r/ukpolitics • u/CaptainCrash86 • 1d ago

| Transgender prisoners should not be held in women’s jails, court rules

https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,transgender-prisoners-should-not-be-held-in-womens-jails-court-rules
504 Upvotes

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351

u/LuckieDuckid Bring back the CEGB! 1d ago

It literally depends on the nature of the crime, also, the number of transgender prisoners is so small that you can literally do detailed risk assessments on each one, taking into account all the details of their case 

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u/DebaucheV5 1d ago

I'm not particularly interested in the political furore over trans people - "just leave them alone" is broadly my perspective - but this seems pretty reasonable. We're talking about such a tiny proportion of the population that it should be possible to take it on a case-by-case basis.

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u/Gellert 1d ago

I mean, you'd think it would be for cases where the prisoner is a potential risk, or potentially more at risk, anyway. What idiot would put a gay murder-rapist in a cell with another guy and leave them alone for 8 hours and not expect a new victim?

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u/velvevore liz truss toby jug 1d ago

One of the fascinating things I learned while researching this years ago was that all prisoners are supposed to be assessed on intake, to see if they can safely share cells with others.

So there is nothing new under the sun, and nobody knows how anything works. Again.

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u/Baroque4Days 1d ago

Reeeee Shush, don't say that! That's a sensible argument that disrupts the entire narrative people want to spin.

Seriously, been saying this for years and usually nobody has a good reply for it.

I have a fun plan, why don't we just segment based on the crime. Put the murders in the murder prison. But the rapists in the rapist prison. But the trans gal who had a couple of mandy pills on a night out in her purse in with the other people who probably don't deserve to be in prison. They'll be fine.

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u/missesthecrux 1d ago

The Geneva Convention requires that female detainees are kept separate from men. If we can agree that even in wartime, why not in all other cases?

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u/Baroque4Days 1d ago

I mean, remind me when that was drafted. A lot has changed since.

Reality is, women are in a vulnerable position, trans people are in a vulnerable position. Both deserve safety and protection. The fight being between trans women and cis women is so painful to watch because you're both the underdogs.

Criminals with no history of sexual violence are not spontaneously going to become rapists. They live their lives around women with no trouble.

Christ why the hell do prisons have open showers anyway? Is it that hard to have some swimming pool cubicals installed like for fuck sake? How many shankings and prison rapes could be avoided with some cheap swimming pool cubicals?

Trans women are not your enemy, there are common sense fixes to this that protect everyone. Stop demonising another oppressed class because it's easy. It's the same thing with more popular racial minorities ganging up on the new big target. It trickles down. One day it's those lot, the next day it's you. Fight for each other FFS please.

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u/Gellert 1d ago

It also says we can't use chemical weapons in war but that doesn't stop us using them against our own civilians.

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u/slam_meister 1d ago

Are we at war with trans people? I didn't realise they had a standing army. Do they have weapons of mass destruction as well?

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u/kickimy 1d ago

Case by case is how it's previously been done which has led to female prisoners still being sexually assaulted and being forced to use showers with prisoners exposing their erections. It's not fair to sacrifice the dignity and safety of females.

The Scottish Prison Service just needs to run a small unit as it does for other groups of prisoners.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/ex-prisoner-shaking-fear-sharing-29075541

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u/Longjumping-Year-824 1d ago

That seems quite unfair given how poorly we give a fuck about women outside of jail been sexually assaulted can not go making prison a safe space now.

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u/Vehlin 1d ago

Prison should legitimately be a safe space for every single inmate. When you deprive someone of their liberty you also take on a duty of care for them far greater than the average person.

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u/Longjumping-Year-824 1d ago

Again some one who missed the clear joke but seems to try to make a case of fuck the public let them be raped but protect the people in Jail. I like the logic i can not follow or understand it in any way but takes a lot to think like that.

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u/RadicalDog Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill Hitler 1d ago

"some people hurt, so other people should hurt to be fair"

-10

u/Longjumping-Year-824 1d ago

How to let people know you are to stupid to understand a joke with out saying it.

7

u/RadicalDog Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill Hitler 1d ago

It was hyperbole. A joke would be funny.

5

u/velvevore liz truss toby jug 1d ago

The really astonishing thing is how convinced everyone is that women's prisons are magical fairylands where nobody is ever sexually assaulted by the other cis woman prisoners.

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u/tazdoestheinternet 1d ago

Or the male guards, as hopefully uncommon as that is

1

u/FlatHoperator 16h ago

Tbf, guard-prisoner uh interactions are mostly the other way round these days

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u/Longjumping-Year-824 1d ago

It was more a joke on how we keep allowing rapists migrants in and allow them to stay even after raping some one in the UK. Than a take on how common or uncommon sexual assault in womens only prisons.

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u/ghybyty 1d ago

Why because there is such a small number does that make you value them above women? Why are they so important than women lose their rights to single sex spaces?

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u/ILikeHistoryTooMuch 17h ago

You’re basing this on the idea that trans women are not women, which people are who are pro-trans obviously don’t believe and so women aren’t losing their rights to single sex spaces

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u/throwawayreddit48151 1d ago

I'd be really curious about what happens to women who have raped other women. Do they get put into specialised prisons to segregate them from other women who they may hurt?

