Watching footage in the news this week of a male person running into a crowd to swing a punch at a sixty year old woman, you might be forgiven for assuming this was another example of male violence against women, and therefore proof that women sometimes need spaces of their own, in order to stay safe. You’d be wrong in this instance, because in fact this was apparently a trans-identified male doing the punching, so it’s not male violence at all: in fact the sixty year old woman is the one to blame because she wants to go to a feminist meeting about gender. It’s a neat trick: if you make sure women can’t go to feminist meetings about gender they will not be informed enough to criticise an ideology which transforms a fist-swinging male into the victim of a sixty year old woman who wants to go to a feminist meeting about gender.
It ties in with other issues raised recently by reports of a male rapist who got to be housed in a woman’s prison because he identified as trans. In both examples I’m interested to know how a man with a male body (sex) who has displayed the most extreme kind of toxic masculinity (gender) can get to be diagnosed as a woman. Where, in this man’s body or soul, is there even room for the tiniest chink of the female or the feminine? It’s surely already filled up with all the male and the masculine?
Many people seem to believe there is a process whereby, in settings like prisons, the men who pretend to be women are weeded out. People believe that only genuine gender- dysphoric men get to be acknowledged as women, and that therefore they must need this recognition and special treatment. Some common beliefs about male rapists in women’s prisons include:
Considering that Josh Jackman wrote an article in Pink News admonishing everyone for ‘misgendering’ this rapist, I thought he must have known something I didn’t.
So I decided to do some research on these ‘rigorous psychological tests’ that could prove that a man is indeed a woman, against all other evidence to the contrary. Some evidence about the Scottish prison system was sent to me. It states that ‘since 2011 prisoner healthcare has been the responsibility of the NHS’ and it gives a link to the NHS guidelines on gender reassignment for further information.
I duly read through the NHS Scotland Gender Reassignment Protocols. The treatment pathway for trans-identifying prisoners certainly takes considerable time (a whole year on hormones before assessment for surgery for example). But that’s ok: that is the one thing that the most serious of offenders have got in spades isn’t it…? Time…?
Diagnostically though, there is nothing rigorous or testing about it: it relies totally on the say-so of the presenting prisoner. Counselling or therapy are provided on the basis that the prisoner is telling the truth about his feelings, just as it is for non-prisoners. In fact, to do otherwise is now on the verge of being officially identified as conversion therapy.
A statement from UK organisations in January 2017 condemns the practice of conversion therapy and refers to a memorandum of understanding from 2015 which adds ‘gender identity’ to ‘sexual orientation’ as a characteristic which may no longer be challenged. They say:
Conversion Therapy is the term for therapy that assumes certain sexual orientations or gender identities are inferior to others, and seeks to change or suppress them on that basis.
What this means in practice is that a presenting gender identity must be taken as the truth. NHS Scotland are one of the signatories of this statement and there is pressure on NHS England to follow suit. Trans support groups such as Stonewall, Pink News, Mermaids, GIRES and Gendered Intelligence have promoted the notion of conversion therapy with regard to trans people, to the point where to question it is to be automatically labelled transphobic. At the same time they have insisted that only trans people can be consulted on trans issues. And trans groups certainly have been listened to. In England and Wales the prison service says this:
At the Trans Inquiry chaired by Maria Miller in 2015, written evidence from the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists said something more cautious:
The converse is the ever-increasing tide of referrals of patients in prison serving long or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences. These vastly outnumber the number of prisoners incarcerated for more ordinary, non-sexual, offences. It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case. There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this. These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system and even (in one very well evidenced case that a highly concerned Prison Governor brought particularly to my attention) a plethora of prison intelligence information suggesting that the driving force was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier, females being generally perceived as low risk in this regard. I am sure that the Governor concerned would be happy to talk about this.
The Governor concerned was not asked to come in and talk about this. The groups invited in to give further evidence did not include any representatives from women’s groups either. Trans support group Action for Trans Health however were one of the trans representatives who were invited to give evidence. Action for Trans Health were coincidentally one of the main players stirring up protest against the feminist meeting on gender this week, mentioned above. They helped to instigate and organise the shutting down of the original venue through sustained online harassment, and they coordinated the search for the new secret meeting place so they could disrupt that as well. A lot of threats against ‘TERFs’ were shared on social media. They ‘loved’ this tweet on Twitter:
After the event, when the stories of the violence had circulated, they posted this:
The Trans Inquiry chose to listen to trans groups such as this one, actively engaged in fighting women and stirring up hatred, instead of women’s groups with genuine concerns over what changes to the Gender Recognition Act will mean to women’s rights and services. The result is that there can be no public discussion about competing rights. Public bodies continually have to refer to the same small group of unchallenged and often unqualified ‘experts’ who all reinforce one another. Once NHS England signs the new Memorandum of Understanding (which they probably will because they are actively ‘listening to trans people’) the door will effectively be closed, and sealed, against outside opinion. Health professionals including GPs, counsellors, therapists and all NHS staff will be constrained in their treatment of patients by a restrictive ideology which has no evidence base. Institutions such as the Prison Service, the courts and the government itself will look to the NHS for ‘expert’ opinion.
Certain things will become unsayable. For instance: ‘Young man at protest punches middle-aged woman’. Unsayable.
And men will have to be women when they say they are. There is no alternative. Even when, as recently reported, there are now eleven inmates in one prison alone seeking sex realignment surgery, all of them sex offenders. The Prison Governor mentioned above could have predicted that, but he’s not trans so his evidence was not called for.
