Wouldn't it make more sense to test for what you are looking for. — Ludwig V

Policy wise I don't think so. Voting exams are bad news.

But what shall we say when the 14 year olds start complaining? — Ludwig V

Let them vote too? The exact age threshold is pretty arbitrary. Someone who's 14 is not expected to analyse literature, write a discursive essay, or read and interpret a graph though. 15-16 seems about right to me for a threshold standard.

I'm not saying that you ought to be able to do these things to vote - most adults can't or won't when forming their opinions -, I'm saying that these things are benchmarks of development. It being justified to expect someone to have ability to do these things makes it a suitable threshold, whether they actually can or do on an individual basis is a different issue.

Let 'em vote. Adults are no more politically savvy than mid to late teenagers. 13 year olds can do well at debate club. Most adults can't.

If you want to make sure a person is fully biologically mature before they do any of these Big Stakes Decisions {tm}, you're waiting until they're 25 and their brain development stops. That's 25 before they can vote, join the military, imbibe substances etc. It's fully consistent to prohibit people doing these things until they reach those ages, but you end up postponing participation in society until... the person's capacity for neuroplasticity has gone down. That's a recipe for social disengagement and long term ills, we need to adapt to those responsibilities and the stakes in society they grant.

In the case that you end up allowing some participations prior to full maturation, that opens the door for case by case reasoning. Is there any compelling reason to believe a 16 year old is insufficiently intellectually developed to vote when they're sufficiently intellectually developed to do complex jobs, analyse literature, read a graph... I doubt it. Let them vote it'll be good for them.

If you and another poster have some common interest or background which isn't shared with the majority of people, PMs are preferable in lots of ways. I miss @Isaac for this, we talked a lot.

Insert caveats about shared perspectives, bias and reasoning here.

There is no fucking risk. — AmadeusD

I can't be bothered talking about it any more for now. It was a fun chat.

Interesting thread. Which type of memory? Stuff you're conscious off, or the lowkey psychomotor stuff that comes along with skills and routines. I'll assume the first.

What occurs, when an alleged memory comes to mind, that allows me to identify it as an alleged memory? — J

It's a bit of a trite answer, but that it seems in the past. Not that the seeming is distinct from the memory, more that past-ness is a property of having a given memory. Be that recalling a fact {"I remembered that..."} or an experience {"Remember that time in school..."}.

I have lots of visual impressions when I remember things, and lots of visual impression when I visualise or imagine. The visual impressions associated with the memories tend to be less detail rich - blurrier - than my visualisations or imaginings. Moreover, a visual memory of someone's face is far less detail rich than their face when I see it. If I imagine someone's I know well's face, the gestalt in the mental image I get is much more focussed on the locus of my attention than it would be in person - if I am trying to remember what their nose looks like, the visual impressions associated with the memory congregate around their nose and the other details blur.

So something like the resolution of the sensory aspects of the memory being lower than a corresponding perception or visualisation, along with creation of "pastness" in it. I imagine "pastness" comes along with what makes a memory autobiographical? Whatever process gets called in that flavour of recall is going to mark something as "past", even if it's flagged a representation as such wrongly.

If you can find any data about the risk factors of kaiju committing domestic abuse, let me know.

These facts are not consistent with a narrative where it's unclear who "started it." — frank

Why?

The evidence in the article I cited shows that men usually start it. — frank

I don't believe that's what it says. It says:

Thus, many domestically violent women—especially those who are involved with the criminal justice system—are not the sole perpetrators of violence. The victimization they have experienced from their male partners is an important contextual factor in understanding their motivations for violence. Some women who have been adjudicated for a domestic violence offense are, in fact, battered women who fought back (Kernsmith, 2005; Miller, 2005). They may well be at the same level of risk of serious injury or death as battered women who are seeking shelter. Service providers working with domestically violent women may need to develop safety plans similar to those they would develop for battered women.

IE that IPV is usually reciprocal. Having experienced it does not mean "he starts it", nor does it mean whenever "she does it", that it's defense.

And thus presents a risk. — AmadeusD

Perceived risk isn't real risk.

You skipped to this didn't you? Have a look at relative harms, in that analysis. Hehe. It is utterly preposterous to pretend males and females are on similar footing as regards IPV. That paper shows it. The conclusion is nominal. — AmadeusD

No, I didn't skip it.

You were arguing in terms of relative frequency of committing IPV given gender, and that including someone who counts as a man in a domestic abuse support group is bad on that basis, since "Domestic abuse is overwhelmingly perpetrated by males.", and I showed you a meta analysis which refutes the claim.

It's really not a good metric. If the majority of relationships that have IPV have two way IPV, "defensive violence" as a concept comes down to "who started it".

