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Regarding the trans-women-in-prison thing, I came up with a counterargument the last time this came up. Curious how you'd answer it. Some trans woman prisoners may try to rape biologically female inmates if put in women's prisons; but won't male inmates be even likelier to try to rape the trans woman if she's sent to the men's prison? If we assume that not all trans women are rapists, but all male prisons contain at least one rapist willing to rape a trans woman, it seems like sending trans women to female prisons will prevent more rapes than it will enable.
(By the way, this is unrelated, but AI could allow us to cut the Gordian knot on constant surveillance pretty soon. A 'dumb' AI can be constantly monitoring prisoners on video feeds human wardens can't access, and if it observes what appears to be rape, it rings an alarm. Slightly ahead of current technology, but IMO clearly achievable using the kind of tech that goes into self-driving cars. It wouldn't need to be foolproof, either, few positives have minimal cost.)
Sure, I have a few arguments. First, I'm not certain about this one, because I think I saw someone question the stats, but the numbers might not work out the way your argument is assuming to begin with, trans sex offenders seem to be overrepresented in prison compared to cis-men sex offenders.
Second, I think the strength disparity between men and trans women is smaller than between trans women and women, so they'd be in relatively less danger.
Third, I don't know exactly how the prisoner sorting system works, but my understanding is that if you're in for something nonviolent, you get pit in a low security prison, with other nonviolent people. You can also get transferred to one for good behavior. If we're talking about a violent trans offender that ended up in a high security prison, I'm less inclined to give a damn to begin with.
Fourth, what Amadan said.
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Arguing that female inmates just need to submit to more danger because you've mathed out that it would be "worse" for trans women to be endangered sounds like you're practically making the TERF argument for them: that trans activists consider the feelings and safety of men to always be more important than those of women. "Well, sure, some trans women might be predatory sex offenders who will rape the female inmates they are housed with, but what if one of them was raped by a man? Wouldn't that be so much more horrible?"
I don't think this is quite the trolley problem you think it is. Trans women can be put in protective segregation in a men's prison.
And prison rape isn't actually a problem of not being able to prevent it. Other countries don't have the same problems US prisons do. We don't want to prevent it, because our prison system is dysfunctional in general, and also we have somehow adopted a cultural norm that getting raped in prison (or at least having that be an ever-present threat) is just part of the punishment.
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