Today is a horrendous day for women.

[Catsanfan]

I haven't the energy to explain, just skim Aja's twitter this morning. So much there, I am losing heart. Especially the police thing.

No. Of course they don't.

It was right there in black and white, years ago on the original equalities impact assessment for self id in Scottish prisons. The Scottish prison service ticked the box that said there wasn't any effect on women worth considering at all. They didn't consider it then, so why start thinking about it now?

Hence the need to get mainstream reporters kicking up a stink about it (and even the Daily Mail is a start though wouldn't we all love it if other papers would get on board, it's not as if women's rights are a left/right issue) So that these services have to think about women.

The report mentions a quote about it being (considered) extremely unlikely that any woman would mind about being searched by a man who expresses a belief that he is something other than a man. This having been arrived at without any consultation or Equality Impact assessment or anything else (several quotes from female police officers make it very clear this is male wishful thinking with fingers rammed in ears.)

And lots of quotes about hate crime and discrimination and police interview for any woman who dares to open her mouth and decline to be felt up by said man for validation purposes.

I'm afraid bereft of the verbal wankery it is that ugly.

And of the 3.3% of women in prison for sex crimes, would/could some of them be transwomen?

Sorry, about quoting myself. I had wanted to say something nice about tw who are caught up in and want no truck with this batshittery, even if they're only protecting themselves. But, I've slept on this and I've realised what a low bar I've set. Congratulating a man for not participating in state sanctioned sexual assault! That should be a bare minimum. He, his colleagues, the whole chain of command (apparently) aren't happy with this policy I should hope they're speaking out against it. Not just quietly subverting it in their little corner.

Does anyone know if policies like this are being pushed in Customs & Excise? I believe Customs officers can also carry out intimate searches. This could make a whole bunch more women vulnerable to this invasion. Women just going on holiday or travelling for business.

I suppose a holidaying tw would expect to be searched by a woman. Would a tm expect to be searched by a man? Would they want to be? Would the man expected to search them even want to considering they'd be vulnerable to the same accusations as a tw searching a woman? Any man who would be happy to do this needs their hard drive checking.

And this is the ridiculous mess we're in. Given the police, CPS and prison tendency to record crimes and inmates under self-reported identity, we have no idea whether this is women or "women".

(Same for the figure for men, of course, but we know that statistically the skewing effect in that direction is likely to be a lot smaller - precisely because there is a diference between women and men.).

This.

Not sure if the study went to any lengths to determine the sex of the 3.3% or if they went with the police data. But we do know that police have been recording crimes of TW as female in some circumstances, which have completely skewed statistics. Because validation trumps meaningful data apparently.

@Kendodd And of the 3.3% of women in prison for sex crimes, would/could some of them be transwomen?

I know in the report I read the prison service was including any male who had a GRS as a woman. So it is a fair bet that at least some of the women sex offenders would indeed be male.

TW incidence of sex crimes in the convicted criminal population = 58.9%
Male incidence of sex crimes in convicted criminal population = 16.8%
(Women = 3.3%)

When you look at the population of men who are in prison AND say they have a gender identity which is something other than man, they are substantially and significantly more likely to be in prison for sex crimes than is true of all male prisoners, as I see @WitchyWitcherson already covered (see above).

What I think is worth considering is why for a sex offender identifying as trans holds or may appear to hold many benefits. This phenomena has been referred to as 'prison onset gender dysphoria'. I do not believe we have anything like good enough data collection to understand precisely how to compensate for that. But it is still interesting to note the two possible extremes.

1. All of the sex offenders claiming to be trans women are lying about being trans to exploit loopholes which make life easier for sex offenders.

2. None of the sex offenders claiming to be trans women are lying about being trans and trans woman do indeed pose by far the highest proportional risk of committing sexual offences of any group.

The truth would need to lie somewhere between those two extremes. And at either extreme or anywhere in between it is clear that the policies being promoted are neither progressive or sensible.

Simply put the position that a trans woman would pose the same risk and have the same offending profile as a woman, rather than the same risk and offending profile as a man is an ideological one based on faith and dogma and is strongly refuted by the evidence.

From what we know of prison statistics, I think it's most likely that: men = men (maybe 1 or 2 transmen with a GRC, but it will be literally 1 or 2 out of several thousand, so not make a meaningdul difference when calculating percentages); trans = transwomen without a GRC [edit, and potemtially men with other trans identies]; women = women and any transwomen with a GRC.

I think this does needs putting in proportion seeing as 0.01% police officers (4) in th Met identify as trans and I expect most of those aren't trans women, and I suspect the Met is likely to have a larger number than other police forces.