This may not be completely rational, just as fearing all men would be, but given the psychological damage suffered it is perfectly understandable — I like sushi

Understandable never entails right, yeah.

When it comes to imprisonment my initial reaction would be that violent and sexual crimes means you have effectively crossed a line. If a trans woman goes to prison for any other crime I do not really see any problem with them being placed in a prison with women. However, this should be on a case by case basis not a one rule fits all (as with most criminal convictions). — I like sushi

Yeah that seems defensible to me. The status quo treats prisoners of particular risk differently regardless of their gender.

Overall, it seems this is just a phase people tend to go through (usually in young adulthood). — I like sushi

Complexities like that are why I've been trying to talk about people that have obtained a GRC.

Yes. The idea of defensive domestic abuse.

Domestic abuse is overwhelmingly perpetrated by males. Males cause trauma to those who have been abused by males. It doesn't matter what you think yourself as, or whether you have a piece of paper saying X. You are male. That is dangerous for females who have been abused by males. — AmadeusD

I think the incidence isn't particularly relevant for exclusion, honestly. The argument roughly goes that the trans woman appears as a man to attendees and is thus unsafe. Which isn't really an argument, but I'm not going to convince you of that.

Regardless, the idea that domestic abuse in itself is committed more often by men is at best misleading. There's a pretty big meta analysis on intimate partner violence papers here.

For size:

A systematic review of risk factors for intimate partner violence was conducted. Inclusion criteria included publication in a peer-reviewed journal, a representative community sample or a clinical sample with a control-group comparison, a response rate of at least 50%, use of a physical or sexual violence outcome measure, and control of confounding factors in the analyses. A total of 228 articles were included (170 articles with adult and 58 with adolescent samples). Organized by levels of a dynamic developmental systems perspective, risk factors included: (a) contextual characteristics of partners (demographic, neighborhood, community and school factors), (b) developmental characteristics and behaviors of the partners (e.g., family, peer, psychological/behavioral, and cognitive factors), and (c) relationship influences and interactional patterns. Comparisons to a prior review highlight developments in the field in the past 10 years. Recommendations for intervention and policy along with future directions for intimate partner violence (IPV) risk factor research are presented.

For outcome:

The reviewed studies generally indicate that men and women are relatively equally likely to perpetrate IPV (Woodward, Fergusson, & Horwood, 2002) or that women show somewhat higher rates than men (Herrera, Wiersma, & Cleveland, 2008; Schluter, Abbott, & Bellringer, 2008). Thus, findings are consistent with the meta-analysis conducted by Archer (2000), which indicated that for IPV perpetration women are slightly more likely than men to use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently.

Women in the aggregate commit more acts of intimate partner violence and do them more often in relationships.

Notice that this doesn't imply anything about whether trans women should be able to attend domestic abuse support groups...

Hey fdrake, — Jeremy Murray

Whassup.

You think of gender as a social construct, then?

Mostly yes.

Because if one concedes any biological component at all then yes, trans women are more of a problem in women's prisons then cis women. Due to the entirety of human history.

Why?

The majority of opposition to trans issues comes from environments of genuine harm - so far, this appears to be change rooms (which, I mean, obviously, different from bathrooms), the playing field of sports (again, obviously, minor consideration with kids, major consideration with adult bodies), and women's prisons. — Jeremy Murray

You can add domestic abuse support groups to the list as well! If my take matters at all on each of these - I'll assume that the person has a gender recognition certificate {GRC}, ie they've managed to change their legal gender somehow.

1 ) Sports - probably depends on the sport. Tennis? Maybe no difference. Powerlifting? Definitely a difference. I think performance makes a difference.
2 ) Domestic abuse support groups - mix them up. Regardless of the other considerations, these are supervised group sessions of non-criminals, there's about the same risk to anyone as going to a cafe. I don't see a good argument for excluding trans peeps from these especially when they have a GRC.
3 ) Changing rooms - these are probably okay to mix from a risk perspective. Especially when they have a GRC.
4 ) Prisons - I'd probably want someone who has a GRC to get a choice of which gender prison they go to.

If we're talking about a process in which someone can just say that they're another gender on a form, and it grants them a choice, I think that's quite exploitable. Even then I don't think this one would matter much for domestic abuse support groups.

You must be aware of the second gen feminist rejection of trans issues? — Jeremy Murray

Yes.

The gay/lesbian argument that this is simply convincing gay people to adopt a different identity?

Yes.

I think both of those groups need to put the pipe down.

I would say that any scenario of a person claiming trans identity and then raping women in prisons - or even, engaging in consensual sex with women in prison - is one too many. Simply because it is wrong to do so. Same in reverse. I think your premise of affirmation ENABLES this problem. — Jeremy Murray

I take the point. If you make it about managing sex offenders in prisons, there are already protocols in prisons for dealing with sex offenders regardless of gender. If it were just about sex offences, women who have committed sex offences on other inmates should be sent to men's prisons. Do you agree with those further points?

