TW in Women's prisons - Zoe Williams' Take

[IcakethereforeIam]

You may wish to put away your breakables

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/01/trans-rights-prison-rarely-defended

Why do I always feel more let down by women spouting this kind of crap than when I hear men say it?

Because women should know better than to decide some women are OK to offer up as human shields. In this case, women in prison who obviously cannot run for the exit.

I'm sure she thinks she would be lovely and sympathetic and supportive and therapeutic and that the male stranger with a serious sex crime conviction would be gratefully lovely in return. Beauty and the Beast fantasies galore.

Except that script goes:

are you prepared to be lovely and sympathetic and therapeutic at your best, when well prepared and going intentionally for your story?

how about at six am when you've just woken up in a cell? Still on duty selflessly providing nurture and care for the male sex offender in the other bed? 24/7 on duty suit you? Indefinitely?

how lovely and sympathetic will you be when the male sex offender's flashing you? In theory and in practice.

how lovely and sympathetically are you prepared to be assaulted and raped in nurturing care of this male sex offender?

Particularly when you don't have the shield of your press badge or visitor's pass, your sex offender isn't on their best behaviour because of what you're offering in terms of an interview, and you have no fast way out of the situation if you discover that you've been really stupidly naive and that your sentimental patronising lady bountiful bit isn't going to mean beans to a personality disordered serious sex offender who doesn't have empathy or compassion when perpetrating, and you're in possession of the biology said offender feels entitled to.

Re: Karen White

”he is often used to represent trans women generally, and indicate that they will always be a threat to cis women. This seems pretty obviously prejudicial: no cis man would accept his essential nature being extrapolated from that of a male sexual offender.”

Every single male in prison, other than the ones who claim they are women, has no choice but to accept his behaviour is extrapolated from that of a male sexual offender, or at least is subject to a risk assessment that says he should not be placed in women’s spaces as he presents an unacceptable risk.

If this is Zoe’s argument, then she probably was pissed when writing as she seems to have missed the fact that no other male prisoners are allowed in women’s prisons and she’s arguing for the usual special treatment for men she is randomly assuming present a negligible risk without any evidence whatsoever.

Ah, this article is obviously the price for Lucy Mangans fair review of “gender wars”.

You'll be stunned to hear Nancy Kelley loves this article:

"Because anyone standing up for them is drowned in bad faith transphobic horror for ever, aided and abetted by the majority of our national media. Still, this by @ zoesqwilliams is🤌 1/2

After three years on the other side of the looking glass, reading this piece made me hoot out loud in a kind of horrified joy. It has become shocking when someone in our media breaks ranks and says what should be mundane and obvious. Wow."

https://twitter.com/nancymmk/status/1664343225614606370?s=46&t=WHoOZ3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

You’re absolutely right, but the problem is that you regard trans women as a subset of men, whereas Zoe treats them as a subset of women. If Zoe is right then of course there is no reason to treat them differently from other women; if you’re right there’s no reason to treat them differently from other men.

its always the kind of women who cannot imagine, under any circumstances, that being banged up with with big Dave is ever going to happen to them. What with being nice middle class people, and that.

I've followed this absolute roaster's career from her days writing 'columns' for Now magazine. She. Cannot. Write.

She cannot persuade. She rambles. She refers to her husband and kid as R and P, so the nefarious reader can't crack the code.

Her Guardian meanderings about having a baby were eye stabbingly embarrassing. No first time mother should be given the nations ear, it's cruel to them and to us.

And now she's a trans pally fanny. Of course she is. Her continued employment is an affront to anyone required to work for a living.

My sister hates her too.

Well, Billy Bragg liked it 🤡

twitter.com/billybragg/status/1664318085187219457?s=20

So pithy Morris, love it! I think Lucy Mangan is GC, she’s generally quite sensible I find, so it fits.

