Mick Hartley

The horns of the dilemma

To clarify, where Nicola Sturgeon failed:

If trans women are women, as seems to be the belief behind the Scotland Gender Bill and the current policy whereby convicts are imprisoned according to their declared gender rather than their sex, then there's no reason to move convicted rapists like "Isla Byrson" away from a women's prison. He says he's a woman, therefore that's his declared gender, therefore a women's prison is where he should be. However violent and threatening, a woman criminal must still be housed in a women's prison.

But clearly this Isla Bryson shouldn't be housed in a women's prison: he's a convicted rapist. How to get out of this dilemma? It's not possible to deny that trans women are women, because that's the basis of the whole SNP policy, and they're not prepared to give that up. Are there then some trans women who aren't really trans women, but are, as it were, pretend trans women? If you acknowledge this, then you're agreeing with all those feminist campaigners who've been saying all along that the system of self-ID is clearly open to manipulation by unscrupulous sexual offenders - the same feminists who you've been ignoring or insulting as bigots. 

So, which should it be? The horns of the dilemma are clear: either abandon the whole gender TWAW nonsense, or admit that you were wrong about male abusers trying to game the system. Since either option would leave you looking very foolish, Sturgeon and the SNP are left there wriggling...

Clarifications

The struggles of the SNP leader:

Nicola Sturgeon clarifies matters. pic.twitter.com/Y9TqYmCB29

— The State Media (@The_StateMedia) January 30, 2023

Here's a rather more enlightening interview:

"Putting a double rapist into a female prison, I don't know what risk assessments they're doing to have these men in the prison."

Female inmates do not trust Nicola Sturgeon to decide who is sent to female prisons, says ex-Cornton Vale Prison inmate Amanda Benson.#TimesRadio. pic.twitter.com/Rzpj43MUjw

— Times Radio (@TimesRadio) January 30, 2023

Labour, under Starmer’s leadership, has become a hotbed of misogyny

Joan Smith, at UnHerd, puts the final boot in:

The problem isn’t that the party has equivocated on the conflict between women’s rights and the demands of transactivists. It’s that Labour has come down wholeheartedly on the wrong side. I’ve spent the last three years listening to frontbenchers, and Starmer himself, spout complete nonsense about biology. I’ve heard Labour MPs yell “transphobia” at women they disagree with. I’ve heard Labour councillors describe their fear of admitting that they don’t believe in gender ideology. I’ve heard grotesque smears and calls for feminists to be thrown out of the party.

The painful truth is that Labour, under Starmer’s leadership, has become a hotbed of misogyny. A current of nastiness has existed in the party since 2015; and while he has addressed one manifestation, antisemitism, he has allowed another to flourish. If women like me, lifelong Labour supporters, are to trust the party again, it will take more than a change of tone. What we need is a proper, serious apology — and an assurance that woman-hating will no longer be tolerated in a party that used to stand for equality and women’s rights.

 

At the core of it, there is a deep misogyny

Miriam Cates, interviewed by Brendan O'Neill:

My personal view is that you shouldn’t be able to change your sex on your birth certificate at all. Your birth certificate is a historical document that doesn’t really belong to you. It belongs to society. You can’t change your place of birth on your birth certificate, you can’t change who your parents are on your birth certificate. So why should you be able to change your sex?

In some ways, though, that argument has been and gone. We do have the Gender Recognition Act, which is UK-wide, and you can legally change your sex on your birth certificate.

So why don't we change the Gender Recognition Act? It was passed at a time when only a tiny number of people would be affected. It's no longet fit for purpose.

But the problem with Sturgeon’s bill is that it would almost make changing your gender into a momentary decision, all while reducing the age at which people can legally change their gender. How on Earth can a 16-year-old possibly know the long-term consequences of doing that? It makes a mockery of the law, and it makes a mockery of the fact of sex.