I ask it because if the driving factor is protecting women from sexual assault, that should also apply to women who provide such risks. If it instead only applies to men who would sexually assault women in these spaces, then sexual assault alone doesn't explain the difference in treatment.

If instead there's something uniquely risky about trans women because they're allegedly men, that needs more words.

Trans people are not seen as a 'massive risk' and they are especially not seen that way in the bathroom. That's a bait and switch. — Jeremy Murray

You don't see them that way. many people I've spoken with do. I treat the issue in that way because, my experience is, people think there is something uniquely risky about trans women because {allegedly} they are men.

I'll respond to your anti-woke stuff in a personal message, as I think the thread has enough tangents as it is.

But your arguments seem entirely of the woke variety, despite the fact that woke arguments continue to be proven wrong? — Jeremy Murray

Also, I am afraid I am quite woke.

I think the maths undermines the degree of urgency of the issue, honestly. Fair Play's rhetoric goes hard on the degree of sexual criminality trans women have. It's central for portraying this as a crisis. That's also the rhetorical reason for focussing on trans women having a "male pattern of criminality".

It's quite difficult for me to take the panic seriously given we know, and presumably Fair Play knew since the MoJ knew, that the data paints trans people in an exaggeratedly bad light.

If it's more broadly about Man Dangerous Rapist Woman Weak Raped, we're back in the norms discussion, and I don't want to pretend that the motte is the bailey like I highlighted before.

but I need to disagree with you. — Jeremy Murray

I think you can disagree with me there about what's true, or whether the logic I presented reflects how people think, but not about the validity of the logic in the post.

Yeah I agree, you just have to think about why they're doing that. They're doing that because they feel the trans woman is a man and is thus more of a risk, which they can be incorrect about if they are in fact a woman or are not more of a risk. A potential discussion of perceived safety vs real risk would also be interesting! — fdrake

If the claim is {a trans woman is a man} and {is more of a risk on that basis}, then the implication doesn't apply in context if its antecedent is false - that "a trans woman is a man" is false, ie that they are a woman. Or if the consequent is false - that trans women are more of a risk. So their perception would be incorrect if trans women were women or that trans women were not more of a risk. Their perception could still be correct, I'm just highlighting how I'm arguing with that remark.

You could also argue the implication, that "man implies more risk of sexual assault of women in prisons" is false, but I didn't do it at this point.

what matters is fact. we have a number of factual examples of trans 'women' raping or assaulting women in female prisons. — Jeremy Murray

Yeah there's absolutely examples. I don't think you immediately get to conclude that trans women are more of a risk than women on that basis, you see what I mean? It's similar to really violent offenders or sex offenders, they get special precautions, but you need to establish that someone is a sex offender or really violent to treat them that way. You'd need to establish that a demographic was on average sufficiently riskier to treat them differently.

There's also a question about the degree of perceived risk vs the real risk. Trans people generally get treated as if they're a massive risk in an absolute sense when it doesn't make much sense, like people terrified of the prospect of unisex bathrooms. It could be that there's more of a reason to keep trans women out of women's prisons than trans women out of women's bathrooms, it's just that the underlying reaction to both is the same for many people.

Here's an example with fake data:

This is a hypothetical table of sentence lengths of trans in a prison. This is the true table. People are either trans or not trans. Then I've put a column in "Has Trans Recorded", which tells you if someone in the prison has filled out a form which records that someone is trans. They get filled out after 1 year in prison.

$\begin{array} {|r|r|}\hline Sentence-Length-Years & Has-Trans-Recorded & Is-Trans \\ \hline 0.5 & No & Yes \\ \hline 0.5 & No & Yes \\ \hline 0.5 & No & Yes \\ \hline 0.5 & No & Yes \\ \hline 0.5 & No & Yes \\ \hline 1 & Yes & Yes \\ \hline 1 & Yes & Yes \\ \hline 1 & Yes & Yes \\ \hline 1 & Yes & Yes \\ \hline \end{array}$

Now, if you freedom of information requested the prison, they'd select for "Has Trans Recorded" being "Yes", since that's just the trans people they'd have in their database. Which would be:

$\begin{array} {|r|r|}\hline Sentence-Length & Has Trans Recorded & Is-Trans \\ \hline 1 & Yes & Yes \\ \hline 1 & Yes & Yes \\ \hline 1 & Yes & Yes \\ \hline 1 & Yes & Yes \\ \hline 1 & Yes & Yes \\ \hline \end{array}$

The mean number of years for a sentence in the first is 5*0.5+5*1 / 10 = 0.75
The mean number of years for the sentence in the second is 1.

