Not only men
Oh give it a rest ffs.
Women can help men commit rape, sure. Women can’t literally rape. The fact that one court decided to call helping men rape “rape” doesn’t change that fact. Women can also in theory shove objects up women, but that too is not rape, even if some court says it is.
Charlotte Proudman seems unusually horrible.
The crime that she was convicted of is rape in the UK Criminal Code, many other systems call it sexual assault to avoid the hairsplitting. She actively participated in an act of rape.
However, the fact that she has to reach back over 20 years to find a case to try to make her rather weak point is self-defeating.
Rape by foreign object is its own crime in California. Women, in theory, could do that. Also in theory, a woman could be convicted as an aider and abettor to a crime of rape. Aiders and abettors are liable for the same crime as the principals.
As a matter of law, but as a matter of public discourse? Of politics? Of refusing to agree that men can become women? Of everyday demotic speech? No. Women can’t do what we civilians mean by “rape.”
Women can and do commit statutory rape, albeit at a far, far lower rate than men.
“It’s not true to say that only men are rapists and that’s why trans women shouldn’t be allowed in women’s prisons.”
That’s an all-or-nothing position. Even with the common American definition of rape that doesn’t require a penis, nearly all instances of rape are committed by men. The vast majority of sexual assaults are committed by men. A much higher portion of men in prison have been convicted of sexual offenses. We don’t know, can’t know in most cases, that a given man poses no risk, and we do know that certain men pose high risk, so it simply makes sense to keep men out of women’s prisons. The fact that there might be some number of men who are not dangerous, or some number of women who are dangerous, is immaterial.
You aren’t arguing that vulnerable men convicted of non-violent non-sexual crimes could be housed in women’s prisons. You are arguing that men who claim to be women should be treated differently from other men, that the risk men pose to women should be ignored if the man in question identifies as female.
And you are claiming that men-who-claim-to-be-women are not safe in men’s prisons and should not be there because of the risk of rape, but that women also rape, so the risk of rape is already present in women’s prisons. That’s contradictory.
Ophelia, leaving aside the fact that it is a 20 year old case, it is a terrible argument whether or not she uses the term ‘rapist’ for a woman who participated in a rape precisely because the fact scenario is quite clear – there was a male (many) present for her to assist in the crime. That is a woeful case to point to demonstrate her claim that trans women should be allowed in women’s prisons because women rape.
The fact that she scoured years of legal precedent and could not come up with a more compelling precedent makes the statistical argument fairly effectively.
The Metropolitan Police define rape as:
Agreed. Good thing we didn’t say it. At all. FFS.
Ophelia, yes but then there are other legal jurisdictions with their own definitions. Australia for example has a mess of inconsistencies between the states, with unwilling penetrative sex being called rape or sexual assault or even sexual penetration without consent. The states don’t even agree on whether the prosecution needs to prove the attacker knew the victim was unconsenting. Yet one consistency between them is that the criminal code applies irrespective of whether the attacker was male or female, and conversationally, I think this non-dependence on the attacker’s sex is taking over, if it hasn’t already.
While I agree on the broader point of keeping trans men out of women’s prisons, I think you’d have to have a really narrow definition of rape to say women literally can’t rape:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-understudied-female-sexual-predator/503492/
A case I personally heard about right after it happened: A male college friend of mine was pursued at a party by a women he wasn’t interested in. He made his lack of interest clear, and she stopped bothering him. He ended up drinking too much and passing out on a bed. When he woke up, he found that woman lying next to him, and there was clear evidence she’d had sex with him. I’d think if the sexes were reversed very few people would hesitate to call that situation rape.
Similar cases here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-law-in-context/article/oh-youre-a-guy-how-could-you-be-raped-by-a-woman-that-makes-no-sense-towards-a-case-for-legally-recognising-and-labelling-forcedtopenetrate-cases-as-rape/8166CABA33BBE64EBBAD384E1FE13551
Yes, some laws are written to only classify forced sex by men on women as rape, but other areas don’t define it that way. Those laws wouldn’t acknowledge male-on-male prison rape, which seems wrong. In the general sense of rape meaning someone having sex with a person without their consent, women can be the perpetrators against men, however rare that is.
Still not an argument for putting trans men in women’s prisons.
If Charlotte were honest on this topic, she would admit that she knows that women commit sexual assault far less frequently than males do. Prisons don’t promise, nor do they place priority on policies nor safeguards to protect anyone from sexual assault in either women’s or men’s prisons. Introducing men to women’s prisons adds a much higher probability of rape and sexual assault, and the Trans ID of the prisoners does nothing to ameliorate that increase. In fact, they are even more likely to commit such assaults than men who don’t ID as trans.
But Charlotte is not being honest. If she were she would be asked to leave Jolyon’s little project.
Mike Haubrich@10:
” In fact, they are even more likely to commit such assaults than men who don’t ID as trans.”
Okay, do you have an actual study to cite for that one? As far as I know, the studies of trans crime rates are, in fact, virtually non-existent, which is one reason I object to the claim that trans women are somehow not a risk in women’s spaces.
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Ophelia, one reason for the broader definition of “rape” in some jurisdictions comes from cases like Brock Turner, who, upon discovering he was too drunk to get an erection, used his fingers on an unconscious victim. And including cases like that, or involving penetration with a foreign object, under ‘rape’ doesn’t, as far as I can tell, increase the number of ‘women rapists’ by any significant number (and the number of cases of women raping men goes up even less–most such assaults by women probably ARE against other women, simply because women are, generally, easier targets).