Transwomen are not women - X (XY?)

[theprestige]

As for who benefits - I think there are a few groups, in the short term. I'll think up a list. But just as one example - in academia now, you can definitely benefit from promoting ideas that claim to serve this type of ideology. You get to publish things in certain journals even if the claims are complete nonsense, and others are scared to challenge them for fear of repercussions for their career. You also get to denounce colleagues who disagree with you (e.g. Kathleen Stock) and damage or destroy their careers without needing to produce any argument or evidence to refute what they say on the basis of logic, reason or accuracy.

Another obvious beneficiary is people who see an opportunity to indulge their self-destructive or anti-social inclinations due to the weakening or abolition of certain taboos and conventions.

 

[Nick Terry]

The Mail also assembled the current data for England and Wales vs Scotland: Scotland in principle now has more trans women prisoners (seven) in women's prisons than England and Wales do (six).

The overwhelming majority of the 230 trans women prisoners in England and Wales are held in men's prisons, although the 230 figure dates back to March 2022. There are 290 women prisoners in Scotland and 3,216 in England and Wales (latter figure is again from 2022).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...rs-womens-prisons-UK.html?ico=related-replace

 

[Rolfe]

I don't like the "exceptional circumstances" part. Any bets on how many cases will be pled to the sentencing judge as having exceptional circumstances? My money is on "all of them".

I also don't like the presumption that men who have had genital surgery should be in a women's prison. I think this is the one that should be subjected to "exceptional circumstances". Like if poor old Donalda everyone assumed was a woman anyway got done for not paying her TV licence. The only males I'd presume should go in a women's prison are the ones who were castrated before they went through puberty and have been on cross-sex hormones ever since. Not eligible to play women's rugby? Into the men's nick with you unless you're a truly exceptional case.

But it's a hell of an improvement on where we were before. And if that captured goon Nicola Sturgeon continues on the way she's going, as you say, the contrast will be painful.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Ya tu sabes.

No me recuerdo bien. Tambien, no hablo espanol bien, lo siento.

As to whether "males benefit from sex denialism," I'm not about to generalize from a handful of males (e.g. Lia Thomas, Rachel McKinnon, Laurel Hubbard) to all of the males. Most males benefit directly from the medical understanding that risk factors for various maladies and conditions (such as prostate cancer or pregnancy) are statistically different for men and women, and there are various other ways in which the scientific understanding of sex effects everyone.

I'm guessing that the actual beneficiaries of sex denialism are an elite few, people who got on board with the relevant ideology early on and can now be seen as thought leaders.

Perhaps. Aside from athletes, in which it seems rather apparent that males benefit, there's also the matter of prisons. I am unaware of any transgender identified females who are incarcerated, but if there are any, I highly doubt they're campaigning to be placed with the males. But the males who identify as transwomen are DEFINITELY benefiting from this bout of sex denialism by gaining access to female prisons, getting lighter sentences (several have been documented where a judge has decided that them being trans means they're having a tough time already so they merit a lighter sentence for their crimes), and in several cases gaining direct access to their preferred victim pool in a situation where those victims cannot get away from them. And whether people believe them to be "genuinely" trans or not, male voyeurs and exhibitionists benefit from being granted unquestionable right to spaces where females are naked or vulnerable.

ETA - Apparently my assumption was incorrect, per Nick Terry's article. There are a handful of transmen in prison, and one is being held with the males.

 

[Nick Terry]

I don't like the "exceptional circumstances" part. Any bets on how many cases will be pled to the sentencing judge as having exceptional circumstances? My money is on "all of them".

I also don't like the presumption that men who have had genital surgery should be in a women's prison. I think this is the one that should be subjected to "exceptional circumstances". Like if poor old Donalda everyone assumed was a woman anyway got done for not paying her TV licence. The only males I'd presume should go in a women's prison are the ones who were castrated before they went through puberty and have been on cross-sex hormones ever since. Not eligible to play women's rugby? Into the men's nick with you unless you're a truly exceptional case.

But it's a hell of an improvement on where we were before. And if that captured goon Nicola Sturgeon continues on the way she's going, as you say, the contrast will be painful.

The current contrast between Scotland and England/Wales, with virtually identical numbers of trans women in women's prisons but almost 11 times more women prisoners in England/Wales, suggests that the main UK prison service has not been granting requests at anything like the rate in Scotland, *already*.

So it does seem as if exceptional circumstances are indeed rare. Six trans women prisoners compared to 3200 in England/Wales is not huge, and presumably will be lowered a bit further by this, while 6-7 versus 290 Scottish women prisoners is enough to terrorise entire institutions.

Given the change in trans women demographics, excluding those who committed sexual offences is line in the sand #1, followed by excluding those with male genitalia. In the current climate this should be considered a compromise, even though there are good reasons from a feminist perspective to exclude all biological males from women's prisons, due to their greater strength etc as you note. Meanwhile, some pro-trans voices will express befuddlement that housing male rapists in women's prisons is in any way wrong, as a Labour MP did apropos Adam Graham in the past 24 hours.

