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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Dreher's Law defied? Transgender rapist Isla Bryson moved to men's prison

After years of haranguing feminists and critics for suggesting that things like self-ID would lead to women being potentially at risk as unsafe males entered women's spaces, the topic has burst unto the scene as a rapist in Scotland sought movement into a female prison because he "transitioned" after being caught.

The basic economic logic of "if barriers are removed from socially deleterious activities people will do them" proven once again. Yet it somehow evades certain parts of the political spectrum.

Isla Bryson was remanded to Cornton Vale women's prison in Stirling after being convicted of the rapes when she was a man called Adam Graham. She has since been moved to HMP Edinburgh.

Bryson decided to transition from a man to a woman while awaiting trial.

She was taken to a male wing of HMP Edinburgh on Thursday afternoon.

It came after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced that Bryson would not be allowed to serve her sentence at Cornton Vale.

This situation seems to have proven to be a boondoggle for the SNP. Sturgeon faced resistance in her own party to passing gender legislation already and the UK government even blocked it for equality concerns (leading to a -cynical imo - row on devolution as well, which I'm sure Sturgeon would prefer to be the issue).

Now this case came up and caused a bit of a stir. Sturgeon came out proactively and reassured everyone, saying that no rapists will be allowed into female prisons, making it clear where she stood & using the "risk assessment" argument to save face: every trans applicant will go through risk assessment therefore there's no problem unless they come to a wrong decision. Of course, the problem seems to be that a) these people are assessed at the female prison and b) maybe the best system is no system. All this effort won't change the fundamental reality of males vs. females so why not use the rule of thumb that works the vast majority of the time? Certainly, if the FM has to come out and reassure Scots that the right decision will be reached in each of these cases that says something about their confidence.

Of course, I've not seen even a hint of reflection on this from the very people who called it bigoted to suggest that weakening gender barriers and implementing self-ID would lead to these ludicrous situations. If anything, activists seem to be doubling down on the claim that anyone who raised the alarm about this was just being bigoted instead of letting the process play out.

Meanwhile, a second plane has struck the Towers

I'm astonished at the sheer amount of people and their new found concern for Scotland's prison population, so astonished I'm left wondering where they've been for the last however many centuries while men who rape other men were placed in, shock horror, men's prisons. Talk about the proverbial fox in the chicken house. Could it be that prisoner safety isn't really uppermost in the agenda of the red tops and certain politicians and commentators?

As for the case of Isla Bryson. How can anyone say the system failed when, at the time of this media storm, she had been found guilty before a jury, had been placed in Cornton Vale on remand in segregation while undergoing an assessment as to the proper place for her to serve the sentence that had yet to be served on her. Her sentencing is next month and the judge requires a variety of assessments.

If this media rumble hadn't arisen, it's overwhelmingly likely Bryson would have been assessed to be unsuitable for a women's prison and would have served her sentence in a male prison.

There are about 15 trans people in jail in Scotland and over 200 in England. Trans women are serving their sentences in male and female prisons north and south of the border (as are trans men) showing that individual assessments by the relevant prison authorities are taking place as they are statutorily obliged to do so.

Why is the sky falling in, people?

The vast and insurmountable difference in physical strength between human males and females is the driving force behind concerns about trans identified males in female prisons, and other female-only spaces where females are vulnerable. Male humans account for the vast majority of perpetrators of violent crime and sexual assault.

Males and females are different, humans have sexual dimorphism and only magical thinking erases that. I'd go so far as to say that some parts of modern gender ideology are implicitly creationist.

The problem for the SNP is that the Scottish courts could overrule her based on her own law. Why would a woman be imprisoned with men even if they are a high risk to women? The best to hope for is isolation within the women’s estate.

The prison estate is still divided by gender, if not by biological sex. If a transwoman is a women as Scottish law assumes, she must go into the proper estate.

(The SNP might be saved by British courts but rather than help Scottish nationalism this may hinder it).

Why is a Scottish nationalist party making this an elemental part of their program anyway?

