Writing at Spiked, British journalist Josephine Bartosch, who crusades for women’s rights, attacked the idea that biological men identifying as women should be allowed in women’s prisons, snapping, “It’s not complicated. If a person has a penis, he’s a man. And if he is sent to prison, it ought to be with other men.”
Bartosch started her essay by referencing a ruling by Great Britain’s High Court last week that high-risk male offenders, including rapists, could be situated in female prisons if they claim they are transgender.
She mocked a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) policy, called “The care and management of individuals who are transgender” for assuming that those with the power to place biological men in women’s prisons had to complete an e-learning module on transgender identity, thus rendering them fir to make the decision. “What could possibly go wrong?” she writes.
“The Ministry of Justice admits that it does not know how many prisoners identify as trans because those with Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs) are counted as their new ‘legal gender,’” Bartosch notes, adding, “Whether violence is a product of socialization or hormones, it is clear that male prisoners are far more likely to pose a sexual and/or violent threat to women prisoners. Indeed, 2019 Ministry of Justice figures show that 98 percent of those prosecuted for sexual offences, and 84 per cent of those prosecuted for violence against the person, are male. Moreover, it is estimated that around half of male prisoners who identify as trans have been convicted of sexual offenses.”
“Is it wise to house men who identify as trans, many of whom may be guilty of sexual or violent offenses, in women’s prisons?” she asks rhetorically. “After all, it is perfectly possible to house men who identify as trans in prisons with other men. Indeed, there are currently around 129 males who identify as trans in the male prison estate.”
Bartosch quotes James Barrett, president of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists in 2016, who told the House of Commons women and equalities committee that a “driving force” in male prisoners claiming to be women “was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending much easier.” She continues, “This observation is backed up by 2019 research, published by Cambridge University Press, which found that some males seek ‘gender reassignment as a means by which to increase their intimate contact with children, which they viewed to be more socially acceptable in a female role.’”
She referenced the High Court ruling once more: “In the course of his ruling, Lord Justice Holroyde outlined a need to balance ‘the subjective concerns of women prisoners’ with the ‘rights of transgender women in the prison system.’ The framing here is telling. The proven risks to women are demoted to ‘subjective concerns’ that have to be weighed against the demands of men. In a sense, this ruling could have come straight from a Sharia court in Tehran, where a woman’s testimony is worth less than a man’s.”
“How many more female prisoners need to be sexually assaulted, or even raped, before the law acknowledges that women also deserve human rights?” she concludes.
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Source: Dailywire