If you eradicate that social norm and break down the social contract that says men are not allowed in women’s spaces, then you get into difficulty. You can’t expect shop or restaurant workers to police who goes in the bathroom. Can you imagine a 19-year-old Saturday worker in Primark doing that? What is she supposed to say when a bloke tries to get into the women’s changing rooms? Of course she’s not going to ask to see his birth certificate. Access to changing rooms doesn’t even rely on birth certificates, it relies on our social contract. And Sturgeon’s bill weakens or outright breaks that contract. That’s why predators are going to use that loophole to gain access to women’s spaces. It’s an inevitability....

I have no doubt that many people and politicians who are taking the side of self-ID in this debate are doing it for reasons that they believe are compassionate and kind. But they need to open their eyes and look at the very heart of this debate. At the very heart of trans activism there is a violent agenda.

We need to remember that there is no civilised society in history that hasn’t separated men and women in intimate spaces. And there’s a good reason for that. Unlike in most species, adult males are far more physically powerful than adult females. Generally speaking, the average adult male can kill an average adult female with his bare hands.... But because of that significant strength difference, women and children need strong societal protections from men who would otherwise do them harm. When you break down those social norms, it is women and children who suffer.

Of course, most men do not mean most women and children harm. But in order to make sure that there aren’t more opportunities to do harm, there has to be a strong understanding in society of men’s obligations to women and children to keep them safe. And that’s what trans activists seek to break down. It is hard not to see that, at the core of it, there is a deep misogyny that doesn’t want to allow women and children protection. Activists are using identity politics as a way of breaking down that protection.

There are technical and legal arguments against going down this route, but there are also wider societal implications – it’s a changing of the social contract.

At the moment, or at least until recently, we had an understanding across the whole of society that there are certain areas where men are not allowed to go and where women are not allowed to go – these are single-sex spaces. Toilets, bathrooms, changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards – for those single-sex spaces to work, they have to be policed by the whole of society. You do not have a policeman on the door of every public toilet, or outside every Primark changing room. The concept only works because it’s socially unacceptable for a man to try to enter women’s spaces or vice versa....

The problem with Mermaids and other trans groups is that they’ve hijacked the popularity of the trans movement. They’ve taken advantage of the fact that teachers and people with responsibility over children want to be kind and inclusive. ‘Trans rights’ has been portrayed as the next frontier of social justice. And so people supported the trans movement without thinking critically about why someone would want to tell a child that they’re born in the wrong body. Why would someone want to separate a child from the loving protection of their parents? Why would someone want to tell a child to do something behind their parents’ back or keep a secret? Those are all safeguarding red flags.

Some people have been blinded by the politics of this. People have failed to ask the right questions. The Charity Commission recently launched a statutory inquiry into Mermaids. I wouldn’t want to preempt the outcome of that, but I don’t think enough questions have been asked – not just about Mermaids, but also about other organisations. And all because of the political risks of speaking up.

Cates is the Tory MP who Labour MP Russell Lloyd-Moyle shouted at and attempted to intimidate by crossing the floor and sitting right next to her during the debate on Scotland's Gender Bill last week - nicely demonstrating the point about deep misogyny.

Obsessive abuse

The vilification of JK Rowling continues to amaze. 

Gamers have opened up a new front in the culture wars, calling for a boycott of the new Harry Potter release because of JK Rowling’s stance on trans issues.

Hogwarts Legacy is expected to be one of the blockbuster games of the year when it goes on sale on February 10. However, the lead-up to its release has been marked by a boycott campaign, a ban on discussing the game on a prominent forum, actors facing a backlash and the sacking of an employee.

Warner Bros Games has gone out of its way to make the role-playing game inclusive, with players able to become trans wizards and witches.

Alan Tew, the game’s director, told the IGN website: “We know it’s a diverse audience. For us, it’s making sure that the audience who always dreamt of having this game had the opportunity to feel welcomed back.”

The game’s website states that “JK Rowling is not involved in the creation of the game” but that her team collaborated in its making.

For Rowling’s critics this is not enough, and prominent voices in the transgender community have urged people not to buy the game.

