When she was a man
I still can’t believe that grown-up journalism does this. The Beeb:
A trans woman who raped two women before she changed gender will not serve her sentence in a female jail, Scotland’s first minister has said.
Isla Bryson was remanded to Cornton Vale women’s prison after being convicted of carrying out the rapes when she was a man called Adam Graham.
“When she was a man” ffs. He is still a man. He always will be. It’s only men who can rape women.
Even in their own terms – the terms that say we must refer to men who say they are trans as “she” – there are very obvious reasons for thinking this guy is not actually trans in the sense of actually believing he has a magic gender. There are very obvious reasons for thinking he’s pretending to be trans, not least of which is opportunities to rape more women.
Bryson decided to transition from a man to a woman while awaiting trial.
Is that the BBC hinting that it knows perfectly well it’s a con?
But the BBC shouldn’t be hinting and it shouldn’t be lying to us about this rapey man.
Bryson is due to be sentenced next month after being convicted on Tuesday.
But where that sentence should be served has been the subject of heated debate, with concerns being raised about the safety of other women in the jail if Bryson [were] placed there.
Right, and this is why the entire mandate to pretend that men are women is such a bad dangerous harmful to women thing. (One why. Sadly, there are others.) This is why it needs to stop.
Speaking at First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament, Ms Sturgeon said she agreed with the chief executive of Rape Crisis that it was not possible to have a rapist within a women’s prison.
And what is a rapist? A man who rapes. Women can’t rape because women don’t have the body part that does the raping.
The first minister said any prisoner who posed a risk of sexual offending was segregated from other prisoners including while a risk assessment was carried out.
She said: “There is no automatic right for a trans woman convicted of a crime to serve their sentence in a female prison even if they have a gender recognition certificate.”
Why? Because they’re not in fact women. That applies to all trans women. Trying to force us all to lie about it is not going to work out.
The first minister also stressed it was careful [crucial?] that people “do not, even inadvertently, suggest that trans women pose an inherent threat to women”, adding: “Predatory men, as has always been the case, are the risk to women.”
Yes, and trans women are all men, and some of them are predatory. For that reason they pose the same kind of generalized threat to women that men do: the threat created by the fact that we can’t tell which ones are predatory so we are forced to take generalized precautions around men we don’t know. That’s why it’s not safe for us to pretend men can be women.
In the context, this appears to be an admission that at least some transwomen are men. First step. Now take it to the obvious conclusion.
After all, if trans women are women, than this individual is a woman. If a woman is anyone who says they are, this individual is a woman. The admission that it is predatory men who are a threat to women (and I think there are a lot of other men who are a threat to women, but let’s leave it at that for this argument) is an admission that this individual, this one, is a man. Which sort of seems to negate “a woman is anyone who says they are”.
Emphasis mine. But he is not a woman, so it is not “other” women for whom concern is being expressed but women, period.
A bit too long for a t-shirt or bumper sticker, but this is one of the best short summaries of this issue that I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately you’ve had far too many opportunities to forge and hone this explanation to razor sharpness than would be needed in a sane world.
And then his defence counsel claimed that his commitment to transitioning “goes a long way” to making the case for complete acquittal.
The Daily Herald reported that the man enrolled on a beauty course when he was beginning to ‘transition’. Parts of the course involved nudity of students (eg when learning how to spray tan) and of course Graham was there ogling and making the women feel frightened. He was also very aggressive toward fellow students and made lots of unfounded accusations against them (homophobia seemed to be a favourite). One woman didn’t attend the course for three weeks because she was frightened of his aggression.
But the most important point is that this all happened while he was on bail for rape.
This is the college’s standard of duty of care and safeguarding, apparently.