Why is a Scottish nationalist party making this an elemental part of their program anyway?

The SNP styles themselves as the most-progressivest party in Scotland, cruelly held back by those evil evil Tories that England votes for. So you should vote for them so they can leave the UK and implement loads of progressive policies! Such as running to hand their leash to the EU immediately, and implementing loads of extra welfare! Somehow! After amputating 60% of their trade... when they're net receivers from the UK treasury already...

Honestly, don't think too hard about it. Their manifesto is basically "we're not the Tories, watch as we advocate the opposite of everything they say." Their speech restrictions and laws are even more draconian than the rest of the UK, they proclaim "refugees welcome!" despite having almost no refugees (and the ones who are placed there aren't happy about it and don't want to go), they call the rest of the UK horrible racists while basically being an ethnostate... give Humza Yousaf, their Health Secretary, a listen, and pay particular notice to the way he spits out the word "white" like it's venom and complains about the majority of positions of power being held by white people in a 96% white area.

Why is a Scottish nationalist party making this an elemental part of their program anyway?

I can't find the article anymore but I recall one making the argument that progressive virtue signaling and standing against England is what Scottish nationalism boils down to at this point (since blood and soil isn't a good sell in Europe anymore, even though it is the more standard or intuitive justification for nationalism).

The UK was perceived as stepping back on some of this stuff recently so perhaps Scotland decided there was an opportunity to distinguish themselves via moralism (aka the Canada model)

Gender dysphoria is no longer regarded as an illness therefore why would a Gender Recognition Certificate require two doctors signatures?

Remind me again how things like this would never, ever happen. I was told that several years back when part of a discussion about the possible problems in letting self-identified trans women use female-only spaces. No boy or man was going to undertake the social costs of dressing like and identifying as a woman just in order to get access to women's spaces.

How many formerly AMAB sexual crimes trans prisoners does this make now? And of course, if I take the lessons that I am being taught, Isla was always a Real Woman, so she was a Real Women when she raped two women with her feminine penis, and she still has her feminine penis while awaiting gender affirmation surgery while in a women's prison, and if you deadname her then you are inflicting real violence on her and denying her human rights.

Does that sound mean? Well, the liberal side like to pose the "what about the pregnant 12 year old victim of incestuous rape, are you going to force her to have her rapist's baby?" in abortion discussions and as we've seen this is a rare but real problem. The Real Woman trans sex offender is the equivalent for the liberal and progressive side, and a real problem they have to deal with, and decide if they are going to stick with the most extreme loons who declare that you can too be a Real Woman if all you do is grow your hair out and change your name. It would be instructive to count up how many "pregnant 12 year olds" versus "sex offender suddenly decided while in men's prison he was really a woman" cases and see who needs to do some tough decisions.

Of course, I've not seen even a hint of reflection on this from the very people who called it bigoted to suggest that weakening gender barriers and implementing self-ID would lead to these ludicrous situations.

Sure, and why not? Their opponents still concede the frame. The linked article continues to refer to the male rapist in question as "she", despite this guy looking like a parody of the "men will exploit this system" claim. Sturgeon says:

She said: "There is no automatic right for a trans woman convicted of a crime to serve their sentence in a female prison even if they have a gender recognition certificate.

Notice the verbiage there, that there is no "automatic right", as though it's something that's often entirely reasonable. She added:

The first minister also stressed it was careful that people "do not, even inadvertently, suggest that trans women pose an inherent threat to women", adding: "Predatory men, as has always been the case, are the risk to women."

Well, I'll go ahead and suggest it - trans "women" that look like parodies of men in drag pose an inherent threat to women. That this sentiment is still outside the Overton Window of polite conversation is precisely why it makes sense for the people that want to weaken gender to keep calling people bigots. Why not? If even the policy-makers that eventually move male rapists out of female prisons maintain that there's nothing particularly predatory about trans "women" in female prisons, continuing to press the point makes sense.

Sure, and why not? Their opponents still concede the frame.