Jessie Earl, 30, a trans YouTuber and journalist who has 200,000 subscribers, provoked Rowling when she tweeted that “any support of something like Hogwarts Legacy is harmful”....

Will Overgard, a US gamer who works in the industry, urged a complete boycott. In a video that has been viewed two million times, he argued that “by supporting the title you are essentially aligning yourself with some really heinous transphobic values”.

No examples provided, of course. Rowling has never said anything transphobic beyond insisting that sex is real, but calling out her "really heinous transphobic values" is an article of faith now, to be repeated as a sign of adherence to the cult. The witch-hunt is unstoppable.

When the voiceover cast was announced, the British actor Sebastian Croft, who features in the LGBT Netflix series Heartstopper, was forced to clarify his involvement after a backlash.

“I was cast in this project over three years ago, back when all Harry Potter was to me was the magical world I grew up with,” he said. “This was long before I was aware of JK Rowling’s views. I believe wholeheartedly that trans women are women and trans men are men.”

Ooh isn't he brave? Yes yes, 2 + 2 = 5, please don't be nasty to me!

A man would never get this kind of continuing obsessive abuse .

Misogyny runs deep in the Labour Party

Caroline Wheeler in today's Sunday Times  on Labour's continuing cowardice over women's rights:

So charged is the debate that not one of the dozen Labour MPs I have spoken to this week would go on the record to express their concerns about the party’s equivocal position on the trans and gender issue — not even Harriet Harman, the architect of the Equality Act, which outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation.

All said the issue was “toxic” and that wading into the debate always opened up a “world of pain.” They are also concerned about exposing divisions within Labour amid fears it could hurt the party at the next election. One moderate Labour MP told me that whenever she talked about the need for safe spaces for women, she got online abuse and was told she was an extremist.

Baroness Hayter said it was easier for Labour peers to speak out because they do not have a constituency party to answer to. She said Labour MPs were often worried about the abuse they and, particularly, their staff, would be subjected to.

“I’m afraid I see this as being a bit like antisemitism when it was first called out in the party and people were saying it was all being exaggerated and overblown and with this issue it is the same thing,” she said. “They are trying to squash us and stop us from raising it. Jewish groups were told to be quiet about antisemitism and now women are being told to shut up too. But this is misogyny. This is men telling women to get back in their box.”

Another peer said: “The treatment of Rosie and Miriam has actually attracted a lot more people to our side of the argument because they have finally seen the bullying and misogynistic behaviour for what it is. This is women being aggressively silenced by men, so it has been very graphic. Combine that with the issues around Scotland and self-identification and you start to see the reality of the threat to sex-based rights very visually.”

They added: “Sadly, misogyny runs deep in the Labour Party, and that has only got worse after members of Momentum morphed into trans activists but are still, in some cases, occupying key positions within the constituency party, which makes some MPs too frightened to speak out.”

And that, I imagine, is why Starmer is never going to make a principled stand on this issue. Unfortunately for him, though, this isn't going to go away.

Living the dream

In Finland, where a middle-aged man who's decided he's really a woman is given the special privilege - because, you know, hey, trans inclusion! - of starring as a lovely snow princess in the opening ceremony of the 2023 European Figure Skating Championships:

Taitoluistelun EM-avajaiset, mitä ihmettä 😳

Piti varmistaa Areenasta, kyllä se aito video on.#Espoo2023 pic.twitter.com/lhlFNnhXGr

— Make Kulmahuoneesta (@kulmahuoneesta) January 26, 2023

George's Place revisited

Walker Evans, February 1936. "Roadside fruit. Ponchatoula, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana."

[Photo: Shorpy/Walker Evans for the Resettlement Administration]

George's Place previously.

An unmanageable risk to public safety

Shay Woulahan at Reduxx has been doing some digging into the disturbing history of Andrew Burns, the latest violent criminal all set for a women's prison (previous post):

One of the most dangerous inmates in Scotland has been approved for transfer from the male prison estate to a female correctional facility Scotland.

