what we have is re-writing of rules and regulations, organising committees, having meetings, getting advice and mangling laws, to try and make the lie work as the truth.

Handwringing, over and over about what to do with transwomen, how to designate them, what panel they need to go in front of, what qualifications they need, what credibility their history can and can't provide.

And it sometimes still feels like the original smack to the solar plexus, when we realise we're still doing this because everyone has to pretend it's not a whopping lie.*

100%

We can't post archive links now
Don't want to derail this thread, but do we know why not? Can't see anything about it in either the main or naughty corner talk guidelines.

Links ending in . is trigger an automated instruction to hide the post

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

Links ending in . is trigger an automated instruction to hide the post

Ah. Thank you, I wondered why a couple of my posts had been hidden even when I was using them as an easier way to see a Twitter thread.

It's a clumsy workaround but I find it's always worth checking to see if something has already been archived at any of the usual places or:

web.archive.org/

Not sure if a Bible is used any more...

Jurors and witnesses are required to affirm and can choose to do so on one of several holy texts, or just promise. Legally it makes no difference.

@Thelnebriati

The genius of this movement has been in painting women as the aggressors.

Absolutely.

The idea that women who won’t play along with the lie that a male person is the same sex as them are guilty of bullying or harassment is a complete reversal of what’s really going on here. Another outrageous DARVO.

Putting male prisoners in a women’s prison is bullying, harassment and abuse of the women.

Making women prisoners refer to a male prisoner using female pronouns is bullying, harassment and abuse.

Punishing women for not following the rules of a misogynistic, authoritarian ideology that undermines and removes their own human rights is in itself a particularly vicious form of state mandated abuse of these women’s human rights, just as in wider society the same pressure being exerted on women to conform to these ideological demands and accept the huge social and legal changes they bring with them is a form of structural abuse of us, a violation of our human rights.

This whole thing since the inception of the GRA in 2004 has been a campaign of sustained harassment against women.

100%, OvaHere.

It’s just rot to say it’s “transphobic bullying” if a woman refuses to use incorrect sex pronouns for a male, for whatever reason. Just buying into the lie that some male people “are” women and should therefore, morally, be treated as women.

We have to challenge this at the foundation, challenge that very idea, and that is why this is such an important issue and one that absolutely needs to be highlighted and revealed in all its cruel misogyny.

We need to turn the picture the right way up again so we can see that this is not the bullying of vulnerable, disenfranchised male people by powerful, privileged female people, but the other way around. Powerful, privileged male people bullying vulnerable, disenfranchised female people. As per bloody usual.

It’s no coincidence that one of the most crucial, foundational goals of “trans rights” activism is to get mass public acceptance of the lie at the heart of all this. Everything hinges on it, everything. No wonder they have to monitor and enforce adherence to the linguistic smoke and mirrors. They have nothing without it.

Thank you for your excellent posts, Eresh, Datun and Potholes.

Why the general public isn't more shocked by the fact we're have a framework of authoritarianism put in place and the scale is not creeping it's being constructed rapidly and with gross restrictions.

It’s really alarming to see how readily many people will accept this, isn’t it Embarrassing.

So many excellent posts on this thread!!

Does anyone else ever get that, where you could literally quote or highlight the vast majority of posts, because you agree so wholeheartedly with them?

Unfuckingbelievable.

This article feels misleading. What would need to be proven is essentially a public order offence, whether in prison or out of it, so I can't see a Judge convicting let alone doleing out jail time for a simple misnaming of pronouns. On a completely separate note for another day I thought s.5 wasn't imprisonable so am surprised more days can be added where it appears in an adjudication, I'll definitely be looking into that more!

@NiceGerbil

Searching for full article without paywall.

Is this in it-

' Asked about the policy on the words allowed for transgender inmates, Lord Wolfson, the justice minister, said: “Incidents where a prisoner uses incorrect pronouns for another prisoner will be considered on a case-by-case basis, in line with the prisoner discipline procedures policy and the prison rules'

If so it's not a new policy then? It's saying that bullying in this way is included in the current policies?

If that's correct then. I do think this is being reported in a slightly unhelpful way.

There are enough issues with this topic and prisons to be going on with.

Media reporting like this. Is a gift to those who say press are against us this is skewed etc. Can't believe anything they say. Which is detrimental.

IF my understanding is correct.

I agree with you. I think this is unhelpful reporting rather than any change. All behaviour is considered on a case by case basis. This isn't a policy decision this is just talking about how the system currently works.

isn't this bullying of women using the protected characteristic of belief, though? Couldn't a woman defend herself using that?

