Is it possible to be a feminist and also have some empathy for transgender people today?

[HoundOfTheBasketballs]

I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert here but everything feels incredibly polarised. Like, either you’re with us or you’re against us.
Is there no middle ground in this debate?
I am, and always have been a feminist, but I know and like people who are trans and non-binary. I can’t be the only person feeling confused and conflicted, can I?

For anyone who wants to know what should be considered for evaluating risk of this sub group of males to show that they have a risk level not less than any other male in the UK of committing sex crime, have a read through the statistics for males who have transgender identities who commit sex crimes in the UK

Firstly, This was a question answered earlier this year:

https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-12-16/20298.

Question from Rebecca Paul (MP Reigate): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the HMPPS Offender Equalities Annual Report 2023-2024, published on 28 November 2024, how many of the 50 transgender prisoners who reported their legal gender as female were convicted of a sexual offence.

Answer from Sir Richard Dakin (MP Scunthorpe): 23 December 2024
Of the 245 transgender prisoners who reported their legal gender as male (i.e. those who now identify as women, non-binary or gender-fluid) on 31 March 2024, 151 were convicted of a sexual offence. This includes both contact and non-contact sexual offences. Offence data was not available for 1 individual.

Of the 50 transgender prisoners who reported their legal gender as female on 31 March 2024, the number convicted of a sexual offence is five or fewer. We do not provide exact data for such small sample sizes as it risks identification of individuals. This approach is in line with our standards on data disclosure.

To put this into perspective with what we already knew from FOI information. I posted the information to a regular poster from FWR on another thread, who did not acknowledge the information at all, so it seems sticking the info here is appropriate:

Here is data from the MoJ

Here is an FOI request from 30 April 2024

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/populationoftransgenderoffend/response/2641337/attach/html/7/FOI%20240322022%20Annex%20A.xlsx.html

Up to the 31st March 2023, the MoJ stated that of the 88 male transgender prisoners with one or more sexual offences.

The breakdown was
48 rapes,
0 attempted rapes,
10 Sexual assault or attempted sexual assault,
13 causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity,
0 indecent assault or gross indecency
6 sexual activity with a child under 16
0 other
77 listed here.... BUT there is a total of 88 in the total so there is 11 crimes not noted.

Possessing or making indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of child has not been recorded in this FOI.

However, there is are further discrepancies in the data of the following when you look at TOTAL NUMBER OF TRANSGENDER PRISONERS SENTENCED FOR A PRINCIPAL SEXUAL OFFENCE.

1 causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity
3 rapes
2 sexual activity with a child under 16
3 Sexual assault or attempted sexual assault,
This equals 9 additional... however the sum for TOTAL NUMBER OF TRANSGENDER PRISONERS SENTENCED FOR A PRINCIPAL SEXUAL OFFENCE is 99.

Therefore 2 more sex crimes have been hidden from this data.

There were 203 males who were declared as transgender in the prison at the time.

There were 24 NB who were not segregated into male and female. What is key here, is that THIS IS NON-GRC HOLDERS. And we all know that males holding GRCs have increased and they are excluded from this data. NO female people with transgender identities were sentenced to a principal sexual offence. There were 41 female people with transgender identities in UK prisons at that time.
As a comparison, I have stats that say as of April 2019 that the general male MoJ data for male sex offenders was just 16.8% of the male prison population.

And there were 3.3% of female people in UK prisons were sex offenders.

I will leave you to do your own sums. But... even using the figure of 88/203 is 43.3%. (And that doesn't include making or possessing indecent photographs of a child remember.)

By the way this exercise was done in 2021. And I checked this data myself from the data source and it was correct at the time. So, it will give some back ground to the above.

The ones that say that in the March/April 2021 data collection period, the MoJ stated that of the 97 transgender prisoners with one or more sexual offences.

The breakdown was
40 rapes,
8 attempted rapes,
31 possessing or making indecent photographs or pseudo photographs of child,
32 Sexual assault or attempted sexual assault,
20 causing or inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity,
10 indecent assault or gross indecency
9 sexual activity with a child under 16
27 other
The 97 sex offender transgender prisons collected 177 sentences between them.

And that according to that FOI 197 prisoners are transgender.

This is why NO SUB GROUP OF MALE PEOPLE SHOULD BE EXEMPT FROM RISK ASSESSMENT. This group of male people still retain the same male pattern of committing sex and violent crime.

Not rare at all, you are very badly informed on this subject.

And stop dragging lesbian women into it as a shield. Women commit very few sex crimes, men 98% of them and that includes all those who pretend to be women. There is a disproportionately high number of trans identifying men in prison for sex crimes.

