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> I'll add: the current fuss about "protecting women's spaces" is pointless > rather than just appealing to hypothetical situations These aren't hypothetical

by dover 4y ago

> I'll add: the current fuss about "protecting women's spaces" is pointless > rather than just appealing to hypothetical situations These aren't hypothetical situations. In some jurisdictions, prisoners are housed based on their self-declared "gender identity". So men who declare themselves as women are being incarcerated in the female prison estate. Women inmates have been raped, sexually assaulted, and even impregnated by some of these men. This is what happens when this polite fiction becomes law and policy, abusive men take advantage of it - undermining the very reason why we have sex-separated spaces in the first place. Protecting women's spaces from men who call themselves women is very important for the safeguarding of vulnerable women.

defrost 4y ago
> These aren't hypothetical situations. In some jurisdictions, ... It would be very interesting to see the actual official statistics on this, alongside the data on the number of women prisoners raped and impregnated by male guards. My suspicion is that the former numbers are over exagerated in importance and the later numbers are sharply underr reported .. but I'd still be interested in your best link to back up your claim and put it in context.
- dover 4y ago
  > women prisoners raped and impregnated by male guards This is why in the UK, women's prisons have a policy where at least 50% of prison officers must be female, and only female officers are allowed to conduct intimate searches where needed, to mitigate against the risk of sexual abuse by males. That there is an existing, mitigated risk of male sexual predation from prison staff, does not justify further increasing this risk to female inmates by locking them up 24/7 with men, just because these men call themselves women. We have sex-segregated prisons for good reason, this was the result of very well documented evidence, from prison reformers of the 19th century, of the harm and abuse of woman that is enabled by mixed-sex prisons.
  - defrost 4y ago
    So ... you've no actual official link to back up your "non hypothetical" story .. no per capita figures on women in prison being raped by either guards or other inmates (other women or trans)? That seems odd to say the least.
    - dover 4y ago
      Is it your claim that this doesn't happen? Here are some search terms for you, these are examples of men in women's prisons who have sexually assaulted or raped women inmates while incarcerated: Janiah Monroe, Karen White, Ramel Blount. None of these men should have been there in the first place, of course.
      - defrost 4y ago
        Clearly (to anyone conversant in English) I am not claiming no such thing has happened. I am asking how frequently this happens and, in hard risk terms, how does it compare to the risks faced by inmates of being raped by other women or by prison guards. I assume you are not claiming these events do not happen. So again I ask - do you have any relevant links re: comparative frequency, absolute occurrence, etc.
        wizzwizz4 4y ago
        I'm not convinced there have been more than five cases. Everyone cites the same ones. I would expect there to be more, given base rate – but if there were, I'd expect those cases to be yelled about, which they aren't. (That leaves open the possibility that trans people are significantly less likely to assault others… Given the correlation between being trans and autistic, and the tendency for autistic people to be highly moral, that's not a hugely far-fetched theory, but it wouldn't explain such a large discrepancy.)
        dover 4y ago
        Even one case of women prisoners being raped by men who are incarcerated in a women's prisons is sufficient to show that this recent experiment in removing this safeguarding measure for women inmates has been a failure, and must be abandoned. That we have several documented cases already only supports this point further.
crashmat 4y ago
just because there are (very) bad apples in a group doesn't mean that the entire group purely and only exists to take advantage of others. By your logic cis women also should be imprisoned for their identity because cisgender women have sexually assaulted others in prison
- dover 4y ago
  > bad apples The full expression this term is taken from is: "a few bad apples rot the whole barrel". Women don't know in advance who the bad apples are amongst men, so in contexts where women are particularly vulnerable to predation from such men, the whole barrel must be considered as being rotten. This is why we have sex-segregated spaces.
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    But why draw the boundary there? Men are a problem because of the society that lets them do what they want. Society doesn't treat trans women like men – and, largely, it does treat trans men like men. Isn't it dangerous to have trans men – many of whom will have testosterone running through their systems – in vulnerable women's spaces? Treating someone who seems like a woman, acts like a woman, is at risk from the gender-based violence inflicted upon women… as a man… is making people safer, how exactly? How would you even determine which women to exclude? If someone's saying "hey, I'm trans, I'll leave if my existence makes you uncomfortable", they're clearly not one of the Evil™ Ones… so are you proposing to check everyone who enters these spaces? Oh, but wait, the state of medical treatment is actually pretty good, these days. Better make that a thorough check. (No. Just, no.) And how is it a good idea to put trans men in with women victims of (usually male-perpetrated) domestic violence? Isn't the whole point of the "women's spaces" thing to avoid that? (Or do you propose to just ban all trans people from support services entirely?)
    - naasking 4y ago
      > Isn't it dangerous to have trans men – many of whom will have testosterone running through their systems – in vulnerable women's spaces? To be fair to the OP, I don't think there exists a history of abuse of females from trans men, which strengthens their allegation that the underlying sex might be an important factor to consider in these scenarios. The sex hormones alone maybe just aren't a factor. It's likely not safe to place trans women into male prisons either though, so I think there ought to another axis than just male/female along which we can segregate, such as violent/non-violent criminal history/tendencies. Come to think of it, that seems almost obvious in retrospect. Put violent offenders together, and non-violent ones together, and then non-violent offenders are far less likely to become harder criminals upon release.

