Now trying to follow 2 threads simultaneously, so I can stay up to date with this one and also catch up on the last - while also doing my tax return. Hm. A task only slightly harder than making sense of the judgement...
This paragraph again...
“I can accept, at any rate for present purposes, that the unconditional introduction of a transgender woman into the general population of a women’s prison carries a statistically greater risk of sexual assault upon non-transgender prisoners than would be the case if a non-transgender woman were introduced. But that statistical conclusion takes no account of the risk assessment which the policies require."
...feels huge. Doesn't it, like that awful Australian lift video, demonstrate why, to some people, our only possible reason not to want to share spaces with trans women must be prejudice, as there's no other "material" substance for it? It feels offensively disingenuous on Pink News, but to see it in a tribunal judgement... It's reality denial writ large. I'd first wondered if it was a kind of "the-facts-presented-in-court-don't-prove-this-so-my-hands-are-tied" kind of thing, then remembered that facts in this (any?) legal context can include certain "everyone-knows-this" type facts too (technical term!) - and the Blackbelt Barrister guy seems to confirm this?
It highlighted to me (as if I needed it) just how Orwellian - and dangerous for women and girls - this ideology is. Because the only explanation for that paragraph is surely ideological capture.
It's all driving me, semi-seriously, to see the Buffy revolution ("Girls can kick ass too!") as authentically dangerous, at least until everyone gets their head screwed back on right. I won't forgive this ideology for a lot, but making me see the (kind of) feminist (crop tops, Whedon, I know - it's complicated...) Buffy as disempowering girls is a new one. How have all our steps forward been turned so insidiously against us?!