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.

“Using pronouns”?

So ScotGov now believe that humans can change species &/or metamorphose into mythical creatures? Or do neopronouns still have to be respected but somehow lack this magical transformative power? Or did they not get to those immediate & glaring issues with that would-be definition?

At this point I suggest we check if Drake does indeed answer his drum as promised - it’s no more absurd a premise, after all, than “living as a woman” being something a male person can accomplish.

Evidence of the impact of the loss of single-sex spaces on women: various public swimming pools in France used to have women-only slots, used largely by Muslim women, to encourage fitness and because data showed men had a 70% share of public sports facilities. They became controversial because it was argued they were against the principle of no religion in public spaces, they stopped being offered and loads of women just never went swimming any more rather than share with men.

So we are to be forced not only into compelled speech but compelled speech of magic words which give any man who demands it access to our spaces, our awards, our refuges, our bodies. This really is a cruel and unusual punishment to enact on the women of Scotland.

We have to say something we know to be untrue and then we are told that because we said it that made it true?

Will Catholics, the Catholic Church having stated that gender identity ideology is unequivocally contrary to their own dogma, also be forced into using the magic words and making men into women and vice versa?

Is this not an infringement on the protected characteristic of belief? Both for Catholics and those of us who believe that sex is immutable, unchanging, biological reality? Are any other groups of believers or religious communities impacted by this? Where are they? Do they know what is happening? Time to stand up now.

@PomegranateOfPersephone

Many Muslim & Jewish women are being impacted in a way that circumscribes their ability to participate in activities outside the home. There are some Christian sects where the same will apply; & those Catholic nuns in open orders will almost certainly face a similar narrowing of their worlds.

There is a predominantly Muslim-led campaign trying to reclaim Hampstead Women’s Pond for women. Of the adult human female sort, as opposed to the imagined feeling in head sort. Orthodox Jews opposed the change in 2019 but it was shoved through anyway, because of course it was.

The C of E, of course, is full-on TWAW, TMAM & “no transubstantiation but we’ll totally roll with Trans Jesus [Is Jesus]”. This is what happens when you get amateurs thinking they can do penance for the whole homophobia thing without the proper training or some supervision. They could’ve asked the Anglo-Catholics, all - technically, somehow - Protestants together & all that. But no, instead they’re after shredding the Anglican communion with this guidance.

Do you remember the 2019 protests - mostly in Birmingham - over the “No Outsiders” SRE programme? Ironically Hope Not Hate are more about the “it was outsiders!” when trying to explain what happened & why; though they do go slightly beyond “homophobia! homophobia! they’re all homophobes!” which makes a change. According to them “No Outsiders” is lovely & fluffy & nobody could possibly have any [legitimate] objections to it. I mean, it misrepresents the Equality Act & despite claiming it’s responding to a need to teach about the EA (there’s no such requirement) it’s only interested in a select few protected characteristics (inc, ofc, those it changes definitions of) - but who could be so churlish as to object to those minor considerations?

The Cornwall Schools’ guidance effectively contributed to its own demise - & it was a Christian couple who made the legal challenge.

So there are plenty of people of faith (& it is people, not just women) who’ve been pushing back for several years - the Rowe’s case started in 2017, but their issues with the school began in 2015. There will be lots of women “just” feministing along whose faith is a consideration - there are Muslim, Jewish & Catholic women here on FWR, for example.

I might perhaps have misunderstood something, but it sounded as if you were suggesting [often multiply] marginalised women were not engaged in the current fight for women’s rights; & it was up to you to tell them to get involved. In a space frequented by women from various of the faiths impacted by the Magic Words approach to gender. I’m not being passive-aggressive, I really would like to know if I’ve misunderstood - disability can cause some issues even if my brain doesn’t keep trying to reboot itself every few minutes.

Thank you @NitroNine for all the information about what is going on!

No I am certainly not saying that multiply marginalised women are not engaged and should be! As you say gender identity theory and queer theory impact all people of faith not just women of faith. I would like to see more of the institutions which represent them stand up as the Catholic Church in Scotland did when they came out with their unequivocal statement against the legislation currently going through the Scottish Parliament. Perhaps the Muslim Council of Britain, the Evangelical Alliance or other such groups or groups representing all faiths together. Perhaps they already are but it just doesn’t get publicity.

