Mary Harrington - Why are so many transgender prisoners sex offenders?

[RebelliousCow]

https://open.substack.com/pub/reactionaryfeminist/p/how-many-sex-offenders?r=clsg2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

It also means that they are able to move from a position of powerlessness to one of having and exerting power.

Testosterone does fuel both sex drive and aggressive instinct, though.

You do hear of young women " on T" that talk about how it cranked up their sex drive and how it can also make them aggressive and bad tempered.

Males in many species have to compete and fight each other to gain access to females.

What is the definition of someone who is 'actually transgender' as opposed to someone who is just pretending to be transgender? Is there an official definition which is used by the prison service?

That assumes there is such a thing as being objectively trans. And don't foget we are told that we must "believe someone when they tell us who they are".

Rather I suggest that being trans is a way of framing one's feelings/desires/drives. A coping strategy of some sort.

I think there's a possibility that guilt is a driver for some transitioning. If I had an underlying feeling of guilt for the way I had treated one or more women, and I associated that feeling with 'toxic masculinity', I could perhaps persuade myself that stopping being a man would assuage my guilt. Maybe the experience of being found guilty could reinforce this.

But I would be very surprised if this hypothetical mechanism is the main factor driving transition.

@GuanYinShanxi
"The purpose of the assessment is to determine if they are transgender or lying about being transgender."

LOL gimme a break. There are ZERO measurable markers or signs for being 'transgender'. As with most mental illnesses, diagnosis is made on patient report.

With the best will in the world, you're not very science-literate are you? No shade on that, there's certainly more research needed on the sudden recent search in self-reported gender dysphoria, why it's happening, and what social / cultural / psychiatric forces drive it.

Yeah, we should fund research on this. Objective research. Without fear or favour from the TRAs. Oh wait....

Hmmm, I think you're being very generous here. I get that in the past people have done a lot of odd things to assuage guilt, like fasting for days, wearing horsehair next to the skin, or parading through town whipping themselves with cat'o'nine tails. But would guilt (which presupposes some measure of self-awareness) cause a bloke to don a dress and force his way into women's spaces? Naaaah.

Yes, that one Swedish study from 2011 did find a slightly higher risk for pre1989 medically transitioned FtMs. It was also a very small sample size of 133 transmen.

The authors also stated that any differences in crime rates compared to birth sex controls only applied to pre1989 transitioners:
Crime rate. Transsexual individuals were at increased risk of being convicted for any crime or violent crime after sex reassignment (Table 2); this was, however, only significant in the group who underwent sex reassignment before 1989.

So if you look at the whole picture of all international studies to date and leave out the very few transmen who have transitioned before 1989 in Sweden- my summary is correct as we understand things now.

The purpose of the assessment is to determine if they are transgender or lying about being transgender.

And how can they do that exactly? How is man A who has been pretending to be a woman for ten years before getting arrested any different from man B pretending to be a woman for ten days after they've been arrested

I think what they do is try to separate the men who are genuinely pretending to be women from those who are pretending to pretend to be women.

I'd like to see the procedure they use for determining whether someone's pretence to be someone they are not is genuine.

I've always been tempted to suspect most of these men probably wouldn't identify as trans outside of prison - so in a sense they're not "real trans people", but it still goes to show how open self-ID is to abuse.

But then this paper I was introduced to yesterday claims "up to 20% of individuals with transvestic fetishism also had been involved in the sexual molestation of children" suggesting there may genuinely be an inflated rate of CSA even amongst "ordinary" trans people.

@GuanYinShanxi The purpose of the assessment is to determine if they are transgender or lying about being transgender.

You may as well ask if the purpose of an assessment is to determine if someone is transspecies, or lying about being transspecies. i.e. if someone is a 'true' trans horse, or just lying about really, really being a horse. We know (like we do with sex) that a human being does not change sex or species. Even if they are really sad, or disturbed.

It's is denial of biological reality. You can state you are something which you are not. It does not make it anything other than a fiction. To the detriment of women and children, the powers that be are enabling this fiction.

