No Evidence to suggest abuse of self ID

[Signalbox]

This is an interesting thread on Twitter by journalist Róisín Michael on Twitter.

How can governments and organisations continue to get away with saying "there is no evidence" that allowing males to self ID into women's spaces will result in increased predatory behaviour within those spaces when the data is not even being collected.

We already know this happens in the UK in relation to Males in the female prison estate and convictions of male sex offenders being recorded as being carried out by women.

I hadn't quite realised the extent of the problem though and how deep this actually goes. It's horrifying...

@ RóisínMichaux

Belgium has had self ID for almost 5 years. Not a single report of a trans woman crime? Not a single one. No stories of men attacking women in prisons? Not one.

I asked the police why. “We don’t communicate that”.

I asked the press ombudsman: “Why is there not one single report about any crime sexual or otherwise in the Belgian press of either of the country’s languages involving a trans woman since January 2018.”

He said he doesn’t know

I contact lots of journalist. No réponse. I follow up. No answer. Is there a rule, spoken or otherwise? Silence. Try to yourself: search the archives of Belgian papers in Dutch or French for the term “transwoman”

It’s all trans sob stories about living their truth.

Weird no? So I try to find out if sex crimes committed by women have gone up. But the stats are hard to parse, especially when COVID arrives. The police record everything about a crimes except sex. I ask the police repeatedly: when did you stop recording sex and why? Silence

Are there trans women in prison? We don’t record that, fellow Belgian terfs were told. But I got to know some researchers who told me yea, plenty of men in with the women. In fact, there will be more of that soon

The council of Europe apparently has decided that to separate women and men is not a familiar enough environment for reinsertion in the real world (i haven’t confirmed this). So eventually all prisons should be as mixed as possible

So Belgium being the progressive little stalwart it is has gone ahead and carried out 3 separate mixed prison experiments (ongoing, results out 2023). My main takeaway (though I’m a terf so I’m biased):

The top-tier alpha men get women, and pair off. The men who don’t pair off? They get upset and angry and tense. And the prison guards have to deal with the fallout. Prison incels. They are creating prison incels.

The people carrying out this research are young queer theory idealists. One of the prison projects roughly translates as de-gendering prisons (in French). I asked one of them: aren’t the women afraid? She said they would never let anything happen to each other.

One researcher told me that there was a case of a trans “woman” that she was aware of who had a psychotic break and attacked a female prisoner. “But that person was mentally unwell” she told me. Oh ok then!

I contacted social workers from inside prisons “I have a lot to say about that but I can’t” was one response. “I’m burnt out, I need a break” was another. I even contacted journalists who made names for themselves uncovering stories that powerful people wanted hidden. Nope.

So is the fact that there have been no stories (as far as I can tell - and I have searched on and off for months) about transwomen committing sexual crimes evidence that transwomen are not doing so? There is no reason to think this is true.

More likely: as many have pointed out, small chill countries (more dependent on institutions like the EU) like Malta, Ireland and Belgium are the laboratories where this bullshit was tested out on an unsuspecting populace.

The most shameful of all, I believe, Is an organisation I thought would be the last place we could put some hope:

@ investigate_eu : how did this all happen so fast? Where is the pressure coming from? Why the silence?

Investigate Europe didn’t even answer my email.

What a time to be alive: massive changes being stealthily made by shady American donors to our very understanding of reality itself. The investigators? The truth-seekers? Absent. Afraid. Cowed.

But then you look at their donor list: it’s the same people who fund @ ILGAEurope and @ TGEUorg and the lobbies that push this sexist regressive men’s rights movement on us.

We’re all alone. It’s up to us. Start searching, asking questions. They have fucking abandoned us.

That's how I see it, Signalbox. And again, it's blurring the definitions of sex and gender. Another objective. Why the hell would DVLC care about your gender?

