Yes, as predicted, the lovely Isla Bryson, and her penis, have been placed in a women's prison. It's what she would have wanted.
From the Times:
MPs from across the political spectrum have called for a transgender woman convicted of raping two women when she was a man to be moved to a men’s prison or held in a separate trans wing.
Isla Bryson, 31, committed the crimes in Scotland before her gender transition, while called Adam Graham.
It is understood she is being held at a segregation unit at Cornton Vale women’s prison in Stirling while awaiting sentencing. Officials will decide whether she should serve her sentence in a women’s or men’s prison. Separately, the government is considering building new trans-only wings in prisons to protect them, and other prisoners, from attacks.
However, Joanna Cherry, an SNP MP, human rights lawyer and her party’s former justice spokeswoman at Westminster, said Bryson should be moved to a men’s prison and accused Bryson of attempting to exploit the system.
Cherry, who opposes Nicola Sturgeon’s plan to make it easier for people born male to identify as female, told Times Radio: “To many people, it will look like this convicted rapist has gamed the system in order to try and garner sympathy, and to end up in a women’s prison."
Surely not. We were told such a thing could never happen.
Alex Massie in the Spectator:
Bryson does not appear to have a Gender Recognition Certificate of the sort which has proved so controversial in Scotland. In the future, however, there would have been nothing stopping her from acquiring one prior to her conviction. Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reforms will permit such things. Self-identification and an undefined ‘commitment’ to living in a person’s new identity for life is all that will be required. You are who you say you are and it is deeply transphobic to question such assertions.
An amendment to the bill passed last month which would have prevented people charged with rape and other serious sexual offences from changing their gender before trial was rejected by a coalition of SNP, Green and Liberal Democrat MSPs. Had it been accepted, defence counsel would have been unable to mount the kind of case presented during Bryson’s trial.
For Bryson’s advocate argued that, ‘There is no way Isla Bryson could be described as a predatory male’ for ‘If you accept that evidence, that she is transitioning, that she is aiming to continue on that path to becoming female gender, that goes a long way to acquitting her of these charges’. Bryson’s lawyer cannot be blamed for attempting to render a purse out of this sow’s ear but this seems a preposterous defence.
Bryson has reportedly been remanded in custody, pending sentencing, at Cornton Vale. Thus, extraordinarily, a convicted male rapist is now housed at a woman’s prison (albeit in a ‘specialist’ unit there). It may be that a risk assessment concludes Bryson could not safely be incarcerated on the male estate but it seems no assessment has been made of the risk Bryson poses to female inmates if housed at Cornton Vale. As a matter of priorities, this seems telling.
There are not many trans prisoners in Scotland so statistics regarding them should be treated with a measure of caution. Nevertheless, it is well-established that trans women criminals fit a male pattern of offending, not a female one. Since they are biologically male this can only surprise those already stupefied by gender woo-woo. Moreover, some 50 per cent of Scottish inmates only discovered their new gender identity after they were charged by police. Bryson now adds to this number. This seems dubiously convenient to the point of being suspicious and it cannot sensibly be thought ‘transphobic’ to think so. Something is happening here, even if it is considered indecorous to speculate on precisely what is occurring.
Though it might be suggested that relying on the decency of male sexual predators not to game the system may not be the wisest strategy.
No sensible – or sensitive – person would suggest Isla Bryson is a rapist because Isla Bryson has belatedly discovered their true, trans, identity. Once again and for the benefit of slow-learners, Bryson’s maleness is the pertinent issue here.
Notwithstanding that, however, this case poses a dilemma for Sturgeon and her supporters. For them, Bryson’s self-identification as trans must be taken at face value – even if this means accepting that a biological male rapist is in fact no different, in essence, to those born biologically female. This is an objectively ridiculous proposition but it is the kind of unreality in which the First Minister and her allies are determined to believe. Those who live by the mantra of identity politics are consequently condemned by the logic of their own beliefs.
Time and time again, Sturgeon and her allies dismissed concerns about the Scottish government’s legislation. Male predators, we were told, do not require a GRC to target women. As Bryson’s case demonstrates this is plainly true. Yet it requires a touching faith in the decency of such people to assume they will not take advantage of the more liberal provisions and opportunities now open to them. The Scottish government argues its reforms are simultaneously merely an exercise in bureaucratic tidying and a magnificent, even revolutionary, leap forwards. It is not easy to see how both these claims can be true.
Current policy, as demonstrated by this case, is a disaster zone but the Scottish government’s proposals will, if ever implemented, make it significantly worse. Throughout this process Sturgeon has airily dismissed any suggestion there might be a clash between ‘trans rights’ and ‘women’s rights’. The argument has simply been assumed out of existence. The First Minister shuts down discussion with the blunt declaration her critics’ views are ‘not valid’.
But as this case – and its portents for the future – demonstrates, those concerns could scarcely be more pertinent or more valid. Ultimately, this is a disagreement between fantasists and realists and it is deplorable to realise that the majority of Scottish parliamentarians are signed-up members of the fantasy club. Well, they cannot pretend they have not been warned of the likely consequences which flow from their delusions. This is meagre comfort but in mad times such scraps of consolation are all that is available.
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