I'm unsure, but maybe they have to in the UK? I know that they've sent policemen to people's houses for trans critical tweets, so it's possible it runs afoul of some hate speech law.

Lol. There were a few admittedly ridiculous instances here and there of police visits but a) they didn't result in anything (still silly but an important caveat) and crucially b) that it absolutely not the norm. I mean you can go on twitter right now and see loads and loads of British commentators and other twitter users with names and faces etc. taking a v. critical position on trans issues. I mean this is just an absurd suggestion to make.

"Predatory men, as has always been the case, are the risk to women."

So are they men or are they women? Because if this guy isn't a woman, then all the trans stuff is just pretence and he shouldn't be humoured in it; he should be referred to by his real name and not allowed prance about in wigs and false nails and pink.

If she is a real trans woman, then she's not a predatory man, she's a predatory trans woman who is an inherent threat to women.

You can't eat your cake and have it, too: if Adam Graham is not trans, then the whole trans thing is mainly a pretence since it's so easy to claim to be a woman. If Isla Bryson is trans, as claimed (and their origin story sounds like it's taking the familiar path - see below), then trans women can be threats and it's not being a TERF to think that allowing people with penises into spaces where other people have suffered at the hands of people with penises is a bad idea.

Imagine if Isla turned up at a domestic violence shelter where one of her rape victims was also living. Is it TERFy to say that maybe Isla should not be taken in to that shelter? Or indeed any female shelter, since Isla has demonstrated she is not safe to be around women?

Originally a male named Adam Graham, Bryson has claimed to have known she was transgender since the age of four, but did not decide to begin the process of transitioning until the age of 29. At the time of her trial she was undergoing hormone treatment and seeking surgery to complete her gender reassignment. Bryson was briefly married after meeting a woman through a dating app in 2015, but the marriage, which occurred the following year, ended unhappily. As a male Bryson told her trial she had also struggled with her sexuality, and had been in relationships with men as well as women.

This is also broader than the entire question of trans rights and if it's all a con job; the perfectly safe and harmless guy out on bail while awaiting trial for rape was able to enrol on a beauty therapy course as a woman and be around young women for a whole three months:

STV News has learnt that Isla Bryson, who was this week convicted of raping two women, attended classes at Ayrshire College’s Kilwinning Campus in 2021, while awaiting trial.

Bryson, previously known as Adam Graham, was on Tuesday found guilty of raping one woman in Clydebank in 2016 and another in Drumchapel, Glasgow, in 2019, following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

Susan Smith from the campaign group For Women Scotland said: “He was charged under his original name, Adam Graham, and presumably they knew him by his new name, so they (fellow students) probably wouldn’t have been able to find out anything about this person.

“It’s absolutely terrifying that people can hide their identities and gain access to young women in this way.”

The course involved Bryson enrolled on featured a mix of classroom work and practical elements such as students doing each other’s make-up.

The other students were almost exclusively female and much younger than Bryson, who is now 31.

A statement from Ayrshire College said: “We can confirm the individual was enrolled as a student at Ayrshire College for a three-month period in 2021 and is no longer a student with the College.

I suppose we can only be thankful she didn't decide to try raping anyone else during this period. What the hell kind of carry-on is this?

Also why women are paranoid about meeting men; this specimen met women online and seems to have done this as a deliberate strategy to find vulnerable women (his ex-wife and the two women he raped) so while it's not fair to treat all men as potential threats, this kind of case doesn't help.

Of course, I've not seen even a hint of reflection on this from the very people who called it bigoted to suggest that weakening gender barriers and implementing self-ID would lead to these ludicrous situations. If anything, activists seem to be doubling down on the claim that anyone who raised the alarm about this was just being bigoted instead of letting the process play out.

Meanwhile, a second plane has struck the Towers

This is old news. It's not the first case of a male sex offender being sent to women's prison, it's the first where politicians found themselves answering for it. Activists have moved from "it will never happen" to "it's a good thing that it did" years ago.