@EatSprayGlove

This article feels misleading. What would need to be proven is essentially a public order offence, whether in prison or out of it, so I can't see a Judge convicting let alone doleing out jail time for a simple misnaming of pronouns. On a completely separate note for another day I thought s.5 wasn't imprisonable so am surprised more days can be added where it appears in an adjudication, I'll definitely be looking into that more!

We're not talking about a judge or a courtroom.

We're talking about the possibility that women who are already in prison might have their release date changed for being insufficiently polite to a transgender male prisoner in the estate.

People have their release dates changes all the time. Good behaviour means an early release but what does good behaviour mean? And this will be decided internally.

I find remembering pronouns a huge cognitive load. I have a colleague who is he/they and I feel petrified whenever his (their??) Name comes up because i just can't work out what I'm supposed to say. Do I say "yes he is a good manager, I really like they"? The whole thing is madness.

I think this is unhelpful reporting rather than any change.

Why does it need to be a change to be newsworthy? Why not just something that is being revealed that was already the case but that the general public weren’t really aware of before?

I don’t get this attitude at all.

Sorry- a huge paragraph of my post got deleted by me before I pressed post.

What I'm.trying to say, is I don't think this is a "it'll never happen". I would have thought the Marion Millar court case would never happen, and it's happening!

But it doesn't even need to go as far as a judge. It's been brought up in the context of an additional judicial sentence- but is that necessary? What about early release dates being adjusted? What about people with vendettas?

What about if the judge is scheduled to visit anyway, and something like this happens because there was an opportunity to be seized?

@PurgatoryOfPotholes I disagree. It is a Judge who comes into the prison to sit as an independent adjudicator. The same must be proved as in if this were prosecuted on the outside and prisoners can have representation. It's the same offence.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark I'm not saying the fact someone can be prosecuted for misgendering is right or wrong. What I'm saying is that the same standard applies inside and outside prison and my frustration is I feel the reporter is trying to churn up rage by misreporting the context which worries me as I fear can damage the real message many on these pages want to get out.

Let's not be misdirected by it, the focus should be on appropriate placement of transgender prisoners to protect women in prisons.

Sorry @PurgatoryOfPotholes didn't see second bit of your post. There are regularly external adjudicator called in where Governors are not appropriate to adjudicate. There is an entire process, you can't just whip up an accusation and pop it in front of the visiting judge. The benefit in my eyes is that a Judge attending will be able to assess the evidence/witnesses/proof better than an internal adjudicator.

A male person in women's prison already holds all the aces. Even if them having this trump card has been the case the whole time it is still worth considering it as it is now revealed to us.

They really do get everything.

Why shouldn't we be raging? We should be raging that the male person is there in the first place. We should be raging that they are then treated as if the women are the aggressors once the are there. We should be raging that a whole load of vulnerable women are being forced to play along with a delusional male and his "I am a woman" fetish or risk further prison time. Ffs. You don't need a reporter to whip up rage, it is already right there.

I am raging.

If the article wakes people up to what is happening to what the REALITY of a male in women's prisons MEANS then I do not think it detracts from the main message. I think it enhances the main message... HE SHOULD NOT BE THERE.

I'm raging too.

Whilst I appreciate that it might be the case that this is the same law in or out of prison, the power imbalance is massively skewed in a female prison.

It almost doesn't get as extreme as that. A male criminal being able to dictate to a female who can't escape, what she can or can't call him, whilst using that very power to be there in the first place. It's just disgusting.

She can't walk away. leave the office, go to the toilet, resign her job.

She can't not do it.

She's already vulnerable and powerless.

They have imagined the worst possible scenario in order to exercise their power, and taken it.

Prisons, rape refugees, homeless shelters. The most vulnerable women we bloody well have.

I agree Datun. I'm glad this is getting sunlight, because it highlights all the problems with this ideology quite neatly.

Hear, hear Datun and WomaninBoots.

I agree, it does indeed enhance the main message and show up the reality of what it means to have male prisoners in the female estate and make the women pretend the males are female too.

A woman potentially having to serve more days/weeks/months in prison than she otherwise would have because she can’t or won’t go along with this misogynistic, male supremacist pretence. We should indeed be raging.

And as you say, Datun, she can’t walk away. And these are vulnerable women.

This is state mandated female subservience. Subordination to their male overlords.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I agree Datun. I'm glad this is getting sunlight, because it highlights all the problems with this ideology quite neatly.

Doesn’t it just.