You see the effect now?

Which are sentences we don't actually care about, for this assessment. Perhaps that's why I saw no relevance. I cannot understand why you would care about other crimes, when we're tlaking about propensity to commit sexual assault. — AmadeusD

The maths of the situation makes it appear that trans women are much bigger criminals than they are, and the amount of exaggeration depends entirely upon the unobserved trans population, which committed petty crimes.

I have literally no clue how this analogy relates to our stats. — AmadeusD

I'll say it in a few ways.
Trans women were only included in the MoJ data set if they had committed crimes like sex crimes.

You could not have found trans women in it if they'd served time for petty things with minimal sentences.

To be recorded as a trans woman, they had to go through a procedure which elicited that data, which only occurred after quite a long time in jail - IE, they must have served crimes with longish sentences. It's why the MoJ spent so much time clarifying it.

Say that 1% of people called David in prison are there for sex offences. Consider the population of Davids that used to play guitar. In order to find out whether any given David plays guitar, they need to be interviewed thoroughly. Then stipulate that the interviews occur after 1 year in prison.

You would then find that any David that played guitar in the data was imprisoned for at least as long a time as one who was not, and usually longer on average. The minimum sentence time for guitar playing Davids in the prison records is 1 year.

Make the simplifying assumption that half of the offences with sentences over 1 year are sex offences. Then if you have a David that played guitar in the data set, and looked at what they were in there for, it's a 50% chance they'd be a sex offender.

Actually recording a David as a guitar player means the sample of Davids which are guitar players will have longer sentences. So if you query the prison for data on Davids which are guitar players, they'll have 50% sex offence rate rather than the 1% of Davids in the general population. Even if in the general prison population Davids who play guitar have the same 1% rate.

If you interviewed them immediately to establish their guitar playing status, then the rate goes back to the 1% they were at in the general population.

Replace David with person, and guitar player with trans woman. That's the effect. The sampling mechanism for the data inflates the crime rates of the demographic for serious crimes.

Are we agreed that the prison question should be evaluated in terms of expedience and not rights? Or at the very least that criminals have forfeited many of their rights and therefore we are thinking more in terms of expedience than rights? By "expedience" I mean that we are focused on things like harm, cost, manageability, pregnancies, etc. — Leontiskos

I've not really been talking about policy, honestly. There are loads of ways to achieve things that would work for everyone logistically. UK prisons have diversity and inclusion volunteers {inmates} whose job is to act as a neighbourhood watch for hate crimes and the like.

For me this issue is generally not about policy, it's about what people think should inform policy. And that boils down usually to some intuition close to the following implication:

since {trans women are potential predators or men are latent rapists} and {trans women are men or trans women are criminals like men} then {trans women should be treated like men in various ways}.

Then I attack it on all fronts - doubt trans women are potential predators and that men are latent rapists and that trans women are men and that trans women are criminals like men. Even if I might agree with the conclusion for some ways - like maybe trans women shouldn't be in {drug tested?} women's powerlifting competitions.

I've largely not spoken about what I think ought to happen for any of these issues because I've been criticising the inferences that constitute the terrain. Except when I've referenced that the GRC was a sensible middle ground for lots of issues. Want to change your legal gender? Get an assessment and fill out a form, fund that process.

For what it's worth, I largely agree with @Michael, but provide the following caveats:

Sports) Let sporting federations set their own rules in accordance with competitive standards, eg I imagine performance differences in elite olympic weightlifters based on biological sex are large enough to warrant separation, but the same might not be true for climbing. Like it's not true for chess.

Prisons) Divide by gender identity, with protections in place to minimise risk of sex offences by individuals and transphobic hate crime. Since this is what people want anyway. There are already some measures in place like this in some prisons. Trans sex offenders get the sex offender precautions.

Holy shit you're back.

I should also have stressed in the above post that the numbers from those speadsheets, and from the Fair Play Initiative, don't specifically target trans folks with GRCs. I think this makes the generalisation from the prior data to trans folk with GRC a bit tendentious, considering that the GRC was being proposed as a gateway to prior gendered protections and recognitions.

As is usual with this terrain, lots of issues get agglomerated together - whether the ruling on the GRC and the legal status of trans folks is vindicated will be a separate issue from prison mangement policies. Which, as the MoJ clarified, already had provisions for housing particularly dangerous sex offenders of women in men's prisons. If that was the worry, it was already policy.

So what was the purpose of the bill, if we need to talk about it in terms of trans women in prisons?

