Mail US story: The transgender prison experiment UNCOVERED: male-to-female inmates in women's cellblocks drive rising numbers of rapes and abuse

[ResisterRex]

This was entirely predictable. I'm
Not sure what the definition of "good faith" is. Sex is immutable so "faith" isn't a relevant factor".

Does make you think though. Do those that put these laws (GRA here, and Title IX amendments there), owe women - as a sex class - an apology? There's a lot of talk of unconscious bias. Seems to me - being charitable - that unconscious bias in lawmakers could've been a factor. It's always assumed women will prop others up, get on with things, that we don't complain.

The other explanation is that they simply didn't and don't care.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11458335/Male-female-Trans-inmates-drive-rising-numbers-rapes-abuse-womens-prisons.html

"In May, a trans inmate took a woman detainee into a portable toilet in the yard and raped her, while another kept lookout, she claims. The perpetrator then threatened to rape others. Nowadays, she suffers panic attacks.
'It is not bigoted to ask for sex-separated facilities when I am changing, showering, sleeping, and using the toilet,' she says in testimony. 'We have a right to insist on accommodations that give some privacy and dignity.'"

I’m actually too angry to read your post, or the article, but thank you for drawing attention to it.
What the heck did they expect to happen when you put males in with females who can’t escape from you?!

Females are no better than lab rats in the eyes of the decision malers

The comments underneath are mostly sensible and supportive, with the occasional 'where are the feminists protesting this?'.

It's actually a pretty balanced article, it highlights two cases of tw prisoners, one who looks very feminine and was apprehensive about being jailed with men and one who was badly beaten after being put in a holding cell with three other men. I feel sorry for them but that's obviously not a reason for a blanket law that puts women at risk. I'd feel equally sorry for any person who was beaten or fearful. Third spaces would be a way forward, but men don't deserve to be beaten or raped either and I believe this is something that happens too often in American prisons. Although it's a tangent to the subject of this thread.

The thought of those women being shut in a cell or cell block or shower or toilet, with a man pretending to be a woman who might choose to rape them.

It doesn't even matter if the men don't rape them, the stress of constantly having to be on alert to the possibility is torture in itself.

I just can't even begin to imagine how powerless and trapped they must feel.

Those poor poor women.

This is so wrong. Why can't people see that?

I'm not sure third spaces are a tangent precisely because they've been suggested by those who want to protect the safety and dignity of women but they're rarely addressed by those committed to self-ID. I think that speaks volumes.

The % of sex crimes seems pretty consistent between the UK and USA doesn’t it. As in, higher than male population.

I wonder when someone will try to establish why.

I really had doubted it was a natural prevalence, but I would like to understand better what the trend relates to.

I don't think third spaces are a tangent tbh, I think it is a solution that should be considered. Women deserve to be safe and so do transwomen (and transmen). There would be some of the same concerns in the third space in terms of safeguarding transwomen from opportunistic predators but I would hope that the hugely reduced numbers in these spaces would make that more feasible.

One of the huge problems I find with so much of this debate is that some of the loudest voices are so aggressive and tribal that there is often no opportunity for empathy for both sides or nuance in discussing the genuine safeguarding issues faced by both women and trans people.

'Third spaces' seems like an obvious idea.

But also, doesn't the US have any concept of 'vulnerable prisoners' who shouldn't be in the general prison population? Or for that matter any sense re who should share multiple occupancy cells?

Oh sorry, I see now that you mean the male-on-male violence in US prisons is a tangent.

I think the emphasis in recent years on unconcious bias is interesting, because what is often more dangerous, and the real issue here, imo, is not bias but underlying assumptions accepted without really interrogating them, and often without realizing that they are being accepted at all.

In this case the assumption is that whatever groups of people we somehow mush together as a class, and who we designate as somehow marginalized or oppressed, are not a risk to others. It's not even just the TWAW assumption, it's the assumption that we can put in place institutional advantaging for anyone in an oppressed class and that will never be used against anyone, especially anyone from a less oppressed class.

It's like the idea that only an advantaged racial group can be racist, the same idea is used in all of these other scenarios. We've seen similar issues in some cases in human rights tribunals in some countries, where there seems to have been as assumption when setting them up that the power they can leverage could only ever be used for good, so no balances or protections were considered.

I feel that in recent years this sort of assumption has underpinned most left social justice thinking.

@Raquelos yes, third spaces are absolutely part of this discussion. Sorry, if I were a bit unclear. The male on male violence, while abhorrent, I didn't think was the focus.

Within prisons, I'd guess a number of things.

One is that sex offenders are highly motivated to get themselves into positions where they can offend again.

Prison can be particularly unpleasant for sex offenders within the male estate.

Among men who transgress sexually, there may well be a preponderance of other sexual abnormalities - they are part of a package. This is an area where I think some of the feminist analysis that insists that rape and sa isn't actually sexual does a disservice to understanding what goes on with some of these offenders.

Yes, they do, but I am not sure who does and does not qualify.

Put them with the beasts!
That way, they're fairly much protected, women are protected, problem solved, simples!