Women aren’t the only group impacted by this legislation, I wondered why other groups aren’t being more vocal about how this will impact them. You have demonstrated that they have been active. I do remember the Birmingham protests against the SRE programme. At the time I was completely “uneducated” on these matters as the other side of the argument would put it. I remember how the media represented those concerned parents as misguided, bigoted and homophobic. The reporting was little short of propaganda.

Groups representing vulnerable people eg who require intimate care and hospital patients, child safeguarding etc. For example, I know they are fully captured by normally I would expect the NSPCC to be fighting this in the interests of child protection, SHELTER, MIND and AGEUK to be fighting it, etc etc

I feel like we need a coalition to stand up and say sex is what matters to all of us for different reasons us in law, institutions, health, education. Gender identity is simply another new faith and should not be elevated above other protected beliefs, it clearly conflicts with the existing rights of all of these other groups of people.

I feel like we need a coalition to stand up and say sex is what matters to all of us for different reasons us in law, institutions, health, education.

This is what Sex Matters are attempting to do…

sex-matters.org/take-action/donate/

That’s ok @PomegranateOfPersephone - thank you for explaining it wasn’t [individual] women you meant but rather for organised religions to make use of the organised bit.

In 2016 the Pope referred to teaching children that people can change sex as “ideological colonisation”.

In 2019 the Vatican issued “Male and Female He Created Them”: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education. TBH even without “No Debate!” I don’t think saying people “annihilate the concept of nature” is going to make them open to talking. Just a hunch.

Essentially, the Catholic Church has been on this - & consistent on this - for a pretty long time.

Sadly - particularly when it comes to legislation at Westminster - the C of E are absurdly captured. Although this guidance on “welcoming transgender people” managed to cause uproar & division within their ranks, never mind the upset this stuff’s causing in the wider Anglican Communion. An example of what’s being encouraged - complete with absolute (highly offensive) drivel about Deborah “breaking gender stereotypes” & thus “being affirming” for trans people. Mind you, that wee booklet claims that Trans and gender variance were not acknowledged, recognised or understood in the time of biblical writings as they are today. So the trans people we’re told have been around forever “absolutely existed but nobody mentioned them at all ever” is quite the take. I think we may need to hope any Westminster legislation regarding shoring up women’s sex-based rights occurs in the 82% of the time (on average) that the Lords Spiritual are not sitting while Parliament is in session.

I know there are issues for women of other faiths in that they don’t have the same national &/or supranational structures; & they may not feel/be represented by bodies like MCB. For example, MCB explicitly stated it wouldn’t represent Ahmadi Muslims.

In 2018 the Chief Rabbi published the first LGBT guide for Orthodox schools. In a similar line to the Pope, really - it’s not ok to bully people, compassion must be shown (etc). However, it’s yet another document written with reference to Stonewall Law as opposed to, you know, any actual law; & it features the big safeguarding red flags of it not simply being acceptable to trans children without parental knowledge, it is actively right & proper to do so. I’m not certain where he’s at now. Reform Judaism aren’t going to help: We hold an uncompromising commitment to building communities which are built on egalitarianism and welcome all – no matter their gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ability or any other characteristic. (From the About page of the Movement for Reform Judaism’s website.) Hope the Rabbi who wrote this 2016 article for HuffPost doesn’t have anyone with anorexia, BIID, or body dysmorphia seek his advice. Oh course, perhaps he’s realised that the concerns women raise are not, in fact “irrational fears” - exactly the opposite in fact! Moreover, the examples available to prove said point are despite deliberate & coordinated suppression of the evidence - gaslighting of women on an industrial scale.

