No, we haven’t. You’re claiming that transwomen must be kept out of women’s prisons to keep women safe. I’m pointing out that putting them in women’s prisons keeps women–specifically, transwomen–safe. The safety is central to the argument.
Well that and wanting to make sure they link rapists and transwomen in people’s minds.
Lots of the oddball prisoners housed in male prisons would indeed be safer if housed in women’s prisons. As you say.
But the other part of that issue is what risks to the existing women in the women’s prisons would be imported into the women’s prisons along with those now-safer inmates formerly housed in the male prison.
Any valid approach to harm reduction would need to look at both. Using statistics, not doctrine, as their guiding principle.
I think @Miller nailed it. This whole topic is yet another RW freakout
with lots of strawmanning.
Just so I’m clear, let me ask you a hypothetical.
Imagine a transwoman in a male prison gets moved to a women’s prison for their own safety. If a male member of one of the groups I mentioned earlier (snitches, ex-cops, effeminate gay men etc…) said “I’m unsafe, too. Why can’t I be moved to the women’s prison?” What would you tell him?
I think you think my answer–“this is a women’s prison”–is a gotcha of some sort. But it ain’t. It’s possible for a person to advocate for gender-segregated prisons for the safety of women, AND for putting transwomen with other women for the safety of women, at the same time.
In order for you to demonstrate that this is foolishness, you need to show that transwomen present more of a threat to ciswomen in prison than other ciswomen present, and that transwomen won’t have their safety threatened by being housed with men (cis and trans) in the men’s prison. And some third factor that I forgot.
That said, if there were a prison system that housed certain male prisoners in the women’s prison genpop as a way to protect their safety, using specific criteria (e.g., that the men were not demonstrated threats to women, and that the men were in heightened risk if they stayed in the men’s prison, and that their presence wouldn’t lead to massive disruptions of some sort), I’d consider it.
I don’t think this way in every situation. Like most women, I DO have a certain low-level fear when I’m in an elevator or stairwell with a guy I don’t know or when a man comes up behind me when I’m walking or hiking alone. I’m tired of having to be so damned aware of my surroundings all the time, an awareness fueled by that low-level fear. And I DO have to be aware. Recently a guy blocked my path and asked if I had a boyfriend, then followed me 4 blocks and stood outside the gates of my complex and watched me.
HOWEVER, it’s important to note I have no idea who’s “biologically male.” I’m wary of anyone bigger than me who presents as male because cisgender men are whom I associate with assault, both from experience and the data. If I were in a women’s prison, I’d probably be wary of guards and inmates, period.
If someone is incapable of distinguishing between a shoplifter and a rapist, their opinions should be automatically discounted as clearly being worthless.
To be concerned about the safety of transwomen, it helps to think of them as the women they are, and not some sort of perverted man that might deserve to be abused because “he” could solve the problem easily just by acting “normal”.
If shoplifters and rapists can have different lengths of sentences(as they usually do), then why insist that they receive the same type of sentence? Judges take personal circumstances into account all the time, so why should this particular factor not be considered?
There’s a certain class of person who always fixates on, “But then someone would have to make a decision!” as being a big problem in dealing with difficult situations, as if we didn’t already employ people to make decisions every day. They’d rather throw their hands up in despair than do the work to find a decent answer.
Wait!
I read to the end of the thread and something was sorta chafing on my mind, so I had to go back and find it.
By that logic, trans-women could be in protective custody in a women’s prison. This would keeping (as you want) cis-women ‘safe’, while at the same letting trans-women be at a facility where the staff - hopefully - has a better understanding about what it means to be a woman in prison.
@ [Qadgop_the_Mercotan
Could you give a small description of what “protective custody” consists of, and how it might affect a person over the long period?
Not sure exactly what you mean, but I’ll describe what happens to inmates deemed ‘vulnerable’. I.e. those who are effeminate or whose behaviors may attract unwanted attention (inadvertently or deliberately seductive or abrasive or just odd), or whose histories make them high risk such as former police officers/prison guards. They generally get assigned to a Special Management Unit (so they end up being called SMUs or ‘smurfs’). Their own housing areas, their own special times at recreation, library, hobby, etc. Restricted work assignments where they’re always under closer observation.
How it might affect one over time varies. Ideally their basic needs are met but their world is shrunk further with less contact with the general inmate community and facilities. Some inmates prefer this sort of limitation, others do not.
I would say that to the first approximation, “creating a [prison] environment in which rapists don’t have the opportunity to assault others” is an impossibility. You might with enormous intrusion on the privacy of every prisoner - including the vulnerable people we’re trying to help who might be harmed by this level of surveillance - get the risk down to “really quite low” but the stake for that bet is not yours to put up.
Since when do prisoners have privacy? AFAIK, they don’t have privacy from their fellow prisoners unless they’re in solitary, and I believe they’re surveilled there.
A lot of inmates in medium and minimum security settings have relatively private bathroom facilities. And inmate culture itself values privacy and generally works towards giving each other some private time and space. It’s privacy that is easily and often breached but the concept and practice exists among the incarcerated.
Should transwomen be allowed in women’s prisons?
I consider “transgendered” to be completely changed over. It’s not just “identifying with”, it’s having hormone treatment, breasts, and a constructed vagina. That person is now a woman and belongs in a women’s prison. “Identifying with”, but still physically the same, belong in their own cell block with their own showers.
Where did you get the impression that this was something you got to define?
That’s why women’s prisons should only have female COs. Statistically, more women in prison are raped by guards than by each other and definitely more than trans women. Put a man in power over women who aren’t allowed to fight back and, well, check the news for the results.
As has been asked, what is wrong with putting transwomen in protective custody in women’s prisons? The prison would still be single sex, right?
I had something to say on this topic- But then I had an hour-long tele therapy appointment and I can’t remember what it was.