The other argument that needs to be reiterated is over trauma - this is repeated for rape crisis shelters and other institutional facilities and would still be valid in prisons, potentially even more so given how many women prisoners have experienced abuse.

The old fashioned post-op trans woman demograhic of twenty years ago that did undergo sex reassignment surgery and lose their penises were not very numerous, almost too small a group to know whether their offending rates were closer to the male average or less than usual. Excluding those with 'ladydicks' and 'girlcocks', some of whom are prone to threatening women with rape and murder, some of whom might be up on charges of assault for violence at demonstrations, is a very good start.

 

[theprestige]

I suspect that males in general don't benefit much, because males in general are already enjoying a surfeit of benefits from living in a largely male-dominated, pro-male world.

A few males, who want specialized benefits not typically sought by the rest of their cohort, are able to extract those benefits at the expense of females, because, again, it's a male-dominated, pro-male world.

 

[Rolfe]

I think that decent men are not benefiting, but that the proportion of indecent men is higher than most of us would like to think.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The movement or ideology promoting sex denialism is not necessarily synonymous with those benefiting from it. Sex denialism seems to be associated with queer theory and intersectional feminism. To understand it one needs to go back to postmodern claims about the impossibility of objective knowledge about reality, and the idea that all knowledge is constructed in the service of power. Truth claims, including scientific claims, are all just narratives reflecting the interests of those who make them.

I think people confuse this with the idea that knowledge can be inaccurate due to biases of researchers. To have a bias there must be an objective reality and a way of determining that an claim about this reality is less accurate than another. But the ideas come from a philosophy that says there is no way to determine that one claim is more accurate than another, because even the methods used to test claims (logic, reason, scientific methods etc) are constructed in the service of power. There is no objective way to determine between competing claims based on truth. You can only try to identify who the claim appears to benefit and then uncover how it serves their interests. By extension, any claim which is identified as serving the marginalised and oppressed should be elevated because it must have been unfairly suppressed by the powerful.

There is also no distinction between concepts or categories that are based on biological reality (e.g. sex) and ideas that are socially constructed (e.g. how sex should behave, or gender roles), because all categories are constructed to oppress people. Therefore, if it appears that women have been oppressed based on their sex, or people in general have been oppressed based on gender roles, it must be that the concept of sex itself was constructed for the purpose of oppression. Therefore it needs to be deconstructed. Instead of attacking the justifications for sex-based oppression or attacking the pressures to conform to gender roles, you can just attack sex itself, and these things will go away by getting rid of the concept of sex. If somebody defends the reality of sex, it can't be because they care about scientific truth - it must be because they want to maintain oppression (or if they belong to the oppressed group, they have a false consciousness). Of course there are a few problems with this, one of which is whose interests the concept of sex serves if sex didn't exist until it was constructed. The funniest example of this is a claim that sex didn't exist until it was invented by male scientists to oppress women.

I'm not suggesting that those who pick up these idea actually believe or articulate the above. I think these ideas are emotionally appealing because they fit with the way the human mind works (but that might just be my bias due to cognitive science background), and the tendency towards tribalism. So people like ideas that are unfalsifiable (because you can't be shown to be wrong) but at the same time want to say their belief is superior to the alternative. People want to start from the desired conclusion and work backwards to construct support for it rather than look for evidence that it's inaccurate. People are cognitive misers who don't want to have to defend ideas by debate unless they are forced to. People want to say that their idea is correct because it is the one favoured by their 'tribe' and not by the outgroup. People want to denounce heretics and punish them for speaking the wrong narrative, rather than have to debate them. One way to achieve all of this is to just claim you are self-evidently correct because you claim to be supporting the interests of an oppressed minority, and that makes anyone who challenges your claim a bigot. You then don't have to examine their evidence, because the evidence is obviously biased since it supports the wrong conclusion.

How this concept made it into academia baffles me. I mean, as a purely abstract philosophical thought exercise, sure... but accepted as having any sort of utility blows my mind.

Regarding your last paragraph... this is an area where I really appreciate my field of work. The entire field of actuarial science in modern times relies on peer review and peer challenge. Throughout my career, it's been extremely common to see groups of actuaries have extremely passionate discussions, trying their damndest to pick apart someone else's hypothesis or proposal, looking for any and every flaw in their model. We pretty much approach any new model or proposal with the assumption that it is wrong, it has errors, it has flaws. The peer reviewer's job is to find every single one of them.

It frequently makes non-actuaries really uncomfortable, because to an outside it looks like a fight and seems "mean". But at the end of the day... this is how we make sure that our work is reasonable and appropriate.

 

[Emily's Cat]

UK government - which likely for this issue means Scotland is devolved - has finally confirmed it won't send trans women to women's prisons.*
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/update-on-changes-to-transgender-prisoner-policy-framework

The criteria are clear-cut and cover the*two main concerns, the first especially. Want to do your porridge in women's prisons? Lose the penis.