You’re right that being legally female - a male with a female GRC and being biologically female as recorded at birth are different things. The trouble is that Lady Haldanes judgement ruled that a GRC changes a person’s sex for all purposes. She also said that sometimes the EqA means biological sex and sometimes certificate sex but as ‘biological sex’ is not used in the Act and there is no agreed way when sex is being used biologically or not women’s sex based exemptions are now entirely up for grabs. It’s the biggest rollback of women’s rights I have seen in my lifetime and the sheer hatred that some men seem to harbor for women has shocked me.

If you want to resolve this situation then sign the petition on the Sex Matters website.

It is, isn't it?

Whether or not any man, even a rapist or paedophile, can obtain a falsified birth certificate which says he is 'female', is very important to us. Which is why we're discussing it.

Those rapists and paedophiles with a GRC will be sent straight to a women's prison if convicted, so it's easy to see why they might want a falsified birth certificate.

But DadJoke still hasn't explained why it's so important to some men who are not rapists or paedophiles to have a falsified birth certificate which says they're female, other than having a death certificate (which they'll never see, obviously) with 'female' on it. Which is an odd thing to fixate about.

This is Schrödinger's reform, isn't it? Completely banal (a mere admin change) and critically important all at the same time.

I've yet to hear how this will actually improve the lives of people who identify as trans - if they either have automatic access without right to refusal or can be completely excluded even with a GRC, if no one can (apparently) ask to see a GRC or birth certificate and no one ever does anyway, what is the argument for reform then?

If people who have no medical need whatsoever for gender recognition can apply for a GRC, how does this help those who have that need? And why does someone who doesn't have any actual need for gender recognition want a GRC? Especially if a GRC doesn't change a thing?

Our side is clear - in implementing self-id policies, laws and regulations situations arise, with increasing frequency, where the rights of female people to female-only legal set asides come into competition with the assumed rights of male people who are legally female and male people who merely identify as female to access those same legal set asides.

(Legal set asides are not only women's safe spaces, but also women's right to organise, campaign and assemble outwith the presence of men, whether for political, cultural or social reasons; positive measures addressing existing and historic discrimination of and disadvantages for female people; women's sports; women's awards and prizes; female-only healthcare, social care and other services; and laws protecting pregnant women and mothers.)

In practice, many providers are unable to exercise the sex-based exceptions in the Equality Act 2010. The reasons for this include (but are not limited to) failure to understand the law and their rights as providers, fear of repercussions, and loss of funding.

So we know in practice this law will make a difference, because just like a gate protecting against intruders becomes pointless if we hand out keys to anyone who asks, many safeguarding measures will cease to protect us.

And this reform will make a difference, because it rides roughshod over our right as women and girls to privacy, dignity and the autonomy to assert boundaries around our own bodies against all males, regardless of how they identify or are legally recognised.

Female prison officers in Scotland for instance are required to search male prisoners in the female estate. At the moment a refusal of such orders is tolerated* because the prisoners in question are legally male. If self-id becomes enshrined in law, and those particular individuals can change their legal sex through self-declaration, such refusals will lead to disciplinary action.

*But as Rhona Hotchkiss pointed out in one of her speeches, that's only because older female guards will typically step in and do the search to protect their younger colleagues. Which still means the former have to touch males against their will.

No difference indeed.

Well said, Charlie!

Female prison officers in Scotland for instance are required to search male prisoners in the female estate. At the moment a refusal of such orders is tolerated because the prisoners in question are legally male. If self-id becomes enshrined in law, and those particular individuals can change their legal sex through self-declaration, such refusals will lead to disciplinary action.*

JFC.

Indeed. Great post.

Thank you@CharlieParley . This is the most clear and thorough, yet succinct laying out of the implications I've read!
I really appreciate this.🙏

Thanks for your excellent post @CharlieParley.

I would be very surprised if JKR's trans exclusionary support centre didn't accept trans men.

I know dad jokes posts are disingenuous nonsense, but this takes the biscuit.

Sorry, to be precise "trans women exclusionary" - but GCs people think trans men are women, so it's always about excluding trans women.