Who are men!

And the group of men most likely to offend sexually no less! Facts aren’t prejudice people!

Could you show the home office data that shows trans women commit more violent sexual crime than men?

And that group of male people are still committing sex crime at the same rate of the general male population. The statistics are available. And there are NO studies that show that their risk of committing sex crime is reduced at any stage of transition.

You seem to be ill informed

It’s upthread.

Yes, I work in a university so it would be surprising if I didn't. I don't see what that has to do with it, though. If I'm in the toilet and a male-bodied person comes through the door, how do I know whether they are a trans woman or not?

I am sorry, I don't understand then what you were referring to. What was the social contract that you referred to?

Because they’re men, and men are, as a sex class, predatory towards women, with TIM’s having higher offending rates than men in general.
Because men don’t have autonomy over women, because women get to choose where and when they spend time around men and have every right to say no to them.

Can you repost, I can’t find it

It is right there at the top of the page.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/population_of_transgender_offend/response/2641337/attach/html/7/FOI%20240322022%20Annex%20A.xlsx.html

This is the kind of hyperbole that makes it difficult to see your view point. No one is denying their existence. Not one person here looks at a transwoman and says ‘that person there does not exist’.

Everyone makes choices, and sometimes those choices exclude them from certain situations.

To give an overly simplistic example. I am not a social person, I’m an introvert, it’s not something I have deliberately turned myself into, it’s part of my personality, it is something that I am. As a result of this I choose not to go to social events. What I don’t do, is go to a social event and then insist that everyone be quiet, give me personal space, respect ‘my bubble’ and not interact with me. I don’t enforce my needs on them and expect them to facilitate my comfort.

A male dressing in women’s clothes and giving themselves a womens name is still a male. They cannot expect all women to disregard their own comfort, privacy and dignity and tolerate their presence in a space where only women should be. They should not expect women to just gracefully and politely accept being beaten in sport because of kindness, even at grassroots level. They need to understand that their needs are not the only ones that matter and self exclude. Find a sports club that is mixed sex, use a unisex toilet, buy clothes and try them on at home…….

But "Cis woman" is not just some a trans-friendly name for what we used to call "woman", a biological woman, an adult human female. "Cis woman" is a female person who "identifies" as a woman in the same way that a trans woman does - they share a mental gender of womanhood, they "think like a woman".

I don't believe that about myself, and frankly I doubt that many women do. So the assumption that we can just be labelled "cis women" is really an assumption that it's ok to impose sexist gender stereotypes on us without asking if we see ourselves that way.

I think a trans identified man ("transwoman") claiming to share womanhood with me because he believes he shares some commonality of mind with "women" is inherently hurtful.

Why should it be not ok to call a trans woman a man, but a-ok for someone to call me a "cis woman" when I clearly don't identify as that?

Why does he get to redefine me, get to overwrite the meaning of "woman" from what it has meant since the start of language and in doing so overwrite my own understanding of myself as a person with a female body into a person who "identifies as a woman" simply because that meaning suits him better?

Why is it more important to molify him than maintain the reality of our history as female people, of how we were marginalised and oppressed, by who, and why, and why we need sex specific rights and supports today because of it?

What I want is an acceptance of the fact that there are 2 biological sexes and the vast vast majority of people are either XY or XX. And that is it that is all that is prescribed and a given. And outside of that people can live however they choose (as long as those choices don’t negatively affects others) which means wearing what you want looking like you want and loving who you want.

Our problem is we are going backward with that and have ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman that are toxic which means it both excludes people but also bends over backwards to include people it shouldn’t by creating too many labels

Go to this post above you

Helleofabore · Today 23:42

Ah! Two of the more rubbish TRA arguments;

"It's 2025!!"

And

"What about intersex?!!"

So in comparison transwomen are imprisoned due to sex crimes 50sh % more than men, which is about 20% of male convictions.

75% of Transwomen are in prison for sexual assault and sex related crimes.

Such an irony the amount of harm that TRA have done to people who say they are transgender.

No, that doesn’t work for me, but you do you!

House!

This fact is often forgotten too Flirts

The term 'cis' puts everyone in the 'having a gender identity' box.

Someone's gender identity is a philosophical belief. It is not founded in material reality.

Effectively there is a massive group of people who don't have a gender identity, but the term 'cis' forces them into a false grouping. There is no word for a person who is female who doesn't believe in gender identities.

Cis is a meaningless word in multiple ways, yet people insist on it being used. It is very harmful to force this word onto groups in this way.

Homophobic and completely fact free, ‘‘twas ever thus!

Not quite. We’re blissfully free of genital inspections so far!