Scotland - New prison rules on housing trans inmates

[Igneococcus]

This was even a news item just now on the Radio 3 news.
Why they can't just say that no man no matter how we identifies should ever be placed in a women's prison, I don't know.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/72168d7f-1bde-4cac-8aff-fe3a0e37f72d?shareToken=2156479f381bbf74631154c5eef0f276

If they don't pose an "unacceptable" risk of harm?
Where is the boundary which makes it an acceptable risk of harm instead?

0.00000000001% risk of harm is still unacceptable. You can do away with the risk altogether if male TW criminals are housed in the male estate, perhaps on a dedicated wing for trans and NB offenders. Why should women accept any level of risk just to make male people happy?

Those stats are shocking Cauldron. Thank you for sharing the report.

I have heard anecdotally that women generally get harsher sentences than men for the same crimes, often receiving custodial sentences when a man would not. Is there any evidence to back this up? Surely judges should be monitored if this is happening in practice, as sentencing guidelines universal and not sex based. Or is it that because women’s crimes tend to be less serious they are being sentenced by magistrates?

It is so depressing that in this context any concern expressed for the ‘individual’ is for the trans person in question, and not the very many vulnerable female ‘individuals’ they want to be housed with/have access to.

Why won't they see/accept that the only correct way to do this is

NO MEN IN THE WOMEN'S ESTATE!!!!!!!

So sick of centering the men over the women who have to have a man in amongst them when they are completely trapped.

It's not acceptable in toilets etc where you can personally choose whether to enter or leave a space if there is a man in there, but to force women to spend their time in prison having to spend every moment worried about the man in their midst is just fucking inhumane.

I hope whoever decided that this was still acceptable in certain circumstances has no bloody clue what they are doing to the women, because if they do and still went ahead and signed off on it that is beyond evil.

I think there does need to be an investigation into sentencing trends for the sexes. When you have women locked up for petty theft, while equivalent male offenders walk free, there is no equality. I suspect it’s because men’s prisons are so overcrowded that any low-level offending is treated more leniently.

It’s not just the risk of harm that needs to be taken into account when sentencing trans offenders. It’s the fear of the risk. Imagine you’re in prison, showering with an intact TW. They’re low-risk and they’re not going to hurt you. You’re still going to feel pretty bloody uncomfortable about seeing naked male genitals in a female space. Not to mention your loss of privacy and dignity when you’re dealing with women’s issues - periods etc - and a TW is around.

It’s utter madness to pander to trans people when it puts women’s safety, dignity and privacy in jeopardy. Women’s prison is punishment enough, without this unnecessary extra burden of fear and discomfort.

Male people’s feelings and need for acceptance must NOT put women at a disadvantage. Isn’t it better to have one sad TW, than countless sad (and potentially unsafe) women? It’s impossible to make everyone happy, so you have to choose the solution that’s best for the majority. What was it Corbyn used to say about Labour? For the many, not the few.

Now it seems this world is not for the many, it’s for the men. And women must budge up and be accommodating.

I agree. Women’s safety should of course be the paramount concern (and I agree the only acceptable level of avoidable risk is zero), but dignity and privacy are also extremely important.

Wasn't there something at the start of all this. The tras pushing this realised if they could get tw into women's prisons everything else would fall. I think this is what's still is at the root of this. Tw can't be women, if there are places that recognise they're not women, ie reality.

Do the new rules say anything about tm?

And prison onset gender dysphoria is definitely a thing.

Why don't women deserve single-sex spaces, unconditionally? In this case, they are being held here against their will and are trapped in these situations. Now they are held with criminal males.

Trans men on the other hand are kept away from men's prisons.

Male feelings are centred time and time again. Scotland is backwards.

I think it is an inablity to be accountable / laziness that leads to evil.

I remember being in a meeting some years ago (Women's Aid & Police present) where all professionals involved repeatedly stated that they 'could not discuss individual cases'. Poss correct but the broad brush policy (which was hopeless in the case of the woman being discussed) meant that, as a WPC said to me at the time, 'that woman will die & there's nothing I can do to stop it'. She did die.

So, 'individual assessment' should be better in theory, yes? But, in this case,
NO as it means that each debateable case will be effectively 'nodded through' by men who are deciding what an 'acceptable risk' to women is. Answer: NONE.

For the many, not the few quickly became for the males, not the females

Is it possible for individual female prisoners to be risk assessed to show that they are particularly vulnerable to males in the female estate? So that particular women would be kept away from transwomen?