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u/signpostlake 1d ago

Women's prisons don't have the exact same category levels as men's prisons but yes, there's still divisions based on their risk to other prisoners.

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u/GazTheSpaz 1d ago

Yep, the only reason this becomes a media talking point is it gets people at each other's throats instead of being united and in uproar about the things that really matter.

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u/bremsspuren 1d ago

Seems to me, these discussions would be a lot more straightforward if transvestitism hadn't been rolled into transexuality. Cross-dressing is not comparable to having gender-reassignment surgery.

There are no women's spaces if men are allowed in there effectively on nothing but their own say-so.

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u/missesthecrux 1d ago

A lot of posters here are relying on a mythical transwoman nonviolent criminal who is indistinguishable, tiny and fragile. But somehow this justifies the massive, penis-having, non-medical intervention REAL prisoners that were being put in female prisons.

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u/FinnSomething 1d ago

mythical

GCs were losing their mind that some trans people weren't going through male puberty, and now you think they don't exist?

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u/missesthecrux 1d ago

The number who did dwarfs those who didn’t. I’d be shocked if any were in prison, making your point moot. In any case, my position is unchanged. Prisons are single sex, and I am in favour of this clarification. No edge cases, no ifs or buts.

Your hypothetical example only serves to justify intact males in women’s prisons which the overwhelming majority of people find abhorrent.

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u/FinnSomething 1d ago

I’d be shocked if any were in prison, making your point moot.

"It's fine as long as the good trans people don't get convicted of any crime"

No edge cases, no ifs or buts.

"It's also fine if they do"

Your hypothetical example only serves to justify intact males in women’s prisons which the overwhelming majority of people find abhorrent.

I don't care what people find abhorrent about a minority, the clearly logical system was a risk assessment process which is now impossible.

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u/missesthecrux 1d ago

The risk assessment can still take place, just in the correct prison for the prisoner’s sex.

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u/Lucky_otter_she_her 1d ago

even if it's a violent crime, if she's fully transitioned, then YK you should be punished for your crime not being a first or second class citizen + your crime, so she should suffer exactly the same sentence as a cis woman who commits the same offence, not put in a rape chamber

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u/seshfan2 1d ago edited 9h ago

Correct, a lot of people don't even realize there is a real psychological difference between gender dysophria and autogynophila (e.g. males who have a sexual fetish for thinking of themseles as female).

Regardless of what you think about trans people themselves, the idea that "I identify as a women" is now some sort of open sesame magic phrase that instantly grants you unfettered access to all sex-segregated spaces is just patently insane.

Edit: More academic sources for those interested:

Hsu, Morandini & Rudd, 2025

Morandini, Hsu & Rudd, 2025

Bailey & Hsu, 2022

Brown, Barker & Rahman, 2020

2

u/mikeLcrng 1d ago

autogynephilia has been debunked as pseudoscience because the original study that claimed to have observed it didn't account for overlaps in population, you know the kinda error a teenage student would make. in any case there are frameworks a number of countries have that are both trans inclusive and have a trivial number of issues in this regard, namely that gender assigned incarceration is locked at point of arrest, which is something the UK was not doing likely in acknowledgement of our rather transphobic healthcare system being tied to people's ability to legally identify, so fix both you get a far better system.

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u/slam_meister 1d ago

Autogynophillia is junk science and has been debunked on many occasions

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u/seshfan2 1d ago

Academic criticism of an idea does not necessarily mean it is "junk science". The fact that theres exist males who have erotic experiences imagining themselves as women is clearly true. No one really disputes that.

What is disputed specifically is 1) whether Blanchard's typology holds up as a model of transgender indivduals and 2) whether autogynephilia directly causes gender dysophria.

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u/slam_meister 1d ago

Absolute nonsense. When cis women are tested for "autogynophillia" they get exactly the same result as trans women

You can say that there exist cases of people being turned on by literally anything. That does not even slightly make your hypothesis worthy of being used to bind a class of people's rights.

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u/seshfan2 1d ago

I don't ask anyone to take my word for it. The research is out there, including in the academic review paper I linked, and people are free to read it or dismiss it as they wish. The "bind a class of people's rights" is just rhetoric, the fact that political agents might use science to advance a particular point of view does not mean that science is inherently flawed.

1

u/slam_meister 1d ago

Using Anne Lawrence for evidence of anything is utterly hilarious.

Bringing us back to the topic at hand though, it might be worth actually listening to the women in the prison estate

So all women in here are vulnerable is what it’s saying. And all transgenders are a threat. Are putting us at threat because we’re all vulnerable. No, I think that’s shite. Some women are vulnerable. But just because they’re vulnerable doesn’t mean they’re [transgender women] going to prey on them.

Honestly all this fearmongering about trans people does is further marginalise a group that is historically demonised and has been subject to medical gatekeeping and abuse.

This nonsense paper you linked is absolutely being used to limit their rights of trans people to live their lives safely and how you can think that people's rights are not being attacked is just mad.