"Predatory men, as has always been the case, are the risk to women"

says Nicola Sturgeon. Well, if this prisoner is not a man, then they're not a predatory man. If they're not a predatory man, then they are not a threat to women. If they are not a threat to women, then they should pass their risk assessment.

So, it follows from her view that even though the prisoner should not be transferred to the women's prison, they should be.

Yvette Cooper just seems overwhelmed by the whole matter:

"It should be clear that if someone poses a danger to women and committed crimes against women, they should not be being housed in a women's prison"

I am pretty confident that Cooper has never been to Cornton Vale, though she may have been to other women's prisons given she's Shadow Home Secretary. She would know that there are a lot of prisoners who are dangers to women and who have committed crimes against women. Sexual crimes? Well, probably not convicted, but "crime" and "sex crime" are not the same thing. One of the main reasons to put female criminals in a prison is that they are dangerous to other women. One would hope that Cooper, if she is going to be Home Secretary, would know that already.

I can see that Nicola Sturgeon is trying to say "not all trans people" and that's perfectly true. There are a lot of trans women out there who are not sex offenders and rapists.

The problem is the loudmouth activists and the crazy ones, as well as the predatory guys who suddenly discover their inner femaleness when the prospect of being sent to a men's jail and having the shit kicked out of them arises. If, like J.K. Rowling, you can be vilified as a TERF and have people doing their best to destroy you (thankfully their best is not very good at all) simply for commonsense observations that hey, maybe putting people with dicks in the same space as people who have been hurt by people with dicks is not a good idea, then we're going to have more of this kind of thing: the rapist was always a Real Woman and you are the insensitive boor for deadnaming her.

We really are going to have to look hard at the idea of transgender being a mental health issue, if the likes of these guys are going to be cropping up again and again. Maybe they really are trans, but it's all part of a pathology. It's a gradient - dysphoria is a mental health issue, but you have milder (person just wants to transition and live like an ordinary person) and graver (sex offenders who are probably getting off on the notion of being a woman).

We really are going to have to look hard at the idea of transgender being a mental health issue, if the likes of these guys are going to be cropping up again and again.

I feel like we should have looked at it hard as a mental illness or paraphilia when people started to suggest surgically removing their genitals. Like...we don't need more than that. Prima facie that is a strong indicator of potential mental illness that needs to be examined.

But an utterly contingent act of sidling up to another sexual minority civil rights movement seems to have led to people to be less critical in assuming that this is just more of the same: a harmless deviation from the norm.

And somehow the fact that trans are making claims that gays didn't (e.g. you need to provide an intensive suite of self-modification tools so I can pretend to be a woman or I will kill myself vs. just don't be bigoted towards me) doesn't seem to penetrate. If anything people use it in defense of uncritically accepting transpeople as the next civil rights cause when it seems to be the best argument for a mental illness definition of trans-identification.

I personally think this is incoherent but it manifestly seems to not bother others.

I'm not sure what Dreher's Law is - searching with DuckDuckGo suggests it's something to do with a Nazi prosecutor - but if defying it means trans women convicted of sex offenses will be put in male prisons, then while I would consider that a win, I wouldn't say it's completely out of the woods. Trans rights activists will almost certainly campaign for that trans woman to be put back in a female prison and may even end up reversing the decision.

Dreher’s Law of Merited Impossibility: X will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.

That is clever and astute.

I think it is.

Some people make accusations of conspiracy theory or slippery slope fallacies, but really would like to slide a step further down the slope and will suddenly switch to "and of course it is a good thing" after the latest slide down the slope has occurred. A handy term to group these people together could be valid.

It's a touch of motte-and-bailey while simultaneously pushing everyone down the slope while denouncing everyone who notices.

Is it really?

The original article is halfway to Moldbug levels of purple prose. The hypocrisy of the "overclass" is assumed rather than shown.

I'll agree with @4bpp.

