History of transgenderism in women's prisons

[baddaytoquitsmoking]

Here's the write up of Northern Radfem Network's latest protest at Askham Grange. Turns out there's a lot more to this prison than meets the eye.

www.northernradfemnetwork.org/hmp-yoi-askham-grange-protest-23rd-april-2022/

This article links to the history of transgenderism in women's prisons in the UK. The author argues that queer theory is causing the shifts in the definition of 'woman' the prison system uses from biological sex to how someone presents (long hair makeup etc.) to simply stating that the person now identifies as a woman.

But it also has quite a bit of the actual history. Well worth the read and it's not overbearingly academic.

I'm increasingly reaching a strong belief, based on an avalanche of evidence, that Queer Theory is really not a good thing in any way, and that it needs to fuck off.

I used to find it just silly in some ways, interesting in a few other ways, but now that it is quite powerful I find it frightening.

It has its own meaning for common words and forces everyone to apply them. It has done nothing to destabilise the concept of 'men' as the male sex, but spends all its time trying to erase the concept of 'women' as the female sex out of existence.

And I don't see it doing anything for the truly oppressed groups, the poor etc. It's a mental type of masturbation.

That is a very acute way of putting it.

It does take self indulgence and lack of respect for others to really quite stunning heights.

Its a very lovely queer theory dear. Now put it back in your pants and wash your hands.

Someone spoke about the "motte-and-bailey fallacy" on another thread. I know it's only wiki but I had a quick search and found one of the sub-sections to do with this, on related concepts interesting.

If you view it in respect of the changing, or change in, or attempt to change, the definition of "woman" because forcing the concept of TWAW with the reality of biology is an elision:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

"The fallacy has been described as an instance of equivocation, more specifically concept-swapping, which is the substitution of one concept for another without the audience realizing.[5]
In Shackel's original article, he argued that Michel Foucault employed "arbitrary redefinition"[2] of elementary but inherently equivocal terms such as "truth" and "power" in order to create the illusion of "giving a profound but subtle analysis of a taken for granted concept".[2] Shackel labeled this type of strategic rhetorical conflation of the broad colloquial understanding of a term with a technical, artificially stipulated one as "Humpty Dumptying", in reference to an exchange in Through The Looking-Glasss^.[2] In Shackel's description, a motte-and-bailey doctrine relies on overawing outsiders with pseudo-profundity,[2] similarly to what Daniel Dennett called a deepity.[3]
"Unlike normal examples of equivocation where one exploits already existing, perhaps quite subtle, differences of meaning, Humpty Dumptying is hardly subtle. The differences in meaning are so obvious that equivocating by use of them cannot normally be pursued without first softening up the audience. The softening up is effected by convincing the audience that the dual meaning is somehow an exposition of a profundity. ... the strategy is, as in Foucault's "Truth and power", to first make use of the word in its redefined sense, then present the redefinition as if it had already been established as the deeper content of the concept. Finally, the impression of profundity is sealed by passages which elide both meanings at once.[2]""

Of course, fucking Foucault is involved