You clearly didn't read the judgment. She didn't "rule that" - it literally says as much in the Act., and it depends on context. It does not stop GCs excluding trans women with a GRC from single-sex spaces, or from sports, and there are other case:

"Mr O’Neill referred to the example of the Forensic Medical Services (Victims of Sexual Offences) (Scotland) Act 2021 where references to the sex of the forensic medical examiner can only mean, read fairly, that a victim should have access to an examiner of the same biological sex as themselves. I agree. There are no doubt many other such examples. That does not give rise to the inevitable conclusion, as was urged upon me, that “sex” in the present context must mean the same thing as it does in others. A rigid approach in this context is neither mandated by the language of either statute nor consistent with their respective aims and purposes."

What rights do you think have been rolled back, exactly, by this clarification of existing law?

It's not about excluding trans women. It's about excluding ALL MALE PEOPLE (and that includes transwomen so actually we are being inclusive really by including them in the male category).

In the terms of your own ideological language it's about excluding ALL those who were "assigned male at birth" because as far as single-sex spaces go it is irrelevant whether or not a male person fancies themselves to be a female person because they are not female. And that applies even once a man has a special certificate to state that they are a woman.

What rights do you think have been rolled back, exactly, by this clarification of existing law?

Well the most obvious example would be the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scot) Act 2018. That's what the FWS case was about wasn't it? IANAL but presumably the ruling means that a Public Board in Scotland could now be comprised of 1 man and 2 transwomen and that would count as being acceptable. This renders that law completely pointless as far a female representation goes. It also allows any man who self-ID's as a woman to take the place of an actual woman. So the idea that self-ID doesn't give any benefits beyond "paperwork" is a nonsense isn't it?

DadJoke says

"GCs people think trans men are women"

"It does not stop GCs excluding trans women with a GRC from single-sex spaces, or from sports,"

"MRAs are always whining about the lack of support for men, but instead of devoting their time to support which meets the needs of men, they simply attack women. GCs play the same game."

There are a couple of really unpleasant things going on here.

Firstly, I realise it must be tedious to have to type "the vast majority of people" (TVMOP) repeatedly but abbreviating "the vast majority of people" to "GC" gives a very misleading impression. Almost as if DadJoke has a problem acknowledging that "GC beliefs" are the established consensus, held by TVMOP.

As if that gaslighting was not sufficient, DadJoke also states that "GCs" (meaning the feminist women he is talking to on this Thread rather than TVMOP) are indistinguishable from Men's Rights Activists in "devoting their time" to attacking women. (By "women" DadJoke presumably means males who self-ID as women, which is pretty offensive to the feminist women on this thread when the term "transwomen" is readily available.)

Secondly, the swift slide from "GC people" to "GCs" is as dehumanising and disrespectful as referring to "trans people" as "transgenders". It is on a par with referring to TVMOP as "the cis".

(Note: Many transsexuals were and still are happy being referred to as "transsexuals" but have been treated with huge disrespect by transgender advocacy groups which deem the term "obsolete".)

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I would say that repeated reference to "GCs" is "truly grim" and, in this context, "sexist".

Firstly, it is gaslighting in presenting the views of TVMOP as niche or eccentric.

Secondly, it is disrespectful and dehumanising.

Finally, it is sexist. DadJoke has clarified again and again that he is using the term "GCs" in the specific context of women (females) expressing concern about their safety, dignity, privacy as well as the erosion of their opportunities and participation in public life, in relation to the number of males expected to self-identify as transwomen in order to obtain legal status as "female" if the Scottish Gender Recognition Reforms go through.

This Board is called "Feminism: Sex and gender discussions" and the URL is "womens_rights". It is very off-putting to find a thread on a Feminism Discussion Board peppered with sexist, dehumanising language and gaslighting that trivialises concerns about women's rights.

I usually just stop reading, close the tab and choose a thread on another topic of interest. However, this is such a serious issue as it involves proposed legislation that, if passed, would affect the whole UK so I have persisted.

It is "truly grim" though, as if the cost of listening to an important conversation about women's rights IRL, not even participating, just listening, is being repeatedly verbally abused and dehumanised by one of the participants.