In reply to this, on Twitter, someone quipped, "I wonder if this will reduce Prison Onset Gender Dysphoria".*

Trans activists should be thankful adults reached this conclusion; it might cut down on the number of stories in the news which end up peaking women and turning them into dastardly TERFs. Self-ID cannot work as a policy if predatory men opportunistically exploit the loopholes, as they're clearly doing.

It will be interesting to see if the Scottish government pays any attention to this or if they're happy to provide more empirical evidence for why self-IDing men into women's prisons is a bad idea by providing a contrast with the rest of the UK over time. And then to see if after 2024, an incoming Labour government tries to reverse this or if they quietly accept this is a common-sense policy.

On a related note, the Daily Mail interviewed the ex-wife of the double rapist convicted this week in Scotland. She said, 'His gender transition is a sham for attention and an easier life in prison. When I saw the photos of him dressed as a woman with a blonde wig and pink lycra leggings, I fell out of bed laughing."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...nder-rapist-Isla-Bryson-warns-never-stop.html

Scottish rugby, at least, has excluded trans women from women's rugby. That, too, will prevent a few negative headlines in the future and reduce potential injuries.

I can't help but laugh (and cry a little). Clearly someone's auto-correct had a problem with the name "Isla", so several places throughout that article, the rapist gets referred to as "evil Bryson".

 

[Rolfe]

I thought they meant it. It's the sort of rhetoric the DM uses for rapists.

 

[Rolfe]

Your midnight check-in on the petition reports 74,627 signatures, so 516 new signatures today. Doing pretty well. It seems fairly inevitable, at this rate, that it will reach 75,000 some time tomorrow afternoon or evening. Coincidentally, as far as I can make out tomorrow is the half-way point time-wise.

The new magic number is 298.5.

 

[Aber]

I don't like the "exceptional circumstances" part. Any bets on how many cases will be pled to the sentencing judge as having exceptional circumstances? My money is on "all of them".

It's implied that the "exceptional case" decisions will be made by Ministers which will give better visibility.

 

[Aber]

So people like ideas that are unfalsifiable (because you can't be shown to be wrong) but at the same time want to say their belief is superior to the alternative.

People want to start from the desired conclusion and work backwards to construct support for it rather than look for evidence that it's inaccurate.

People are cognitive misers who don't want to have to defend ideas by debate unless they are forced to.

People want to say that their idea is correct because it is the one favoured by their 'tribe' and not by the outgroup.

People want to denounce heretics and punish them for speaking the wrong narrative, rather than have to debate them.

One way to achieve all of this is to just claim you are self-evidently correct because you claim to be supporting the interests of an oppressed minority, and that makes anyone who challenges your claim a bigot.

You then don't have to examine their evidence, because the evidence is obviously biased since it supports the wrong conclusion.

 

[Rolfe]

It's implied that the "exceptional case" decisions will be made by Ministers which will give better visibility.

Visibility, maybe, but given the calibre of people Nicola Sturgeon is appointing to ministerial positions, I have no confidence that any such appeals will be refused. They seem utterly in thrall to the Holy Trans, no matter how violent or aggressive their behaviour is.

 

[Nessie]

The answer for prisons is the same as it is for changing rooms. More segregation. Sex offenders in male prison, many of whom have committed crimes against other males, tend to be segregated from other prisoners.

 

[Rolfe]

Obviously. Male offenders to male prisons, and if they can't mix with other inmates there, a segregated unit within the male prison. I utterly deplore the suggestions that trans-identifying males should be housed in a segregated unit within or attached to a women's prison. Apart from anything else, what about the female prison warders who will be obliged to come in contact with them?

 

[Nessie]

Obviously. Male offenders to male prisons, and if they can't mix with other inmates there, a segregated unit within the male prison. I utterly deplore the suggestions that trans-identifying males should be housed in a segregated unit within or attached to a women's prison. Apart from anything else, what about the female prison warders who will be obliged to come in contact with them?

The problem is, Scotland's only women only prison is closing down and all women are now in prisons where male and female are kept, but segregated. Or, maybe that is the solution, with increased segregation, with a trans prisoner in with other sex offenders, separate from the nicer prisoners.

 

[Darat]

Obviously. Male offenders to male prisons, and if they can't mix with other inmates there, a segregated unit within the male prison. I utterly deplore the suggestions that trans-identifying males should be housed in a segregated unit within or attached to a women's prison. Apart from anything else, what about the female prison warders who will be obliged to come in contact with them?

Female prison officers and OSGs are in male prisons as well as female prisons.

 

[Rolfe]

The problem is, Scotland's only women only prison is closing down and all women are now in prisons where male and female are kept, but segregated. Or, maybe that is the solution, with increased segregation, with a trans prisoner in with other sex offenders, separate from the nicer prisoners.

It depends on how it's done. But "validating" rapists into their new acquired "gender" by putting them in something that's nominally a wing of a women's unit isn't something I'm in favour of.

 

[Rolfe]

Female prison officers and OSGs are in male prisons as well as female prisons.

Talk to Rhona Hotchkiss. I have.