The purpose of the assessment is to determine if they are transgender or lying about being transgender

Claiming to be the opposite sex is a lie.
'Trans' is no longer classed as a mental illness so there is no objective way of separating those we used to call transexuals from the the men with the multiple sexual paraphilias.

It similar to the concern that crimes by female women should only be counted as such if the offender was actually a female woman?

Female women? Really?
Women are female. There is no such thing as a male woman.
No men should be included in female crime stats. Their feelings are irrelevant.

As has been noted before - why wouldn't you? If you are in the lowest class of prisoner already, what on earth would stop you from IDing as a woman?

'if they are transgender or lying about being transgender.'

Really interesting idea.

How do we determine if a man is pretending to be a woman, or just pretending to be pretending?

I think what they do is try to separate the men who are genuinely pretending to be women from those who are pretending to pretend to be women.

😂

Ask them how often they think about the Roman Empire? 😂

Ask them how often they think about the Roman Empire? 😂

😆😆😆 I have very much enjoyed this unfolding on social media

as a man cannot possibly know what it’s like to be a woman - I mean how can one know what it’s like to be like half of the population?? they’re always lying. What they are saying is they feel the way they believe (but don’t know because how could they?) that women feel

it’s bonkers

I'm a woman and I don't know 'how it feels to be a woman'. I know how it feels to be me. I know I share certain biological attributes with other women and will have experienced common experiences and expectations but it doesn't mean that I know how every woman on the planet feels. We are not a hive mind. The things we share are our biology and to a degree our socialization (although this is time/place specific) and those are the things that someone born make can never experience.

totally agree @ManuelBensonsLeftBoot thats why TW idea of what it “feels like to be a woman” are just a bunch of gender stereotypes bolted together

Third spaces are as ever the only rational answer. I'm perfectly happy to respect that some men feel feminine/do not feel comfortable in their bodies or with masculinity/have multiple reasons why they prefer to wear skirts, have long hair, enact their internalised stereotypes of what they perceive womanhood to be, and it's naive and ridiculous to deny that sex plays a large, front and centre part in this for adult transitioners. You cannot separate the reasons for transition without mind melds and why gatekeep it anyway?

Provide trans wings, men are free to identify and enact what they like, and if the prison service want to support the freedoms of identifying as different species or Klingons or elves, that's up to them. Any read of a prison officer's memoir will quickly tell you; mens prisons are boring, anything that adds entertainment and stimulation will be grabbed for. They're also a hotbed of bloody awful psychology and behavioural issues 24/7. If you offer male sex offenders, who get off on power, control, coercion, intimidation, and the fear and distress of women, then you'd have to have the IQ of a small brick to not understand immediately why access to a women's prison would be a much better plan than being banged up with a lot of blokes.

The bottom line is I'll respect men's rights to do them however they wish. But not at any point to be anywhere near women's provisions, or provided with non consenting women's bodies as resources for their use. No men in women's prisons ever. Men can be TW. No man ever changes sex.

I'm sure another thread could start "Why are so many average male athletes transgender", and we could get people looking at studies, hormonal levels etc, when the obvious answer is that they can easily get success by claiming to be a woman.

If we build it, they will come.

Creating trans wings, allowing offenders to use different names in trials and on registers, more lenient sentences and suddenly you have a lot more "trans" criminals.

If tomorrow policies were created that gave criminals with handlebar moustaches preferential treatment, we'd then have a thread about "why do so many prisoners have handlebar moustaches?".

So if you look at the whole picture of all international studies to date and leave out the very few transmen who have transitioned before 1989 in Sweden- my summary is correct as we understand things now.

I'm guessing your claim that biology plays no part would be highly controversial.

I do think there are likely a few reasons for this.

The correlation with certain other mental health issues may be part of it. There are some indications that a greater portion of trans people suffer from personality disorders, and perhaps that also correlates with sex offenses to some degree.

Relatedly or not, I think lack of boundaries around sexual behaviour are a significant element. And it's not that the boundaries society has are too harsh, at least not for the most part. It is that some individuals get some kind of payoff for pushing secual (and often other) boundaries.

Unsettling data but important non the less. I think it's hard to talk about this because many gay men were unfairly accused of this for years so many are afraid of the idea of repeating that ugly history. But it shouldn't be ignored.