Tiffany Scott, 31, born Andrew Burns, is one of only around 100 offenders in Scotland subject to an Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR). The order means that, regardless of his sentence length, he will only be released when he is no longer considered an “unmanageable risk to public safety.”

Burns was initially sentenced for multiple convictions of assaults, vandalism, and resisting arrests. In 2010, he assaulted a nurse in a hospital in Crewe, Cheshire while he was still known under his male name. He began identifying as transgender and changed his name to Tiffany Scott sometime in 2016.

In 2013, while still in custody, Burns began stalking a 13 year old girl from his prison cell. He began writing her disturbing letters from Polmont Prison, near Falkirk. He was sentenced to an additional 14 months for the crime.

Between August and October 2015, Burns asked prison staff to refer to him as “Mighty Almighty,” or “Obi Wan Kenobi.” Prison staff complied with his requests that he should be known within the jail as “Mr. Mighty Almighty,” and referred to him as such.

A very accommodating bunch, the prison staff in Scotland.

During this time in a segregation unit in Clackmannanshire’s top-security Glenochil Prison, Burns smeared excrement over his cell, tore a drip needle out of his own arm, and ripped up clothing that was supposedly tear-proof.

“It’s supposed to be untearable, but Tiffany could rip it up no problem,” stated Prison Officer Paul Locke at the time.

He also assaulted four wardens and a prison nurse during a “dirty protest” at Glenochil Prison, Clackmannanshire, and assaulted a jail nurse by striking her on the back with a chair. During his violent tirade, Burns went on to assault another officer, Kenneth Hilton, by punching him in the face as Hilton sat at a desk doing paperwork. Burns also assaulted multiple other officers.

In 2017, Burns was put on trial for the incidents that occurred while he was in prison, but the case was initially dropped as he was considered “too dangerous for the dock.” It was later re-tried after outrage from prison union officials.

He was put on trial again later on that year, and during the hearing the public was not allowed to attend as Burns was known to “to bite open his own veins and spray blood at people.”

During his sentencing hearing for the 2015 rampage, Burns displayed violent outbursts whenever he was referred to as “he” rather than “she.”

Burns verbally abused the judge during sentencing, calling him a “fucking transphobe bastard” and “cunt” as he was handed an additional year on five charges of assault and one of criminal damage. As he was led away following his sentencing, he attempted to attack one of the officers.

Burns has made multiple failed attempts to be transferred to a female prison over the years.

According to the Daily Record, Burns’ latest attempt was approved during the height of the ongoing debate in Scotland over reforms to the gender recognition act.

Too dangerous for the dock, attacks women, and an unmanageable risk to public safety. So it's a women's prison for him, then. No problem.

Burns is the fourth violent male inmate in Scotland making headlines for identifying as transgender in less than two weeks. In addition to “Isla Brynton,” on January 15, a serial rapist who targeted women in changing rooms and restrooms had reportedly begun identifying as transgender and seeking transfer to a women’s prison. Jonathon Mallon, 40, was sentenced to life in prison in 2014 on a slew of rape charges. He has now begun referring to himself as “Charlene” and has allegedly been “bragging” that he will be in a women’s prison by the spring.

Days later, it was revealed that an incarcerated sex offender who abducted and raped his care worker had begun claiming to identify as a “woman,” and demanding cosmetics and a transfer to a women’s institution.

Albert Caballero, 50, is currently detained at Edinburgh Saughton Prison, where he has served half of his sentence and is eligible to apply for parole. But Caballero is reportedly now boasting to fellow inmates that he will be transferred to a women’s prison prior to his release after abruptly claiming a transgender identity. Now calling himself “Claire,” Caballero has been demanding red lipstick from the prison.

Could there possibly be a pattern here?

One of Scotland’s most violent prisoners

Yet still it continues.

Nicola Sturgeon faces another trans storm after a decision was made to house one of Scotland’s most violent prisoners in a women’s jail. The Record can reveal that volatile Tiffany Scott - who stalked a 13-year-old girl while known as Andrew Burns - has been rubber-stamped for transfer to a jail that aligns with her chosen gender.

