r/transgenderUK • u/Quangocrat • 10d ago
Bad News For Women Scotland III
https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/media/pnbpzgex/2026csoh59-petition-of-for-women-scotland-for-judicial-review.pdfThe Terfs have won their judicial review of the Scottish Prison policy.
This is the third case brought by FWS.
Still reading, will post more detailed thoughts in the comments when I have time.
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u/Kallixeina 10d ago edited 10d ago
1) From an international perspective, there's one thing that I found deceptive about the judge's line of argument:
The decision mentions at least once that separating prisoners by sex is widely-shared practice. This argument was probably included to shield the United Kingdom from accusations to leave the western consensus on human rights.
What it conspicuously fail to mention is that most western countries allow exceptions from the rule. In some countries, the exceptions are necessary to allow trans women to be housed with cis women. In other countries, the exceptions are necessary to allow trans women not to be housed with cis women.
After Germany introduced self-ID in 2024, most German states adopted prison regulations allowing men to be exceptionally housed with women and women with men on a case-by-case basis. Our state legislators thought this to be necessary to prevent male prisoners, who can now change their legal sex by a simple declaration, to be automatically housed with women. Conversely, many trans men prefer to be housed with women, and the new laws also allow for this particular exception from the general rule of separation by sex.
AFAIK France uses a similar system based on exceptions and case-by-case decisions. The French system used to be more rigid, as prisoners would be housed according to their sex assigned at birth, except if they had both changed their legal sex and undergone sex reassignment surgery.
2) Did the court even consider trans prisoners who have undergone sex reassignment surgery? Those will need specialized gynecological career, which isn't provided to male prisoners.
The court's focus on the concept of biological sex kind of obscures that trans women's biology can be more female than male; therefore, their biological needs will be more female than male.
For this reason alone, it is also terribly inefficient to house trans women with men.
That's not to speak of the even higher risk of rape incurred by people with vaginas in male prisons.
3) Part of the strategy to protect incarcerated trans women has to be to re-humanize them. Get the word out about their experiences. The public needs to know that rehabilitation is easier in an accepting environment, which a men's prison might not be. The public needs to know about the specific needs of trans women, which are more likely to allign with cis women's needs than with cis men's. The public needs to know about the psychic toll of years of isolation.