Too many of us have been on the receiving end of degrading, bullying language and behaviour by men, whether in private, coercive control situations or involving public humiliation. We should not have to tolerate it here or have to exclude ourselves from the conversation to avoid the distress of being re-traumatised.

The term "male chauvinism" might have gone out of fashion but its manifestation seems alive and kicking, kicking women to the ground and then kicking them again when they are down.

Additionally, it is not people who are critical of the gender identity ideology deciding on access, it's providers.

And if a provider denies access to males, it's not because they are critical of this ideology but because they have decided that giving access to males is detrimental to the females they are tasked with protecting.

It's funny how if we turned this around and asked about giving the general public access to resources, spaces or services dedicated to the trans community to meet their specific needs, the reaction would be outrage.

Thanks @Bosky
You're right, and it's a waste of time engaging with an MRA.

Further to my point about female prison officersas another group of women being harmed by these policies of putting male prisoners in the female estate, here is a recent case where a female prison officer was awarded compensation because she was forced to supervise a male on mental health watch while he masturbated for hours.

twitter.com/palladianblue/status/1603135718989402112?s=20&t=PSzojMV43zUz4KHerwvB6g

Absolutely wrong - it never required a GRC for trans women to be included. Here is the section from the act.

"woman” includes a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (within the meaning of section 7 of the Equality Act 2010) if, and only if, the person is living as a woman and is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of becoming female. This means that it is not necessary for a trans woman to have a Gender Recognition Certificate to be included as a woman for the purposes of the Act, provided they –

o have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment,
o are living as a woman, and
o are proposing to undergo, are undergoing or have undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of becoming female.

I should rephrase that - the female prison officer had to watch this male inmate for nine hours while he did various things, including masturbation.

This was done by equipping him with a camera that showed the observer whatever he looked at. The officer had to sit in a small, dark room by herself and record everything he did every 15 minutes. This included full view of his intact genitals and anything he did, including masturbation.

She grew increasingly distressed as she had been abused as a child and this was retraumatising her. So she begged to be taken off the observation several times. After being ignored, she even disclosed that she was a survivor and couldn't tolerate this. In response, she was threatened with losing her job.

@DadJoke

"MRAs are always whining about the lack of support for men, but instead of devoting their time to support which meets the needs of men, they simply attack women. GCs play the same game."

Leaving aside that nasty little use of the dismissive and dehumanising label "GCs" for people who disagree with you, the point you are missing is that women, in the original sense of adult human female people, already devoted their time, money and political power to put in place support. We spent a big chunk of the last 150 years or do doing it. That is, in fact, how those exact rights, spaces and support which are now being appropriated for trans women came to exist.

And yet those trans women, unlike the female people, had no hand in their creation. No part in shaping them. Their only claim is by the redefinition of the word woman to mean a group totally different to the one which needed and therefore worked to establish these things.

What you are advocating for, in fact, is for women to walk away from the support they already built for themselves. You somehow think that it's unreasonable to not want to just hand it all over without a fuss to people who, unlike women, actually did nothing to put this in place but now demand access.

And yet, even when a woman does exactly what you are proposing, when she swallows the utter unfairness that women are bring told they have no right to keep what they built for themselves, based on themselves, because it is what they themselves needed to exist, you yourself, on this very thread, call it transphobic.

I agree that using 'GCs' to refer to women is the equivalent of using - well, words I wouldn't use to refer to people, and would probably rightly be deleted for using.

There is just no need to dehumanise us, DadJoke. You can disagree without doing that, surely?

"are proposing to undergo, are undergoing or have undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of becoming female."

Well that strikes me as nonsense. Whatever they do to themselves hormonally or surgically, they remain male genotypically, unless they have a DSD. All they are doing is changing their presentation. As for "part of a process" as far as I can see that can involve as little as putting a dress on.

It has been discussed in ScotParl today (but not to any real conclusion) what 'living in acquired gender' actually meant.

The answer was, vaguely, 'using pronouns'.

And thus pronouns take take on even more significance. The thing that makes a person a man or a woman is the demand that other people use a certain pronoun when they are speaking about you in your absence.