In summary, these appear to be the new rules:
Demonise women as TERFs for wanting to have a say in legislation that affects them
Insist that only trans people should be consulted on gender legislation
Persuade everyone that questioning a trans identity is always transphobic
Punch feminists who persist in questioning the trans narrative
Frighten everyone else into silence
Once all those rules are in place and are applied to all situations, including male on female assault in a public place and the housing of male sex offenders in a woman’s prison…job done.
And this is how a man with a male body (sex) who has displayed the most extreme kind of toxic masculinity (gender) can be housed in a women’s prison.
Not The News in Briefs 
As far as know, the placing of rapists in women’s prisons in the UK began in 2009.
A trans “woman” (Karen Louise Lawson) successfully won a court case using the European Human Rights Convention in 2009. He had strangled his boyfriend to death (but was convicted only of manslaughter) and then on release had immediately tried to rape a woman. His defence lawyer tried to use his ladyfeelz to excuse the attempted rape!
Anyway, the court held that holding him in a male prison infringed his rights, and so ordered the prison service to put him in with women.
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2009/2220.html
The fact that this right is now established in human rights law (at ECHR level) constrains the prison service and government.
Amazing – not – that ‘What this means in practice is that a presenting gender identity must be taken as the truth. NHS Scotland are one of the signatories of this statement and there is pressure on NHS England to follow suit. Trans support groups such as Stonewall, Pink News, Mermaids, GIRES and Gendered Intelligence have promoted the notion of conversion therapy with regard to trans people, to the point where to question it is to be automatically labelled transphobic. At the same time they have insisted that only trans people can be consulted on trans issues. ‘
Yet womens’ lived experiences of male violence perpetrated against them are not ‘valid’ unless and if a professional male(s) decides ‘yes this is what happened to the woman/women.’ Women still have no right of defining their experiences because men are the experts!
Yet biological males merely by saying the ‘magic words’ I am a woman because I feel I am’ means his male claims have to accepted as the definitive truth despite no real evidence supporting his spurious claim.
This is why UK’s fascist government eagerly accepted the trans claims as ‘definitive truths’ because this conveniently silences all women who disagree and/or have specific concerns about how women’s and girls’ lived experiences will be null and void because the only ‘real women’ will be those biological males who play at being women!
Welcome to the new Male Supremacist Women-Hating Political System!
Thankyou. An excellent break down. Will be sharing this widely.
The overwhelming majority of people are completely unaware of how this agenda is being slipped into legislation, with MPs and MPs of all stripes falling over themselves to congratulate their selves on their off-the-peg progressive world view. Of course the fact that women’s interests are not listened to, and that when those women who have attempted to engage with the discussion using all democratic means open to us are branded “bigots”, “proported feminists” (Maria Millar), or “on the wrong side of history” – thus fuelling the undercurrent of anti-women sentiment that seems to be growing rapidly in our culture. It makes this a very one-sided conversation. I believe it is the case that Stonewall (who have yet to unequivocally condemn the violence perpetuated upon women on Wednesday evening) were invited to speak at the advertised discussion, and indeed accepted, only to withdraw at the last moment. Despite there remaining two places at the table for any organisation willing to explain and support the recommendations arising from the Women and Equalities Committee Enquiry, none were forthcoming. Indeed I understand that pressure was put on potential speakers/organisations *not* to engage. Thus, the most vocal eements of the trans activist community were able to manipulate public perception of the talk as “hate speech”. This isn’t the first time that this lobby has refused to engage in any open discussion about their agenda or beliefs. They remain opaque and unaccountable, yet hold great sway over the formulation of policy in this country since they are effectively above questioning. It really is quite ingenious.
Meanwhile, women who may wish to express a view or even ask questions about how proposals to change the basis of what constitutes a “woman”, are dehumanised by the label “TERF” (which even the CEO of Stonewall, politicians, journalists and popular social commentators like Owen Jones use with impunity), with no opportunity whatsoever to a fair hearing. In fact most of the men and women being labled “TERF”, aren’t even feminists, let alone “radical” feminists. The word is used as a dog whisle against anyone who disagrees no matter how mildly with the ideas being used to change the meaning of woman/men as a biological category to a nebulous “identity”. It is the uncritical use of that dehumanising term and it’s care blanche acceptance in the mainstream, that leads to the abuse of women, culminating in the act of violence we saw on Wednesday evening.
Do our politicians really want to be associated with a movement that has now shown it’s ugly underbelly? No doubt this will be brushed off as “a few bad apples”, but I for one have no faith that the organisations being listened to by our government have any intention of openly distancing themselves from these elements. Why would they? Their fear and harrassment tactics are working beatifully to silence dissenting voices.
I am not hopeful that women will finally be listened to. Unless of course every woman reading this writes to their MP asking the questions that need answers and making their views known before that door is firmly shut in our faces. Even then, I wish I were more hopeful that our politicians and law makers will put aside easy virtue signalling in favour of women, so I am not holding my breath.
Question: prisoners need to be given basic human rights – but is “gender identity” truly a basic human right? Is “gender identity” now considered a basic human right that needs to be granted to prisoners in countries that have discrimination laws about gender identity? So many questions.
Please write on the madness that this is in your next post!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5117669/Girlguiding-issues-controversial-advice-trans-members.html