Because, and this I always come back to, the fundamental issue is always, always,
‘Do you believe humans can change sex?’ - and the answer for an increasing number of people is No, obviously not. She’s still at the stage of pretending that she does believe that humans can change sex, and so she doesn’t see the ‘Transwoman’ prisoner as a man.
I had a wonderful hairdressing appointment with my trusted longstanding - gay male - hairdresser last weekend. And for the first time since I have known him (23 years) he raised the GC issue…
He started off by (almost whispering) that he’d been listening to a podcast ‘The Witch Trials Of…’ - at this point I was holding my breath!😂 ‘… JK Rowling’, and did I know of it or anything about the subject? Anyway, he said he wanted to hear both sides and that so far he was definitely feeling he was GC, very much on the side of privacy, dignity and safeguarding of women and girls in same sex safe spaces, but he still wasn’t sure whether or not Transwomen who had had surgery should be allowed into those spaces. So I simply asked him whether or not he believed humans can change sex? His answer was, No. And I said, well then, that’s the rub, there’s your answer. It’s literally all you need to know. And he was taken aback, and said omg yes you’re right. That was it. He was getting there on his own but suddenly he was no longer confused. We moved on to why, as a gay man, he might feel the trans ideology is deeply homophobic. He hadn’t seen that either and was frankly shocked by the revelation. He finished my hair and moved on to the lady next to us, and she started up the conversation with him! More peaks than the Himalayas that day…

This seems pretty obviously prejudicial: no cis man would accept his essential nature being extrapolated from that of a male sexual offender.

What?! What the hell is she talking about? Men do exactly this. This is why men - the good, normal ones - don’t go into women’s spaces, like changing rooms or toilets because they accept that the bad men - the male sex offenders - are the ones that do that. Men accept that their essential nature as men as a class, not as an individual, is defined by all the bad things bad men do. And most men have absolutely no issue with it.

Why do people keep going on about Karen White she wonders?
Because it was an atrocity like something out of a Russian Gulag it was inhumane and not worthy of a supposedly civilised country to lock up a woman with a male rapist.
Zoemight have sold her morality for her career but it’s getting harder for them to pretend that they have the moral high ground as the facts become known.

It's finally popped up on the Guardian's twitter. This tweet thread in response is excellent

https://twitter.com/mar2vickers/status/1664375770016358402?s=20

I have a genuine question - are the UK government breaking international law by housing male prisoners with women prisoners? Isn't this a breach of the Geneva Convention?

And if they are, is anyone going to take them to court?

Sadly no. The Geneva Convention only applies to prisoners of war.

I believe in California more than two hundred male prisoners are currently applying to be transferred to female prisons.

Several incentives for even men not identifying as trans, especially if their sentences are long:

Less likely to meet violence from people stronger than they are, more likely to have access to heterosexual sex and, for those who prey on women, more prey. Also, women's prisons tend to be somewhat more comfortable places on the whole, I've been told.

It seems that California doesn't require any medical transitioning or anything beyond a self-identification, so trying for this makes sense much more widely than just for those who actually are trans-identified.

That's not the UK, of course. But the data from the US, Canada, and the UK all suggest that a much higher percentage of trans women are in prison for sexual assault than is the case for male prisoners, on average. This, to me, would suggest that the scrutiny for that possibility should be central in deciding who can be moved into women's estate.

Ah, this article is obviously the price for Lucy Mangans fair review of “gender wars”.

Good point. Yes.

I read this evening and was hoping there would be a thread. Some of the stuff she writes it’s like she’s actually a troll like she writes deliberately inflammatory nonsense

It's very simple, this. If Zoe thinks it is acceptable to house transwomen prisoners in the female estate, then she should have no problem with spending a week in a female prison with transwomen herself.

The Guardian should commission her to do this as an investigative piece. She can share a cell with such a transwoman, chosen by blind lottery so it has that element of random chance as to who she will get: will it be a Barbie Kardashian or a Miranda Yardley who forgot to pay their TV license?

If you are going to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk.

Completely agree.

I read this briefly after seeing Mr Bragg's incompetent take on it. I couldn't work out what she meant but didn't it say inmates? or did I read it too quickly due to being too cross?

As I say frequently, it is worth writing a letter for publication. Saturday’s Guardian does seem to carry a fair few GC letters. I very much doubt ZW reads this corner of MN, but a letter pointing out how statistics have been played fast and loose might make it on to the page

Good idea. I wonder if that suggestion would be signed off or deemed to risky.