I assume that's not your intention, based the previous exchange around the same thing - but I find it very, very hard to see a justification for dismissing female concerns based on millennia of data and lived experience as anything but "I don't take it seriously" or some such.. Could you be a bit more specific about what's wrong with that? I don't think a male has any standing to make such dismissals.. — AmadeusD

Yeah. It's the difference between being cautious around men for good reasons and assuming that men are latent rapists, the former's something behavioural and can {and usually is} done without prejudice, the latter treats men as if they are always on the verge of boiling over into rape as if it's an essential facet of masculinity, just waiting to get out.

In the discussion, the latter move also calls trans women men. I know you believe that's true, it's just not a neutral move in this space of ideas. I want to distinguish that from a claim like "trans women have a male pattern of offending", which you could believe even if you believed trans women were women.

The kind of discussion people are having regarding trans women in women's prisons - which is currently rare in the UK anyway - responds to trans women as if they are latent rapists on the basis that they are men.

Someone who goes into the discussion believing that men are latent rapists will then find it very difficult to hear "trans women are women and should thus be allowed in women's spaces", since it will sound to them like "latent rapists should be put in women's spaces".

It roughly comes down to whether you're, in a manner of speaking, calling rape an aspect of every man's personality. Like men are all chomping at the bit to commit sex crimes.

Distinguish that from the claim that the majority of sex crimes committed against women are done by men, which is true. You can just believe that without doing a Dworkin and saying penis = rape.

Conceptual example being that pro-trans protesting and agitation tends toward chaos and violence, from what I've seen. The anti(lets say) crowd doesn't, until confronted by the former. The former also seeks confrontation (at events, lectures, clubs etc..) and seeks to violate the rights of those with whom they disagree. This is why the ruling is helpful (these are not supposed to be arguments just reports). — AmadeusD

Probs a difference in our experience then. The lobbyists here were calling trans folk rapists loudly in the street and handing out pamphlets to that effect. The degree of panic has caused a big spike in trans victimisation. Seeing trans women as latent rapists has real social effects.

Yep but that flies in the face of both the empirical evidence, and the work in that paper. You should read it throroughly (I have, but its been some time). The Dutch Protocol and surrounding work is also an interesting tidbit in this area.. — AmadeusD

I did read it quite thoroughly. I would generally trust the author's interpretation {a scientist} of their own work over people from a think tank.

I also looked at your spreadsheets with the risk in them, they were from the Fair Play Initiative, which is a think tank - which is fine, so long as what they're saying is alright, but it gives me pause. I followed their trail of data back to their freedom of information request from the UK's Ministry of Justice {MoJ}, the MoJ had published a clarifying remark on the degree of caution that data should be interpreted with regarding trans sex offenders:

A government survey has counted 125 transgender prisoners in England and Wales, but the Ministry of Justice says these figures are not yet a reliable reflection of the true numbers. The MoJ says 60 of them have been convicted of one or more sexual offences but it didn't identify their gender. There are likely to be more trans inmates, on shorter sentences and who are less likely to be sex offenders, who don't show up in this data.

...

"Any assessment of a transgender offender's risk of reoffending should be based on valid, evidenced factors that relate to that individual, as for any other offender. We have seen no evidence that being transgender is in itself linked to risk. Risk assessments must be free from assumptions or stereotyping."

It also notes:

There is provision for any female prisoner - trans or not - to be housed in a men's prison if she's deemed especially dangerous.

This was in 2018 by the by.

The MoJ is hesitant to conclude that the trans folk in the data are representative of trans folk's patterns of offending, why? Because in order to be inside of the published data, and count as trans by its lights, you needed to have a case conference - a big meeting, which is only ever given to prisoners serving long sentences.

Why that matters - let's say stealing a blue jelly bean gets you 1 year in jail, and stealing a red jelly bean gets you 2 years in jail. Assume for the sake of argument that rabbits and cows steal jelly beans at equal rates. But sometimes cows like to wear rabbit costumes, and have them at home. In order to find out which cows have rabbit costumes at home, they get a review on the second year of their prison sentence. If they're revealed as being cows wearing rabbit costumes, they'll be recorded as such. Which would mean that any cow wearing a rabbit costume which was recorded would have been in the jail for over 1 year, which meant they could never have stolen a blue jelly bean.

You could look at this and say that cows wearing rabbit costumes have a massively inflated rate of red jelly bean theft, it's 100%! Or you can look at it and say "what about all the cows that just stole blue jelly beans?" and "the high odds of being a cow in a rabbit costume stealing red vs stealing blue is explained more by sampling in the data than anything about being a cow wearing a rabbit costume".

I hope the analogy is sufficiently on the nose that I don't need to substitute things into it.

You are not wrong, but you are not concluding something reasonable, imo. — AmadeusD

I'm not particularly trying to conclude something reasonable. If my interlocutor told me "anyone who commits sexual offences against women doesn't belong in women's prisons", I'd need to ask them "what about the women in the prisons who commit sexual offences against their fellow inmates?", and they do that quite a lot.

