There should be flexibility
Knowing that men are not women is just so random, ya know? What’s the point? Relax, enjoy the ride!
Biological sex is an “artificial parameter” for deciding where prisoners should be held, Scottish National Party (SNP) ministers have told a court.
They have? Really? Surely they meant “arbitrary”? Calling it artificial seems deranged even for them.
Gerry Moynihan KC, acting for the Scottish Government, argued that there should be flexibility to allow transgender women, who are biological men, to serve their sentences in female jails.
We need that flexibility so that men can have opportunities to beat up and rape women, right? It’s just common sense.
He told the Court of Session in Edinburgh that defining “a man as a man and a woman as a woman, without exceptions” was “artificial”.
Ah so that’s how “artificial” got into it. Naming things at all is “artificial”. Language is artificial. Pass the bong.
Listen up, Scottish government: the fact remains that women and men are women and men. Men can rape women; women can be impregnated by men against their will. Men have more punching power than women, by a wide margin. Men are a threat to women in confined spaces in ways that women are not a threat to men. None of this is artificial. You can call arrangements to protect women from these unpleasant realities if you want to, but that still doesn’t make them worthless, let alone bad.
Mr Moynihan argued that classifying a trans woman inmate as a man was “a fundamental denial of their choice of gender and it’s a fundamental denial driven only by semantics”.
Oh fuck off. That doesn’t matter. Compared to the safety and rights of women, that whiney crap just does not matter.
Under the current guidance, a trans woman in Scotland can be jailed in a female jail if they have not hurt or threatened women or girls, and there is no basis to suppose that they pose an unacceptable risk.
FWS argues that this is incompatible with last year’s UK Supreme Court ruling that the definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 is based on biological sex. It has applied to the Court of Session for a judicial review seeking to quash the policy.
SNP ministers have argued that excluding biologically male trans prisoners from female jails would breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Mr Moynihan rejected claims that housing trans inmates in women’s jails automatically breached female inmates’ right to privacy under Article 8 of the convention.
It’s so easy for a man to dismiss women’s right to privacy. No skin off his ass, is it! Run along, girls, we just don’t care.
Calling for inmates to be treated on a case-by-case basis, he said: “Where a transgender prisoner does not pose an Article 8 problem, does not threaten the rights of others, are we to have an absolute rule that says that they must be accommodated in a prison of their sex?
“Why? The sole reason is that they are to be classified as a man. Even though they live their lives as a woman. It’s a fundamental denial of their choice of gender. And it’s a fundamental denial driven only by semantics.”
What does he even mean, “they live their lives as a woman”? That’s not a thing! They may live their lives pretending to be a woman, but that doesn’t translate to everyone else having to play along. Adults playing let’s pretend are just that, and they have zero right to demolish women’s rights in the process.
He argued that SNP ministers had to make “very complex, difficult judgments” around prisons policy and could not risk an increase in suicides among trans prisoners.
What about an increase in suicides among women prisoners?
Mr Moynihan added: “What is being asked in this case is that they be put in a straitjacket. That their best prison management judgments are constrained by an artificial parameter, that they must define a man as a man and a woman as a woman full stop, without exceptions.
That’s because there are no exceptions. A man is in fact a man, and a woman is in fact a woman. Full stop, yes.
I just know that reminds me of something. Now let’s see, what was it again…
Reality is sooo 20th century. Welcome to the 21st.
Didn’t someone write a book once, titled “Why Truth Matters”? Now more and more, I wonder if it really does?
(Full disclosure: Year and years ago, in what feels like a previous life, I picked up a book with that title in an airport lounge somewhere, so I would have something to keep me occupied on a long flight. If I hadn’t stumbled across that book, I probably wouldn’t be hanging out around this blog. What wonders random encounters work sometimes!)
Why is the Scottish government so determined to trash women’s rights? What’s in it for them? What do they get out of it? I know that the lawyer is a hired gun, but I wonder what he thinks of the crazy illogic he’s spouting? It’s just so ridiculous, I find it hard to believe someone actually saying this anywhere, let alone a court of law. It’s madness.
The obvious question here is, “Unacceptable to whom?” I’d think the best judges of ‘acceptable risk’ are the people being asked to take the risk–ie, the women in the prison. Wonder if the SNP has asked any of them.
Stepping back from the inanity of the core position, this bit, too, is a lie. There is a constraint being pushed, yes, but that constraint is not, by any necessity, between “Force transwomen to contemplate suicide or force women to endure the risk of rape”. One could absolutely set up a prison sub-unit exclusively for transwomen inmates. The inmates and their advocates could set the criteria for admission–whether it would be self-determination, psychological diagnosis, hormone treatments or actual ‘bottom’ surgery–thereby determining for themselves the risk of infiltration by a bad actor. Such a facility could even be staffed with counselors specifically trained to address the issues faced by this specific sub-population.
So why is it that the SNP’s only solution is to put women at risk of rape?
Harald @ 2 – ahhh that’s nice to know. Still at it, aren’t I!
Put in this way, it seems clear that part of this push might very well be to give TiMs “affirmation.” Or they might just be being cheap bastards.
I would say it is more a tautology that men are men and women are women, not artificial. By definition, men are men and women are women. Even Humpty Dumpty would understand that.
I live my life “as a woman” every day. I have little choice about it, because no matter what I do, no matter how stereotypically feminine or masculine my activities might be, I am a woman. I do not dress like porn stars or little girls, as many of the TiMs do. I do not pose in sexy poses. I do not make a spectacle of myself, ensuring that everyone looks at me, and then complain because everyone is looking at me. I just live. As a woman. Being a woman in my own way, no matter what that means. No other woman lives as me; I don’t live as any other woman. And NO MAN ANYWHERE LIVES AS A WOMAN BECAUSE THEY ARE A MAN.
Biology 101.