Some Christian women who belong to denominations/sects that have prohibitions/restrictions on sharing [certain] spaces with the opposite sex also lack any kind of larger organisation to represent them. So-called “free” churches are a particularly good example - it can literally be a single family following the patriarch’s interpretation of the Bible. Which invariably involves heavily gendered division of labour (in & out of the house - patriarch may get a pass on this Because Reasons); rules on dress & hair; & really rigid rules on sex segregation. The Plymouth Brethren are anti-clerical (but obviously women aren’t allowed to pray aloud, let alone preach) so they just have wee communities; though admittedly that’s not stopped Brethren in other countries from campaigning against legislation to benefit LGBT people. Brethren lead very narrow lives; & access to single-sex spaces is vital to ensure women & girls can/will (amongst other things): seek & receive health care; get DV support/support to leave should they ever wish it; & get a good academic education (up to age 18, at least, attending university is forbidden). I suspect that fewer Brethren children will attend mainstream schools since it became so usual to teach that people can change sex & there are a squillion genders (etc). I know parents can still withdraw their children from sex education; but so much GenderWoo is taught outwith those classes I can imagine Brethren children would simply be withdrawn from mainstream school. (Of course, Tory links to the most conservative - no pun intended - of the Brethren groups [Plymouth Brethren Christian Church] might be part of the reason they’re the Party who know what a woman is. Unrelatedly, but for the fond of rabbit holes, PBCC managed to get awarded £2.2 billion in covid contracts - they really are very chummy with the Tories…)

Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist & Jain women are all in that same position of not necessarily having someone to speak for them. As with the issues highlighted in the article about MCB, there’s a “wrong” way to be each of these faiths.

I suppose Pagan women (under which umbrella Wiccan women are considered to fall) could be said to have The Pagan Federation to represent their interests - but The Pagan Federation regards membership of any organisations that refuse to support freedom of religion and equality of race, gender, and sexual orientation, as incompatible with our aims, objectives and values. Do they mean gender as a synonym for sex; or that TWAW & TMAM?

Any time a religious group challenges the idea that TWAW & TMAM they are dismissed as evil transphobic homophobes who want to enact a genocide. (Optional bonus allegations of perversion & child abuse.) You can understand why groups who are already at risk of attack would consider carefully their contributions. The MCB making a statement is seen (by most people) as them speaking on behalf of the entire Muslim population - thus legitimising Islamophobia should a statement be deemed transphobia. Ditto anti-semitism were the Chief Rabbi to say the wrong thing. Catholics are hardly immune from violence in the UK, but in most of GB people don’t think they can spot one on sight. Lots of the people who engage in anti-Catholic violence hold vastly more fire + brimstone views on LGBT people, of course.

This is a great post, thanks so much.

From an Orthodox Jewish POV - preserving single sex spaces are actually important for both men and women, although it's probably easier to argue why it is an issue for women.

I haven't read the Chief Rabbi's 2018 guidance so wasn't aware it had been Stonewalled.

An added factor in the Orthodox Jewish community is that the Chief Rabbi actually represents the more 'liberal', CofEish end of the spectrum. There is a large and growing segment to the right of the Chief Rabbi who do not necessarily respect him and his guidance as a leadership figure. This is the same part of the community which is most vocal about pushing back against the new RSE curriculum in schools when it comes to teaching about sex and sexuality.

The problem is that there are very real problems with the way that sex (including awareness of sexual abuse) and attitudes towards gay and lesbian people are taught in the community. The Chief Rabbi's guidance was probably doing its best to counter that (for which he has got a lot of flack). But if that guidance has been Stonewalled, then that makes it all the harder to have a sensible, nuanced, safeguarding-focused conversation within the community about sex education as a whole because you're left with the extremes of 'nothing about sex in our schools whatsover' vs the Stonewall/affirmation only approach. Which is absolutely influenced by NoDebate in the wider world.

I don't know to what extent this is true in other faith communities, but I wouldn't be surprised if similar tensions are going on.

Finally - yes, I can't see the Chief Rabbi's office putting its head above the parapet for the simple reason that Jewish history has taught us to keep our heads down and avoid controversy as far as possible. The fact that more rightwing elements are more vocal is not necessarily a good thing (for the reasons above).

MN keeps deleting my attempts to reply (had almost finished a proper long/full referenced response) & I have to allow myself to sleep properly (instead of trying to post whenever wake up after being ambushed by sleep) so will have to come back later to try again. Dratted techFAIL.

Thank you again @NitroNine and thanks also @mirah2 for your detailed and informative posts.

Another thank you for the informative posts. One theme that runs through is the evidence of how catastrophic it's been to have trans issues piggy backed onto the LGB community. The demands are so different and it's really hindered organisations in calling out the overt gaslighting of children in schools, teaching them they've been born in the wrong body and celebrating body modification and drugs as the antidote. The role of so many religious communities in enabling for fear of accusations of homophobia & with zero critical thinking is depressing.