I still think that it's actually more of a memetic superweapon in the class of bingo boards than an astute observation. Show me one example where someone actually says something that it is fair to gloss by this abbreviation, as part of one utterance, because as far as I can tell, all examples including the present one actually fall into one of the following patterns:

  • One person says "X will never happen". Another person says something that may be interpreted as "When X happens, you bigots will deserve it." This means nothing, unless you fall to the old temptation of treating the statements of all outgroup members as being coordinated.

  • One person says "X will never happen". Later, under different circumstances, the same person says something that may be interpreted as (...). This is only objectionable insofar as the person revised their former prediction without publicly conceding that they were wrong/miscalibrated/overdramatic before. The culture war is replete with people on all sides being wrong, miscalibrated and overdramatic and making no admission thereof, no doubt fueled by an overwhelming desire to imagine oneself the underdog ("the ingroup will NEVER win this much, since our enemies are too strong"), so I'm not particularly convinced that your outgroup is uniquely guilty of this.

  • One person actually says something like "X will never happen, but if X were to happen, you bigots would deserve it". I don't see anything inconsistent about this viewpoint, and I'm sure your ingroup believes lots of things that have this shape as well. If X does later happen, then the miscalibration thing above applies, but that's about it.

I personally encountered "vaccine passes will never be introduced in this country" and "why are you mad that vaccine passes have been introduced? Are you an anti-vaxxer?" during Covid. I can't say with perfect confidence that the same person said both, but I'm quite confident that I've never heard someone admitting fault for falsely asserting that vaccine passes would never be introduced.

That's the second point in my taxonomy, I believe. I stand by the statement that if the problem is just about mispredictions without subsequent apology, this is a nothingburger on the culture war grading curve.

Symmetrically, do you not imagine yourself possibly acting in the following way?

  • You predict that vaccine mandates will never be banned in the US.

  • Later, against all odds(?), compulsory vaccination is in fact banned. Someone in circles of what you thought were respectable right-wing peers is mad about this. You say something to them that amounts to "why are you mad that mandatory vaccination has been banned? Are you a progressive?". It does not seem relevant in this case to go out of your way to revisit your past prediction.

During the pandemic, I was seriously concerned that vaccine passes in the country in which I live were the first step on a slippery slope to a China-style social credit system, and sincerely predicted as much in public fora. When this came not to pass and vaccine passes were (eventually) abolished, I was only too happy to admit my error in judgement, as basic humility and epistemic hygiene demand. I am proud of my ability to acknowledge my mistakes and not to pretend that I have always been at war with Eastasia, even if it would be expedient to do so.

One example that I recall was that the classical liberal "You don't like gay marriage? Don't get gay married!" has turned into punitive attacks on cake decorators.

This is only objectionable insofar as the person revised their former prediction without publicly conceding that they were wrong/miscalibrated/overdramatic before.

The key observation is not that they were wrong, but that if a right-winger was foolish enough to believe them when they said it wouldn't happen, they'd be wrong, and that the right-winger probably shouldn't believe them the next time, either.

The general expression of this is "Cancel culture is not a thing at all, it's all a right-wing invention, nobody gets fired or removed from their job just for saying something" and then when someone has been fired, or otherwise removed from a position, just for saying something by the activists baying for blood then it's "X was engaging in hate speech and it's a good thing this happened to them".

You can argue (and I'm inclined to agree) that that particular instance is bad and calling it out is appropriate. What makes this a rhetorical superweapon is that it is effectively applied even in cases (such as, arguably, this one) where it is not.

One person says "X will never happen". Another person says something that may be interpreted as "When X happens, you bigots will deserve it." This means nothing, unless you fall to the old temptation of treating the statements of all outgroup members as being coordinated.

When One refuses to notice the existence of Another or treats you as crazy for believing that Another said something that may be considered representative, it's a mite insulting.

I think youre missing an important part. The whole conversation the idea describes goes more like this:

A: "We shouldnt do Y, that would imply we should also do X, which is bad"

B: "X will never happen, it would be totally safe to do Y"

Y is done, X happens

A: *angry*

B: "Obviously its good that X happened, its good for the same reason Y is good, are you really such a backward bigot that you think even Y is bad, or are you too dumb to understand consistent principles?"