I think what this shows is that the particular urgency people feel regarding trans women in women's prisons isn't just about sexual assault, there's a special sauce of manhood that people care about. If women are horrible to each other it's fair game, but if one {alleged} man is horrible to them it's a cause for uproar.

I'm not saying any of that is okay, by the by, only highlighting an asymmetry in the urgency people talk about these problems with. If it was as clear cut as "get sex offenders out of women's prisons", or "get people who sexual assault out of women's prisons", it shouldn't even matter if those offenders - or people - are women.

Have you read the paper? This is patently untrue and clear attempt to avoid the vitriol of trans activists who routinely harass and attempt to 'cancel' anyone saying anything they don't like in the lit — AmadeusD

Yes. That's the author of the paper you're disagreeing with, I believe. Dhjene is denouncing the conclusions about trans criminality people are making using her work. Dr Dhjene, I believe, would not agree with the interpretation of her paper in the UK parliament document you sent me. This is why I quoted her about it.

I don't know that that's true, but if the community itself, in some significant proportion notices this (my personal trans friends do, also) then it cannot be hte case that this is some inarguable situation where we have to just do as were told (which is the postion). — AmadeusD

Yeah you can have a reasonable discussion about it using the statistics, and I'm glad you've brought them up. Most people are not, however, doing that. There is a world of difference between

1 ) Talking about trans women's rates of sex offence using data.
2 ) Construing trans women as latent rapists on the basis of their {alleged} manhood.

I have the time of day for the former, the latter can suck a bag of dicks, believing something in the manner of ( 2 ) and motte-baileying back to ( 1 ) can suck a larger bag of dicks. It isn't just about being factually correct, people can believe all this stuff in the wrong way. I am not saying you're doing this specifically. I'm bringing the calcified prejudices I usually bring to this discussion's terrain, where knee jerk reactionary crap suffices.

I shall look at your other numbers later.

They're saying it because they are male. Nothing else. They do not need to justify that further. — AmadeusD

People can feel unsafe for whatever reason, it can sometimes be a bad reason. Excluding people from spaces because of personal discomfort, or feelings of unsafety, can also work as a vector of discrimination.

then it cannot be hte case that this is some inarguable situation where we have to just do as were told — AmadeusD

Yes. This could've been a world where people talked about this in a nice way, without prejudice or knee jerk castigation. We don't live in that one. Instead we live in one where the issue is steeped in such a moral panic that talking about it is joining a circular firing line, in which everyone thinks everyone else is a reactionary blowhard centralising a clear cut issue which we should've stopped speaking about ages ago.

Honestly it will be nice when the trans community stops being treated like a global tennis ball for political signalling. Hopefully that comes with easy access and well targeted healthcare as well as humane treatment+protections in gendered places like prisons.

It's an uncomfortable reversal of a norm. We wouldn't expect people to call white people Black because they want to be Black — AmadeusD

Also yeah. It relates to your reference to passing as well, you don't have to think about it at all if a trans person passes. I've made plenty of slips with trans people who don't look sufficiently like I expect their gender to look. If I've not spent much time with them anyway.

I must love punching beehives, tasty tasty bees.

I wanted to throw these ideas out there, knowing that they can easily be taken apart from many directions, biological as well as social. — Joshs

It's a fun thing to think about.

The same reasoning would suggest that as a whole, trans women may have been born with less of the anti-social male-correlated biological traits than straight men, and thus are less of a potential threat to women than the typical straight male. — Joshs

We could talk about this in a different thread, perceived threat vs real threat. It's also extremely spicy.

Vehemently disagreed. Often, people silence themselves for fear of the social repercussions as a result of the utterly abysmal response from TRAs to any criticism whatsoever. And then there's the actual assault/intimidation/inappropriate behaviour trans women do engage in so it is not unreasonable, at all, for a female to say "Fuck no" to males in their spaces, regardless of their identification. I certainly don't want a female in my spaces of that type, regardless of how they look. I just don't take on a risk the way a female does in the reverse scenario. — AmadeusD

Yeah I agree, you just have to think about why they're doing that. They're doing that because they feel the trans woman is a man and is thus more of a risk, which they can be incorrect about if they are in fact a woman or are not more of a risk. A potential discussion of perceived safety vs real risk would also be interesting!

There is one justification I can think of for considering it to be so, at least when the victim is a woman, given that rape (defined as penile penetration) women may lead to unwanted pregnancy. — Janus

Yeah it's definitely an argument. "May lead to unwanted pregnancy" needs massaging though - man has vasectomy and it doesn't lead to it, infertile victim and it can't. I believe they should be treated with the same moral weight. It also provides an exemption for bumming, that'd have to go back into the sexual assault category when relevant.