Scott, 31, has been repeatedly refused the switch over several years but senior management relented in recent weeks. It is understood that the transfer is still planned - despite the First Minister instructing a U-turn on a decision to house double rapist Isla Bryson at all-women jail Cornton Vale, Stirling, on Thursday.

Last night the Scottish Government faced calls to make another embarrassing U-turn on Scott. A source said: “Of all the female trans prisoners in the estate, Scott has been considered the most dangerous."

They added: "Isla Bryson’s rape convictions took public perception of the risks to a new level. Cornton Vale staff were bracing themselves for Scott and then the Bryson case showed how ill equipped the SPS is to deal with the most extreme trans prisoners.

“As it stands, Scott will be admitted to a women’s jail - probably the New HMP Stirling later this year - and held in segregation. This will very possibly lead to full integration with the main prison community.

“This highly disturbed prisoner has attacked female staff during time in prison, has admitted stalking a young girl and has been one of the most menacing people inside Scottish jails. It’s madness to send her to a women’s jail - there needs to be a better solution than this.”

A reductio ad absurdum of the idea that a man is a woman

Janice Turner in the Times - Feminists have long warned of the dangers of male-bodied rapists in women’s jails and Scotland proves them right:

Mark it in your diary: the bicentenary of the Gaols Act 1823. The work of the social reformer Elizabeth Fry, this landmark law mandated sex-segregated prisons with female inmates guarded by female wardens. When women were incarcerated among men, Fry observed, they were exploited, terrified and raped. She established a principle which became enshrined in international law, from UN protocols to the Geneva conventions. How, then, was history rewound, 200 years of evidence memory-holed, so that this week the double rapist Adam Graham was remanded in Cornton Vale women’s prison? How could a “robust” risk assessment by the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) conclude he was safe?

Exposed under the stark lights of the Scottish parliament was a decade of prison policy made covertly with zero regard for women. We learnt that a rapist could “transition” (in this case, merely wear a blonde wig) after being charged, call himself “Isla Bryson”, have his lawyer argue he’s a “vulnerable woman”, compel his female victims to call him “she” and journalists to write about “her penis”, then be locked up with vulnerable women like those he raped. Adam Graham is the reductio ad absurdum of the idea that a man is a woman solely on his say-so.

Nicola Sturgeon has always dismissed feminist concerns about gender identity overwriting biological sex as “not valid”. But after a public outcry she was forced to send Graham to a men’s prison. The first minister has also argued that predatory men would never exploit the self-ID law she rammed through last month. In fact, Graham showed they don’t need to. Already in Scottish women’s jails are Katie Dolatowski, a male paedophile, and Sophie Eastwood (formerly Daniel), who strangled a cellmate with shoelaces. Scotland dispensed with Elizabeth Fry’s first principle years ago.

Indeed, trans activists strategically targeted prison policy. James Morton, head of the Scottish Trans Alliance, formulated the SPS’s rules. By enabling the service “to include trans women as women on a self-declaration basis within very challenging circumstances”, he wrote, “we would be able to ensure all other public services do likewise”. In other words, if horrible things happen to female prisoners, no one will find out (or even care), so we can “prove” to the NHS or schools that self-ID is risk-free.

In England and Wales, a 2015 government review of trans prisoner management consulted the trans lobby group Gendered Intelligence. Neither here nor in Scotland was evidence taken from female inmates, charities such as Women in Prison or female warders who’d have to search much stronger, male-bodied prisoners. Nor was thought given to privacy in sleeping arrangements or showers. (In a 2021 judicial review, the High Court noted women “suffer fear and acute anxiety” sharing space with fully intact male prisoners.)