Your third scenario is not a case of the pattern at all, because the "X will never happen" isnt used to assuage. Your second scenario might be, but I think youll find very few examples of conservatives using it that way. They just dont get enough wins for that.

As for the first example... well somewhere in between those two totally different people saying these things, the X did in fact happen. That would be very unlikely if noones mind changed. So propably there is a significant faction who made the switch in-one-person.

But thats not particularly relevant. The point is that you shouldnt believe the "X will never happen", and waxing about how totally sincere the liberals are and how mean and unsportsmanlike it is to say theyre not doesnt change that.

or:

I think it's interesting how it combines or reconciles two contradictory things ,one that is unpopular with another which is at least not as bad. For example, censorship is generally unpopular. It's hard to make a case for it. No company or group can easily come out as openly pro-censorship. But preventing hate or misinformation is at least easier to justify due to the socially desirability bias. So it's like, "We will not censor (or 'we are committed to speech'), but if there is censorship, it's to prevent hate speech/misinformation." This is the sort of logic I have observed with the left, at least. It's like a motte and bailey.

One person actually says something like "X will never happen, but if X were to happen, you bigots would deserve it". I don't see anything inconsistent about this viewpoint, and I'm sure your ingroup believes lots of things that have this shape as well. If X does later happen, then the miscalibration thing above applies, but that's about it.

I wish that this was the standard formulation of the law, for exactly the reasons you suggest. It's a case of bad argumentation that's not as simple as inconsistency, but which justifiably aggrieves people. You could probably spend years of research doing informal logic to work out what is wrong with it (insincerity? excessive discursive robustness?) but that doesn't mean it's right.

After all, our ability to systematically categorise and understand pathologies of human thought is far from advanced:

https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html

Hey I only got like ten paragraphs into this, and I would like to read the rest, but it feels a bit like a shaggy dog joke. Is the issue that when smart people are interested in something they get super invested in it and start talking in circles like an obsessed lunatic? Does he acknowledge that he is doing that in this essay?

He's talking like an obsessed lunatic, but not in circles. And the issue is that, when humans leave relatively concrete domains, our thinking tends to fall apart in a very diverse range of ways.

I'm not sure what Dreher's Law is

The Law Of Merited Impossibility

The Law Of Merited Impossibility is an epistemological construct governing the paradoxical way overclass opinion makers frame the discourse about the clash between religious liberty and gay civil rights. It is best summed up by the phrase, “It’s a complete absurdity to believe that Christians will suffer a single thing from the expansion of gay rights, and boy, do they deserve what they’re going to get.”

There are popular formulations that make it less specific to gay marriage like "that'll never happen but, when it does, you bigots will deserve it/it'll be good".

In this case, we've seen the absolute refusal to grant any potential downsides like this specific scenario, until it happened.

I wouldn't say it's completely out of the woods

Neither would I. To be frank: even having this discussion at all seems like a sign of vast confusion, in multiple domains.

But, while I did start to write a "Dreher's Law strikes again?" post I think it's fair to note that the worst didn't happen...yet. While pointing out that it still could.

the worst didn't happen...yet.

Yes it did. Like I said, it's old news.

I think it's fair to note that the worst didn't happen...

I don't think it's fair at all. If anything, the fact that Bryson ended up in a Women's prison in the first place kind of proves Dreher's point.

I think it's fair to note that the worst didn't happen

Not the worst, but a significant step on the slope. "What if a rapist identifies as trans and wants to be transferred to a women's prison?" was one of those steps on the slope that we weren't supposed to think about.

"What if a rapist identifies as trans and wants to be transferred to a women's prison?" was one of those steps on the slope that we weren't supposed to think about.