Though I suppose you could say "it's worse because if it was penetrative vaginal sex involving a fertile man and a fertile woman it could lead to pregnancy", which kind of lays bare the social landscape regarding it too. Rape's {man raping woman} is uniquely bad because it's associated with a violation of womanhood and not just personhood and autonomy.

This comes across as, "I literally do not care about women" talk. — AmadeusD

It wasn't intended that way. I think it's quite useful to remember that the inmates of women's prisons are awful to each other often, and that includes sexual assault. Those places are not hotbeds of women's rights.

The logic for excluding trans women from women's prisons also doesn't really work conditionally either, if all that matters were odds, women who are sex offenders against women should also be excluded from women's prisons. And that's obviously not seen as the case. If people treated that seriously you'd yeet anyone who committed acts of sexual victimisation of women, in women's prisons, out of them for women's protections. But no, as you're saying, it's uniquely bad when a man does it and allegedly needs special protections.

perhaps the most telling. — AmadeusD

Those are a few instances of it. You can find similar instances regarding lesbianism and sexual assault in prison, or gay men in male prisons. Can you show me what the source you have for being "four times more likely" is? The last time I looked at this crap there was like 1 paper which even did this comparison with real data, the newspapers picked it up with a misinterpretation, then the paper's author had to go on the record to say "no, in fact there was no evidence in the paper that trans women are uniquely risky".

That paper, "The Swedish Paper" is the one the UK Parliament used {this one } as its primary source for the legislature.

Here is the author going on record showing their frustration with how much it gets misrepresented.

Dhejne: The individual in the image who is making claims about trans criminality, specifically rape likelihood, is misrepresenting the study findings. The study as a whole covers the period between 1973 and 2003. If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989 – 2003), differences in mortality, suicide attempts, and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality.

As to the criminality metric itself, we were measuring and comparing the total number of convictions, not conviction type. We were not saying that cisgender males are convicted of crimes associated with marginalization and poverty. We didn’t control for that and we were certainly not saying that we found that trans women were a rape risk. What we were saying was that for the 1973 to 1988 cohort group and the cisgender male group, both experienced similar rates of convictions. As I said, this pattern is not observed in the 1989 to 2003 cohort group.

The difference we observed between the 1989 to 2003 cohort and the control group is that the trans cohort group accessed more mental health care, which is appropriate given the level of ongoing discrimination the group faces. What the data tells us is that things are getting measurably better and the issues we found affecting the 1973 to 1988 cohort group likely reflects a time when trans health and psychological care was less effective and social stigma was far worse.

There you have it. To be clear:

No, the study does not show that medical transition results in suicide or suicidal ideation. The study explicitly states that such is not the case and those using this study to make that claim are using fallacious logic.

No, the study does not prove that trans women are rapists or likely to be rapists. The “male pattern of criminality” found in the 1973 to 1988 cohort group was not a euphemism for rape.

No, the study does not prove that trans women exhibit male socialization. The “male pattern of criminality” found in the 1973 to 1988 cohort group was not a claim that trans women were convicted of the same types of crime as cis men.

My impression is that the majority of the people who really support the lobby are thinking with their gut, as everything about trans existence violates taboos, much like homosexuality used to.

The specific taboo with trans women is... they're men... and men are latent predators... so we've got men camouflaged as women... lying on forms to get access to women... who they'll certainly rape with their superior muscles. Which, broadly, is something bad feminists and conservatives can agree on, man bad dangerous woman weak protect.

"Woman" should still be a protected characteristic, it's just that this moral panic is specifically about weaponising women's victimhood, and especially what remains of the chastity and despoilment norms from centuries ago. It's old shit the culture's vomiting up. It's a lot like lactose intolerant people eating a shitload of icecream, honestly. Culture loves chicks with dicks and hates trans people at the same time.

That is certainly not my experience. They aren't a threat, so there's not much to say. That's the line I get, repeatedly, over many years. If it has been yours, fair enough. There are stupid people in every group.. — AmadeusD

Yeah I could see someone really double-downing on the idea that people of male natal sex are inherently threatening in response to this. Seems an ally of various gender related essentialisms, not my cup of tea.

I can certainly imagine someone who looks at a trans man and sees someone who isn't a risk because they're seeing a woman, but I imagine they're still taking the precautions they take with men if they interact with Buck Angel.

Which is the thing I'm referring to, for all practical purposes in social life people who think trans X aren't X treat nevertheless treat trans X as X whenever the trans X person passes as X. That includes perceived sense of safety.

Though there's a particular kind of disgust and revulsion that trans peeps are subject to, trans women aren't just men {allegedly}, and thus latent predators... they're latent predators wearing camouflage! They're sneaking up on you like they're a woman!