Transmen are not put in male prisons because they would get their asses sued if they came to harm. So somehow the reality of the harm of sticking a female in a male prison is recognised but in the reverse situation of sticking a male in a female prison it can be ignored. Makes sense? No.

Totally agree: it reminds me of the EHCR statement the other day. All discussions on 'trans' issues are always far more focused on males, talking about males, stroking male egos and reassuring frantically about how males are Very Important and Very Cared About and then kind of apologetically sliding in a bit of human rights for women... it just screams over and over that this is just sheer male supremacism. The fixed belief that men are more valuable and important than women. Which makes bullshit any pretense of believing that men who identify as women ever become anything other in reality than men who identify as women. If they actually were viewed as women no one would give a fuck how they felt or what they wanted or what language they chose or what happened to them. No fucking holy days for women dying at the rate of 3 a week while everyone prays with candles.

The fact that the English prisons now house less than 5 men in the women's estate demonstrates that barely any of the males there were fully transitioned gentle, non violent predators without convictions of extensively and serially harming others, and by others the massive majority will have been women.

The wittering we've seen to this point about 'well we can't keep the serial rapists out because it might mean saying no to some poor slightly fraudulent, fully transitioned accountant and how sad for him to be in a men's prison - better a whole lot of women hurt than one sad deserving male in a men's prison..'

Ffs, it's a damn sight sadder for the women who got raped in the name of trying to nurture this one mythical bloke's feelings, how do people actually say this stuff without realising the mad sexism they have signed up to? Enough with all this. Just enough. As evidenced over and over again, these are men we are talking about, and they are men who in massive majority are not just indifferent to women, they bloody hate them and wish to use them as they choose and are gleeful to see them excluded and harmed or worse. It's evidenced over and over again, what is NEVER evidenced is any capacity to give a fuck about anyone else, particularly women. Or to have even basic social reciprocation. I'm not indulging this any further.

But the woman who got hurt would be a special kind of woman with a whole lot of protections other women aren't entitled to.

No one cares if women get hurt.

TRANS and more interesting people? There's a loud shouty lobby with scary boundary issues and a whole lot of publicity, money and powerful people dying to use the virtue signalling publicity involved.

Men matter, regardless of what they identify as. Women who identify as men matter too, although not as much.

Possible in theory? Yes. Would they do it? No.

Frood this is so true:

‘If they actually were viewed as women no one would give a fuck how they felt or what they wanted or what language they chose or what happened to them.’

The irony.

This is the Guardian's take on it

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/05/trans-inmates-with-history-of-violence-against-women-to-be-mostly-kept-out-of-female-scottish-jails

That headline 😠

Why should we even consider this? Just keep the men out of women's prisons, job done.

From the Guardian article:

"transgender woman, Isla Bryson – who committed two rapes while living as a man, Adam Graham"

Given what we know of the rate of misunderstanding what 'transwoman' means, how many people will correctly parse the above? It seems written to maximise the possibility of misinterpreting it.

Also from the graun

"Vic Valentine, the manager of Scottish Trans, welcomed that updated policy as “recognising that trans people in custody should not be considered to be a risk of harm to others simply because they are trans”, and supported decision-making “on the basis of evidenced risk assessment”."

Yes I quite agree Vic. Trans people should not be automatically categorised as high risk, just the male ones.

No. Why should vulnerable women be forced to divulge their trauma or face being traumatised further? Is the comfort of a few men really that important? What level of trauma would be necessary to grant a woman safety? Rape? CSA? Physical violence?
I'd start with the presumption that EVERY woman in prison is vulnerable, if you'd looked at the statistics provided by a pp you would know that most of them are incarcerated for relatively petty offences, and a majority are victims of male violence before conviction.
So no.

There's a comment by Kath Murray in the Times but I can't do a sharetoken at the moment:

The prison service’s transgender policy amounts to institutional gaslighting (thetimes.co.uk)

I don’t think it even should be about proving individual women are vulnerable to anything in particular.

The point is that collectively female prisoners should be guaranteed single sex housing. We don’t need to justify that by finding counter examples of vulnerable individual women or whatever. it should simply be a fundamental right for all women that, should they be imprisoned by the state, they will be housed in single sex prisons.

Biological men, however they identify, will be housed in the male estate. If trans inmates are unsafe in the male estate, then changes should be made to the male estate to keep them safe.