It was one of those steps we were told absolutely would not happen, could not happen, and we were just bigots and horrible people for even suggesting it. Years back on Ozy's old blog, to be fair to them, they did let a lot of discussion between conservative-leaning and others happen, and the trans thing was just taking off - this was the time of the bathroom laws. And one of the rock-solid principles the pro-trans right side insisted on was that no boy or man would ever pretend to be a woman, because the social costs were just too high, and for what? The chance to leer at naked women? And anyway, if any man did do this, they weren't really trans in the first place. So there could never be anyone pretending to be trans because if they did, then they weren't really trans, and only real trans people counted and real trans people would never do anything bad, they just wanted to use the bathroom.

Well, years of fighting hard to reduce the social costs of claiming to be the other sex have paid off with this kind of happening. And of course, we saw with the Loudoun County school case, they did all run out with "the boy wasn't really trans/never said he was trans or gender-fluid" after it was proven he did indeed assault two girls.

So where do you envision this slope leading?

On that matter, I'm not sure that this idea that people should actually be encouraged to think (non-quantitatively) about outrage-provoking edge cases of a policy would at all work in favour of the right-wing agenda. Most right-wing causes (access to guns, religious freedom, restrictions on abortion...) have edge cases that the median grilling centrist will find far more outrage-inducing (school shootings! sadistic pastors running special Jesus camps in their basement! 10 year old pregnant rape victims!) than that some rapist got transferred to women's prison. (Even if we assume that the prison environment is so lax that this basically guarantees that our protagonist will be able to rape the female inmates, they're prisoners! The median normie doesn't know any women who went to prison, can't imagine women going to prison for anything short of "microwaved her 2 year old", and probably has laughed about prison rape jokes when it was about male prisons)

I, for my part, don't find single instances of any of those situations to be particularly meaningful. In this particular case, if the prison can't be expected to prevent the rapist from assaulting other inmates, it seems to me that something is wrong with it that goes beyond admitting biologically male rapist inmates, and would only be hacked around by not doing that. Women sexually abusing other women is a thing that also happens; is the implication that that is less concerning?

Women sexually abusing other women is a thing that also happens; is the implication that that is less concerning?

The fact that cis women cannot impregnate other cis women is a major contributing factor why male-on-female rape has historically been considered a graver crime than female-on-female rape. For this specific reason, male prisoners raping female prisoners is a qualitatively different problem to female prisoners raping other female prisoners.

So where do you envision this slope leading?

If trans rapists have to be referred to as "she" by news reports, or else, even when they were still presenting as male at the time of committing rapes, then I think we're sliding downhill pretty fast.

If Isla and her ilk are really trans, then they're really women. And it's unjust and unequal treatment to make a woman serve a sentence in a men's prison. So they should be sent to female prisons. Otherwise we are not treating trans people equally, and it's TERF and it's the trans genocide and all the rest of it.

You can't say it's a mental illness. You have to accept it as normal. Look, they even have their own Pride flag! And if it's normal, then we will have women raping other women, using their feminine penis to do so, and nobody can say a word about it because you're guilty of transphobia and hate crime Trans rapists are real women too and should be housed in accordance with their gender, which means women's prisons.

Just accept the new reality, women can have dicks, men can get pregnant, and trans criminals are not representative of all trans people, even if they seem to be disproportionately sex offenders. Any questioning around what does constitute being transgender or how can we identify it is medical gatekeeping and oppression. Denial or psychological screening means driving trans people to suicide.

So where do you envision this slope leading?

A number of locations are plausible, but one of the more probable is towards treating trans women in the same way as non-trans women.

On that matter, I'm not sure that this idea that people should actually be encouraged to think (non-quantitatively) about outrage-provoking edge cases of a policy would at all work in favour of the right-wing agenda. Most right-wing causes (access to guns, religious freedom, restrictions on abortion...) have edge cases that the median grilling centrist will find far more outrage-inducing (school shootings! sadistic pastors running special Jesus camps in their basement! 10 year old pregnant rape victims!) than that some rapist got transferred to women's prison. (Even if we assume that the prison environment is so lax that this basically guarantees that our protagonist will be able to rape the female inmates, they're prisoners! The median normie doesn't know any women who went to prison, can't imagine women going to prison for anything short of "microwaved her 2 year old", and probably has laughed about prison rape jokes when it was about male prisons)

Do you think that outrage-provoking edge cases would not be used against right-wing agendas if the right-wing stopped encouraging median normies to think about outrage-provoking edge cases that could be used for right-wing agendas?