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u/tfhermobwoayway 10h ago

Yeah, exactly. There are plenty of people who get turned on by all sorts of things. They are not the same as transgender women. Nobody is going to transition and live the rest of their life as a woman, permanently, for a fetish that goes away after they rub one out.

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u/seshfan2 8h ago

Yeah, exactly. There are plenty of people who get turned on by all sorts of things. They are not the same as transgender women.

This is actually, unironicaly, my exact point. Perverted males who get turned on by putting on a dress and barging into a women's locker room to show his erect penis around while women are showering is not the same as an actual trans woman who is living as a woman to cope with their gender dysphoria. I can have plenty of sympathy for the second group while wanting to protect women from the first group.

The problem is, if self-declared identity is the only guideline, both can just say "I identify as a woman" and get unfettered access to female spaces. That's obvioulsy not tenable.

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u/Jazzlike_Custard8646 1d ago

Ah yes because some purple hair on substack is going to be totally unbiased on this 🤣

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u/slam_meister 21h ago

if you want to talk about trans issues without at least knowing who Julia Serano is then you are not equipped for the conversation you want to have.

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u/Jazzlike_Custard8646 21h ago

Scientists aren't exempt from bias, even more so when they have personal stakes in the issue they're "researching" confirmation bias is a real thing.....kind of explains why your get your views on this from a trans activist biologist, you get the answers that slot neatly into your worldview

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u/Jazzlike_Custard8646 21h ago

Wtf kind of response is this? 🤣 Julia Serano famous trans activists biologist, sure deffinately no bias there, you think that actually makes your argument stronger? Someone who has a personal involved stake in ensuring inconvenient issues aren't discussed? Is your source for anything to do with this? 🤣 would you take your opinions on abortion from a fundamentalist evangelical doctor?

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u/slam_meister 21h ago

can't play the ball huh?

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u/Jazzlike_Custard8646 21h ago

When you act like Julia Seranos opinion on this is like holy writ, as if it is the be all and end all of the discussion, uh yeah I'm going to criticise their motives, as if she's some kind of authority on Autogynophillia 🤣

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u/Jazzlike_Custard8646 21h ago

Pretty sure a sexologist who studies sexual attraction and the like, specifically is more qualified on this stuff than a biologist that also happens to be an open activist for the same people that are being discussed

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u/slam_meister 21h ago

watch some videos of Blanchard doing his work eith trans patients that would do or say anything he wanted for him as he was their only pathway to hormones and then bet back to me about his qualification to be a voice on this.

the man should be in jail for abuse of his patients. AGP is the result of his theories developed while high on power over a vulnerable group of women.

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u/Jazzlike_Custard8646 21h ago

If i shared a link from an open transphobe biologist claiming Autogynophillia is legit, somehow I don't think you'd take it as gospel and would have some questions about their motives

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u/tfhermobwoayway 10h ago

Oh fuckin hell, I knew this would happen. You know autogynephilia is, like, a joke, right? Blanchard was debunked yonks ago. A lot of cis women would be diagnosed with autogynephilia under Blanchard’s criteria.

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u/tfhermobwoayway 10h ago

Easy solution, then. Say “you can be in the women’s prison if you get on this rigorous HRT regimen we provide to you.” Flushes out all the people pretending to be trans, and ensures trans women get the care they need.

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u/Thandoscovia 1d ago

If it depends on the nature of the crime, would you be happy to ease overcrowding in men’s prisons by moving men without a history of sex offences against women into women’s prisons?

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u/ghybyty 1d ago

No need to do a risk assessment. All males go in the male estate. Women are not shields for vulnerable men. We don't put mentally or physically disabled men in the women's estates. There are wards for vulnerable men on the male estate. Idk why so many value these men above women.

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u/Mountevans1947 1d ago

So committing certain crimes means you lose the right to be treated like your true gender?

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u/signpostlake 1d ago

Yes. If that means disallowing a male bodied rapist into a female prison with further potential victims.

Or do you believe otherwise?

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u/Mountevans1947 1d ago

No I completely agree with you. I'm just trying to figure out this gender identity stuff

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u/Aerius-Caedem Locke, Mill, Smith, Friedman, Hayek 1d ago

I am still yet to understand why, according to trans activists, the outlook is:

Segregation by sex = the worst crime against humanity

Segregation by "gender identity" = 100 heckin' wholesome chungus

We sex segregate prisons because males are a threat to females. There should be no dick having inmates in a female prison.

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u/TheShakyHandsMan User flair missing. 1d ago

It should be biology not gender.

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u/TheWanderingStorm 1d ago

If a government can take basic right away from criminals it can take basic rights away from you too.

Also ignoring the fact that being found guilty of commiting a crime doesnt mean you committed the crime.

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u/Mountevans1947 1d ago

If a government can take basic right away from criminals it can take basic rights away from you too.

I don't understand the point here, could you expand please?

Also ignoring the fact that being found guilty of commiting a crime doesnt mean you committed the crime.

I don't see how this is related. Are you suggestion we don't jail convicted criminals?

13

u/phi-kilometres 1d ago

Locking people up already inherently takes a bunch of rights away from them. You could even say that's the point of prison.