This is how these laws and policies are always implemented. "it's such a tiny minority you need to get things in perspective." Then once the law/policy is in place women are screwed.

WitchyWitcherson · Today 10:04

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/

^TW incidence of sex crimes in the convicted criminal population = 58.9%
Male incidence of sex crimes in convicted criminal population = 16.8%
(Women = 3.3%)^

How many of that % of women are women as understood by rational people? And how may used to be called Kevin, Andrew etc?

@SinnerBoy How many of that % of women are women...

That we don't know.
What we do know:
a) the % of sex offenders who are women was consistent at 1% for a long time
b) rapidly increased to 2%
c) is now at 3.3%

Using the same tool as before the truth would have to be a or b or somewhere between a and b

a) none of the increase has anything to do with gender recognition certificates or muddled statistics. Women are just now three times more likely than they were to be sex offenders. OR that whilst the proportion of sex offences committed by women has not changed women used to be much more likely to get away with sex offences but are now 3 times more likely than they used to be to be successfully prosecuted and incarcerated for them.

b) the proportion of women sex offenders hasn't changed and remains the 99:1 seen consistently across a range of countries and time periods but 2 out of 3 people appearing in the prison stats as women sex offenders are men with grc.

Personally I suspect that the answer lies closer to b, than a.

Personally I suspect that the answer lies closer to b, than a.

That is also what I suspect, very strongly.

I did think of an addition scenario / confounding factor

you could also increase the proportion of women in prison for sexual offences by letting 2 out of 3 men who would have been sent to prison for sexual offences off with a non custodial sentence...

food for thought indeed

That we don't know.
What we do know:
a) the % of sex offenders who are women was consistent at 1% for a long time
b) rapidly increased to 2%
c) is now at 3.3%

The statistic quoted was that 3.3% of women in prison are sex offenders, not that 3.3% of sex offenders are women.

arrh thank you I had misunderstood

Are these not two different arguments?

There's an article in the Spectator by a man who was imprisoned and strip searched.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/police-are-in-a-muddle-over-transgender-strip-searches/

https://archive.ph/3RYVK archive link

I have to admit that not being able to sexually assault a woman or girl taken into custody might be a bar to career progression is a wrinkle I hadn't previously considered.

@AmaryllisNightAndDay

Your first mistake was to try to put a reasonable fact in front of the anti trans lobby on MN.

I see it got met with nastiness. No surprise there.

The thought that every woman in the U.K. is going to be at risk of being strip searched by one of 4 Met police officers is ridiculous. But it's you they ridicule.

I didn't notice anyone being nasty to me. A couple of people were just being literal minded. And everyone else got what I meant!

Why do people only reference the Met every time? They don’t cover the whole of the U.K.

Numbers for West Midlands alone in pp is higher

Plus how many times would be ok for you?

It’s always N+1 isn’t it

how many women is it ok to be strip searched by a man? 1, 10, 100?

tje safety industry talks about the number of acceptable accidents being 0 because it’s not ok for people to be hurt whilst doing their job

strangely that approach never seems to apply to how many women it’s acceptable to be harmed, coerced or bullied to keep men happy

The thought that every woman in the U.K. is going to be at risk of being strip searched by one of 4 Met police officers is ridiculous.

Oh my god, did you actually think anyone was claiming this, @baileybrosbuildingandloan ?

‘once a transgender colleague has transitioned, they will search persons of the same gender as their own lived gender.’ This, it said, would remove any ‘potential employment barrier for transgender individuals to consider the Police Service as an employer of choice for transgender individuals.’

Well here's a basic clue from non-clown world.

If a man feels that not being allowed to get his hands on women to search them is a barrier to their employment, don't bloody employ them. How many red flags do you need that this person should never, ever be in a position of power and trust?

If that man further feels entitlement to a special right to search women that is not granted to other men, while everyone involved pretends this is ok because he is a 'woman' with the woman under coercive threat of harm if she fails to sufficiently pretend for him on command? ..... shred the fucking application and get the brains tested of anyone who thinks this might be a good idea.

Fgs, we all knew the police were fundamentally and institutionally misogynist, but my God are they working on taking misogyny and abuse of women to stellar new levels of dysfunction and depravity.

Is it a good day or a bad day?

Traditionally abused against women were invisible. That's the whole point of Invisible Women as a concept.

So although it's bad and you are seeing it, that's progress. You are seeing it.

Seeing abused against women is the first step to change. There must always be a first step to change.

Question: When suffragettes were being locked up and imprisoned how did it look?

I've had the 'feel down' search multiple times at airports over the years. Always done by another woman ... so far.