by dover 4y ago

defrost 4y ago

> These aren't hypothetical situations. In some jurisdictions, ... It would be very interesting to see the actual official statistics on this, alongside the data on the number of women prisoners raped and impregnated by male guards. My suspicion is that the former numbers are over exagerated in importance and the later numbers are sharply underr reported .. but I'd still be interested in your best link to back up your claim and put it in context.

dover 4y ago
> women prisoners raped and impregnated by male guards This is why in the UK, women's prisons have a policy where at least 50% of prison officers must be female, and only female officers are allowed to conduct intimate searches where needed, to mitigate against the risk of sexual abuse by males. That there is an existing, mitigated risk of male sexual predation from prison staff, does not justify further increasing this risk to female inmates by locking them up 24/7 with men, just because these men call themselves women. We have sex-segregated prisons for good reason, this was the result of very well documented evidence, from prison reformers of the 19th century, of the harm and abuse of woman that is enabled by mixed-sex prisons.
- defrost 4y ago
  So ... you've no actual official link to back up your "non hypothetical" story .. no per capita figures on women in prison being raped by either guards or other inmates (other women or trans)? That seems odd to say the least.
  - dover 4y ago
    Is it your claim that this doesn't happen? Here are some search terms for you, these are examples of men in women's prisons who have sexually assaulted or raped women inmates while incarcerated: Janiah Monroe, Karen White, Ramel Blount. None of these men should have been there in the first place, of course.
    - defrost 4y ago
      Clearly (to anyone conversant in English) I am not claiming no such thing has happened. I am asking how frequently this happens and, in hard risk terms, how does it compare to the risks faced by inmates of being raped by other women or by prison guards. I assume you are not claiming these events do not happen. So again I ask - do you have any relevant links re: comparative frequency, absolute occurrence, etc.
      - wizzwizz4 4y ago
        I'm not convinced there have been more than five cases. Everyone cites the same ones. I would expect there to be more, given base rate – but if there were, I'd expect those cases to be yelled about, which they aren't. (That leaves open the possibility that trans people are significantly less likely to assault others… Given the correlation between being trans and autistic, and the tendency for autistic people to be highly moral, that's not a hugely far-fetched theory, but it wouldn't explain such a large discrepancy.)
      - dover 4y ago
        Even one case of women prisoners being raped by men who are incarcerated in a women's prisons is sufficient to show that this recent experiment in removing this safeguarding measure for women inmates has been a failure, and must be abandoned. That we have several documented cases already only supports this point further.

crashmat 4y ago

just because there are (very) bad apples in a group doesn't mean that the entire group purely and only exists to take advantage of others. By your logic cis women also should be imprisoned for their identity because cisgender women have sexually assaulted others in prison

dover 4y ago
> bad apples The full expression this term is taken from is: "a few bad apples rot the whole barrel". Women don't know in advance who the bad apples are amongst men, so in contexts where women are particularly vulnerable to predation from such men, the whole barrel must be considered as being rotten. This is why we have sex-segregated spaces.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  But why draw the boundary there? Men are a problem because of the society that lets them do what they want. Society doesn't treat trans women like men – and, largely, it does treat trans men like men. Isn't it dangerous to have trans men – many of whom will have testosterone running through their systems – in vulnerable women's spaces? Treating someone who seems like a woman, acts like a woman, is at risk from the gender-based violence inflicted upon women… as a man… is making people safer, how exactly? How would you even determine which women to exclude? If someone's saying "hey, I'm trans, I'll leave if my existence makes you uncomfortable", they're clearly not one of the Evil™ Ones… so are you proposing to check everyone who enters these spaces? Oh, but wait, the state of medical treatment is actually pretty good, these days. Better make that a thorough check. (No. Just, no.) And how is it a good idea to put trans men in with women victims of (usually male-perpetrated) domestic violence? Isn't the whole point of the "women's spaces" thing to avoid that? (Or do you propose to just ban all trans people from support services entirely?)
  - naasking 4y ago
    > Isn't it dangerous to have trans men – many of whom will have testosterone running through their systems – in vulnerable women's spaces? To be fair to the OP, I don't think there exists a history of abuse of females from trans men, which strengthens their allegation that the underlying sex might be an important factor to consider in these scenarios. The sex hormones alone maybe just aren't a factor. It's likely not safe to place trans women into male prisons either though, so I think there ought to another axis than just male/female along which we can segregate, such as violent/non-violent criminal history/tendencies. Come to think of it, that seems almost obvious in retrospect. Put violent offenders together, and non-violent ones together, and then non-violent offenders are far less likely to become harder criminals upon release.