SPS thinks there is an “acceptable” level of risk
Kath Murray, Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Lisa Mackenzie write:
This week the Scottish Parliament Justice Committee will consider the Scottish Prison Service revised policy for transgender prisoners, finally published after a five-year hiatus…
As before, the revised policy is based on self-declaration principles. Prisoners seeking to be accommodated and/or searched based on their gender identity are required to “demonstrate” their identity, but this is not essential. As the SPS explain, the “policy is also explicit that decisions should not be made based on an individual’s ability to provide a wealth of evidence and there may be many reasons why an individual cannot provide this evidence and should not be penalised for this”.
Because the people of gender identity must never be penalized for anything. There is no such rule about women of course.
Whilst the revised policy starts from a default position of excluding men with a history of violence against women from the female estate, it also provides for access if the risk is not considered ‘unacceptable’ – or in plainer language, SPS thinks there is an “acceptable” level of risk it can create here.
An “acceptable” level of risk to other people, that is. Those other people just happen to be women.
Despite consulting more widely, compared to the preceding 2014 policy, the SPS has nonetheless arrived in the same place. To reach this position, it has ignored a swathe of evidence relating to the vulnerability and trauma of women prisoners, male offending risks, and relevant human rights instruments.
It’s interesting how the goal is doing what men who claim to be women want, and everything must be arranged to accommodate that goal, as opposed to the goal’s being to do what women need for safety. Why is that? Why are men who claim to be women so massively more important than women? Why does men’s fun outweigh women’s basic safety?
Despite the clear relevance of the policy to female prisoners, the Equality and Human Rights Impact Assessment (EHRIA) only sought to understand the policy impact on transgender prisoners in any depth. It ignored the 2007 Corston Review of Vulnerable Women in Prison and 2012 Commission on Women Offenders chaired by Dame Elish Angiolini, as well as its own policies that foreground the prevalence of trauma in the female prison population. It did not consider human rights instruments relevant to women but instead cites the controversial Yogyakarta principles at length. It relegates women to the status of “non-transgender women” and describes risks to their safety as “perceived” and a “perspective”.
How do people get this way?
The lack of balance demonstrated here is not an isolated case. The same failures are evident in the analyses underpinning the two Scottish Government consultations on gender recognition reform. In each case, it appears the policy was decided at the outset, and the evidence retrofitted to that aim. Like the SPS, the Scottish Government ignored relevant evidence, including cases demonstrating the adverse impacts of policies and laws based on self-identification.
Mass hypnosis. That’s all I can suggest.
In Scotland, denying access to puberty blockers is cruel and unusual and can land parents in the hoosegow or kids will kill themselves, but if a man says he’s a woman and wants to get in the women’s prison he’s accepted as a woman even with no demonstrated need to alter his body to match his idenniny?
It’s bullshit all the way down.
Mass hypnosis isn’t far off from what we (i.e., most people) have done to ourselves with partisan/social media.
Is it really that men who claim to be women are more important than women — or that it’s so important to believe in and support the existence of trans people that looking at situations using sex categories is morally forbidden? After all, Genderists seem to be catering to trans-identified women to the same extent. Witness the disappearance of the word “woman” from organization specifically associated in some way with female anatomy. Phrases like “pregnant people” isn’t being used for the benefit of transwomen, but transmen.
The reason there’s more conflict between males who consider themselves women and women is possibly due to the very real significance of the biology-based differences between men and women. If females who consider themselves men were similarly throwing themselves before media and law crying out for their right to be put in men’s prisons, try out for men’s sports, live in men’s shelters, and, of course, use the men’s bathroom, showers, and locker rooms,I doubt very much that the people who support men in the women’s facilities wouldn’t support them. That transmen aren’t doing this to the extent that transwomen are is testament to their implicit recognition of those biology-based differences.
It’s heads we win tails you lose, isn’t it.
Astra, another way of looking at it is that the genderists have to support trans identifying women as it gives a defence against accusations that it’s really all about the rights of men who claim/believe/pretend/fantasise that they’re women.
Personally, I doubt that the genderists would give TIWs a second thought if they weren’t useful to them as a cover. TIMs are women, after all.
Sastra, not Astra.
Autocorrect does not like your name, does it?
I think part of how this happens is a failure to discuss whose spaces, words and rights we’re talking about. The focus is all on the oppressed group (trans people) and no one seems to stop and wonder how this is all being done, and at what cost. Further, I suspect “kindness” means most people, when they picture one of these oppressed people, picture famous, non threatening examples: Mackenzie from Australian soap opera Neighbours; Jazz Jennings; Hannah from First Day (pro trans propaganda aimed at tweens) and so on. They’re not picturing Eddie Izzard, Dani Laidley or Karen White.