I do trust that the people you've spoken with have an intellectual commitment to treating trans men as women and trans women as men, but I'd put money on those people having revealed preferences to treat trans women as women and trans men as men in most circumstances.

Except when the women's safety and sanctity tropes are in play.

(Note that a woman who is an elite powerlifter will receive special attention from a prison, for the exact same reason that men and women are separate.) — Leontiskos

They won't be excluded on the basis of their strength alone. What remains?

If you think that placing biological men who are criminals into an all-woman environment will not endanger the women, then you are the one who has to demonstrate that the men pose no special risk. — Leontiskos

Wrong demographic innit.

The relevant comparison is trans women in women's prisons, not men generically in women's prisons. Even if you wanted to say that trans women were men, as you seem to, that's the relevant risk comparison! When people actually look at that risk comparison, trans women don't behave like men are stipulated to at all.

Women who sexually assault women still go to women's prisons for god's sake. Even women who are sexual predators go to women's prisons.

Legislation that wants to send people to prisons based entirely on their natal sex for the protection of women then sends women {trans men} to serve sentences in buildings full of rapists. It's utter hypocrisy. You send a woman who passes as a man {how you see it} to a building with loads of women with dubious understandings of consent who might be attracted to her, who's way more likely to be the victim of sexual assault because she's a trans man. And she's a woman {according to how you see it}.

Again, you seem convinced that women are not physically weaker than men, and I can't think of a more unintelligent position for someone to hold. The rhetoric doesn't help your position. — Leontiskos

It would be nice if you would demonstrate how the difference in physical strength between men and women makes trans women more likely to commit acts of sexual assault if they were imprisoned with cis women. You need to show the implication.

The broader context also doesn't have precedence for you to appeal to - difference in physical strength between someone who may be a perp of sexual assault and their victim is neither necessary nor sufficient for the attempt.

Again, you seem convinced that women are not physically weaker than men, and I can't think of a more unintelligent position for someone to hold. The rhetoric doesn't help your position. — Leontiskos

Women on average are physically weaker than men, I just don't see how you've demonstrated how that fact engenders that trans women should be excluded from women's prisons. What about women who are elite powerlifters? Should they be excluded from women's prisons on the basis that they're way stronger than most men.

nd whether physical strength is a central factor when it comes to rape and abuse. — Leontiskos

Oh. It just acts as more of a risk than physical strength differences with strangers, for sexual assault. The person in your life most likely to sexually assault you is always your partner. Just don't get married.

I'm being facetious. You would need to establish that trans people pose unique risks in prisons. When people look at the data, it doesn't look like that at all. All that's left is the perception that Man Strong Rapist Woman Weak Raped, and it works like a thought terminating cliche.

You've, "Swallowed the camel and strained the gnat," to quote a phrase. — Leontiskos

Which, to mirror the rudeness, you've demonstrated admirably.

Do you disagree that women are physically weaker than men? I can understand political positions, but when your political position causes you to contradict some of the most well-known biological facts the political position becomes untenable. — Leontiskos

Difference in average physical strength is much different from factors that influence prevalence of sexual assault in prisons innit. If we want to think about major risk factors for rape of women "out in the wild", we should think of marriage {and fatherhood} paradigmatically. As my gran says, "it's your bloody husband you've got to watch out for!"

If I answer it with my head, 2.2, if I answer it with my gut's intrusive thoughts, 3.27.

I'm talking about two things at once, there's the ruling, and there's why the lobbyists wanted it. The lobbyists wanted it for the reasons I've stated. I've almost no interest in talking about the letter of the ruling, other than the ways in which it still catastrophically fails the lobbyist's intentions.

If you put a criminal, biological man in a women's prison you put all of the women in danger. — Leontiskos

Why? Surely you need to demonstrate more danger than would be expected from a typical inmate in order to make this case?

You presumably want to favor a tiny minority of criminals because you think minorities are good, and need to be protected. — Leontiskos

No. I think the moral panic surrounding trans people in gendered spaces is totally nuts and that they don't amplify the risks meaningfully if they're allowed in their preferred gender spaces especially if they've received a GRC. That's mostly what this ruling was about, honestly. What a GRC does.

Scotland passed a bill that let trans people count as their preferred gender if they went through a lengthy and robust assessment process, which was then vetoed. This ruling made that irrelevant.

I don't see any good reason to endanger all of the natural women in women's prisons — Leontiskos

They're sexually assaulting each other just fine in there without trans womens' help. And more than men do to each other in men's prisons. If anything we should be afraid that the poor trans woman is being put in with such vicious, criminal, creatures. But we won't, because we see women as weak and in need of protection.