Female inmates, who make up just 4 per cent of the prison population, are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. They’re inside for shoplifting, drug offences or unpaid fines yet 80 per cent have experienced sexual or physical abuse from men. Most serve short sentences which pointlessly devastate families, putting children in care. Those most alarmed by women being housed with male-bodied offenders are campaigners against incarceration such as Frances Crook, former head of the Howard League for Penal Reform.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, who has long swerved gender questions, ventured this week that women prisoners are protected under the single-sex exemptions of the Equality Act. But she’s mistaken: these don’t, unbelievably, apply to prisons. In 2015, when rules were relaxed to allow genitally intact and legally male felons into women’s prisons, Dr James Barrett, president of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists, warned parliament’s women and equalities committee this was ripe for exploitation. He described “a tide of referrals of patients in prison serving long or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences”. He said the reasons were obvious: women’s prisons are nicer, inmates believe a female persona would play well with parole boards, but mainly there was “a plethora of prison intelligence” that the driving force “was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier”. The chairwoman, Maria Miller, ignored him.

After Karen White, a convicted male sex offender, assaulted two women in New Hall prison in 2018, rules were tightened. And this week Dominic Raab, the justice secretary, said in future no one with male genitals or who has committed a sex offence will be housed in a women’s jail. Whether this will include trans women holding gender recognition certificates (GRC), which mean they are assessed as female, is unclear.

An easy political win for the Tories. But women and trans people deserve prison policy which respects their dignity and human rights. Currently a trans woman in the female estate may sometimes socialise only under extreme supervision, while a trans woman with a GRC in a men’s prison is legally female, so cannot freely use facilities. Both cases mean isolation and exclusion. One proposed solution, given the rising number of trans prisoners — 230 (160 trans women) in 2022, up from 197 a year earlier — is a specialist trans facility. This might mean trans prisoners housed a great distance from home and family. A better plan may be to improve vulnerable-prisoner units in the male estate. Trans women are at risk among men but so are gay, “effeminate”, physically small and very young prisoners. All would be safer in women’s prisons. But why should vulnerable female inmates be used as human shields?

Because that's the way it's always been done. But, thanks to the furore caused by this particular case, the whole charade of allowing men to become women by waving a piece of paper is beginning to be exposed as the absurdity it is. Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are revealed as either idiots taken in by gender ideology or chancers trying to prove their progressive credentials in opposition to Westminster - or, possibly, both.

Sandwich Shop

Walker Evans, January 1936. "New Orleans sandwich shop. Orleans Parish, Louisiana."

[Photo: Shorpy;Walker Evans for the U.S. Resettlement Administration]

A Scottish paradox

If a man says he's a woman, then, in Scotland, he is a woman - except, apparently, for rapist Adam Graham, aka Isla Bryson.

Brendan O'Neill:

Surely the broader problem here is the idea that ‘trans women are women’? That any man who says he is a woman is a woman? If you accept this idea, then you have to accept it for Bryson too, right? This is what I would like to ask Sturgeon: Do you think Bryson is a woman? Do you think his self-identification as female makes him female? If you do, why haven’t you put him in a women’s prison? And if you don’t, will you finally admit that JK Rowling and the many other critics of self-ID have a point when they say men are not women? 

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day

"One by one we had to pass Dr. Mengele. He motioned to someone to take me away. At that point I knew, that I was selected to go to the gas chambers."

Join the #WeRemember Campaign to remind the world of what can happen when hatred is allowed to thrive unchecked. pic.twitter.com/iy9DwDN61B

— World Jewish Congress (@WorldJewishCong) January 26, 2023

Following his TikTok

An alarming headline at Reduxx - Trans-Identified Male Teacher Removed From Middle School After Encouraging 6th Graders to Follow His TikTok.

Hmm...

Oh I see, TikTok, of course, the video-sharing platform. 

A trans-identified male substitute teacher was banned from King Middle School in Portland, Maine after he shared his highly sexualized TikTok account intentionally with students. 

Lydia Lamere, also known as Chris Lamere, wrote his TikTok handle on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom and encouraged students to “check it out,” according to one student. 

King Middle School students took to visiting Lamere’s social media at his invitation and began to circulate his suggestive, highly sexual videos in group chats...