On that 350 million people who are already covered by self-id: Pakistan has somewhere between 220 and 230 million people alone, and it is absolutely not a country which is great for women's rights or for keeping good statistics on sexual violence or harassment of female people. From the other end of the list of those countries, in terms of population size, Malta is a country where abortion is illegal.

In fact, if you look at the countries with gender self-identification it is odd how many of them are places where women's rights haven't been terribly central. Seven are in South and Central America, and several of those have severe restrictions on abortion, for instance.

My point is that many of those countries probably don't pay very careful attention on how violence against women might be influenced by self-id.

I have also read that Ireland made no provisions to collect statistical data on the possible effects of gender self-identification on women or children, just as Scotland now has decided not to collect data on that. Wonder if Norway does? That's the only one which might.

I would think that the real difference of the gender self-identification system is that no diagnosis of gender dysphoria is required. This means that gender self-identification is available for everybody, not just those who would define themselves as suffering from dysphoria. No particular reason is required. This makes gender a pure choice.

Which raises the question of how opening up a protected group for open enrollment might affect its status as 'protected' in countries where this is relevant, or what it means when the characteristics of a particular protected group (say on the basis of sex) are then dispersed across many gender groups and the initial basis of that protection is no longer recorded.

If I legislated that dog's tails counted as a leg, how many legs do dogs have?

Still four. Just saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it so.

If Hostelling Scotland is putting women in danger by housing males with them who ID as female, based on documentation only, then they need to revise their policies before someone is sexually assaulted or raped on their premises.

JKR's (natal) women-only refuge is most certainly legal under the provisions of the EA2010, which has jurisdiction in Scotland. A transwoman can be excluded if sex segregation is proportionate. Excluding male-born people from a women's refuge, where women are fleeing domestic violence and sexual assault, is most definitely proportionate. The person running Edinburgh's rape crisis centre needs to be removed (they're a bigot, too, though that's by the way).

Yes, it's almost certainly legal, which is what I said, and it's much better for GC people to set up their own trans exclusionary centres rather than sue providers, which, perfectly legally don't want to exclude transgender people.

The isn't a man in charge of Edinburgh's rape crisis centre, and they are inclusive, rather than being bigotted, so I think you've got that back to front.

Single sex facilities aren't bigoted. If they were, they wouldn't be legal.

The CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis is biologically and legally male. Hence having fuck all sympathy for women left traumatised by male violence.

I work in an exclusionary environment- a university where we exclude people with Art, Drama and English Lit A Levels from doing a STEM degree. The word "exclusionary" is not synonymous with "bad".

I said 'most certainly legal', which means it is legal, not 'almost certainly legal'. Different words have different meanings. You implied it 'might' be legal and I stated that it 'was' legal. That means we disagree somewhat.
I disagree with you totally re Edinburgh Rape Crisis. I note that I am not allowed to say that Mridul Wadhwa is not a woman - Mridul Wadhwa is a transwoman. So a transwoman is leading Edinburgh Rape Crisis and has said that rape victims must accept counselling by non-women. Since I assume you are a non-woman I expect you understand what I mean.

I have not removed my original message, but one word has been changed, and that changes the meaning. To be clear, Mridul Wadhwa is a transwoman and runs Edinburgh Rape Crisis, about which there has been much protest.

Has JKR said that she will excude transgender people or that she will exclude male people from her refuge? There is no trans exclusionary exception in the EA, but there is an exception for single-sex services to be permitted.

It may have escaped your notice, but many people who identify as transgender are female. I think it's only the male ones she wants to exclude from her women's refuge. This is not trans exclusionary, it's male exclusionary.

Hmm.

It's not been tested in court, and until it is, it's "almost certainly legal" not "most certainly legal." No similar case has appeared.

Wadhwa is upholding the values of rape crisis centres across the country apart from JKR's, but of course it's the fact she a trans women which makes her exceptional to you.

Wadhwa is upholding the values of rape crisis centres across the country

unfortunately this seems to be the case. We can only hope Sarah’s case upholds the rights of women not to be discriminated against in this appalling fashion by placing the wants of men over the needs of women.