I, for my part, don't find single instances of any of those situations to be particularly meaningful. In this particular case, if the prison can't be expected to prevent the rapist from assaulting other inmates, it seems to me that something is wrong with it that goes beyond admitting biologically male rapist inmates, and would only be hacked around by not doing that.

Is your suggestion that everyone who is worried about biological male rapists in women's prisons are not concerned about rape in women's prisons?

Women sexually abusing other women is a thing that also happens; is the implication that that is less concerning?

It seems uncharitable to assume that the concern is about an asymmetry of outcome rather than an asymmetry of probability. Certainly, Mother Theresa killing and eating a woman is just as bad as Ted Bundy doing it, but that doesn't mean that we can't have asymmetries of concern. If you think you can demolish a widespread position in two clauses, perhaps you consider the possibility that you haven't appreciated some of the nuances of that position.

A number of locations are plausible, but one of the more probable is towards treating trans women in the same way as non-trans women.

I did get the impression recently that there is a push to drop the "trans" bit and just refer to them as "women".

And some are arguing that taking hormones means that trans women are indeed biologically female, so you can't make a distinction between biological sex and social gender. They are not biologically male, they are biologically female.

Some may not go that far, but they do hold that trans women are women and trans men are men, so you have to include trans women as well as cis women in the category of "woman".

Good points.

Slippery slope arguments aren't fallacious if you have good reasons to think that the slope is slippery.

some are arguing that taking hormones means that trans women are indeed biologically female

From the link: "to be a trans woman is to have been through, be going through, be intending to go through, or desire to go through a process that results in a change of a person's sex to female"

Tacitly admitting that only men can be trans women makes a poor argument that they're women. Wait a second, notice the sleight of hand in framing the premise in gender terms and the conclusion in sex terms? Very clever! But oh no, wait a second longer, that means a female can't be a trans woman.

Using the writer's own definition, either a) gender is primary and only a man can be a trans woman, or b) sex is primary and a female can never be a trans woman. Conclusion: Trans women aren't women and they aren't female. Alternatively, man and woman are empty signifiers and the pursuit to justify crossing from one category to the other renders the enterprise meaningless.

My position - the position a decade of high tempo trans rights advocacy itself has led me to - is that trans women aren't trans women either. It's a polite fiction. The uncomfortable reality is that they're transgender men with bad logic and a rhetoric built of sophistry. I've got no business telling them how to live their lives: change your name, buy some surgery, switch your wardrobe! I won't stop you. Demonstrate adequate commitment and I'll refer to you by the fitting pronouns and use practical labels out of simple pragmatism. But don't claim seriously that you are what you aren't and you aren't what you are.

[And vice versa re women/men and males/females.]

to go through a process that results in a change of a person's sex to female

Given that it is (currently) impossible to change one's sex, this definition implies that "trans women" is an empty set.

Even if we assume that the prison environment is so lax that this basically guarantees that our protagonist will be able to rape the female inmates, they're prisoners! The median normie doesn't know any women who went to prison, can't imagine women going to prison for anything short of "microwaved her 2 year old", and probably has laughed about prison rape jokes when it was about male prisons

I'm not sure it matters. Even putting aside a women are wonderful effect , I think some policies can be unpopular or eye-catching enough that it draws a serious political backlash. Which seems to have happened.

Especially when the underlying logic is also being used in other highly visible cases like women's bathrooms (which almost all women use) and schooling (which many people use) and sports (which many people don't play but gets outsized visibility)

I, for my part, don't find single instances of any of those situations to be particularly meaningful.

I do, when:

  1. The problem is totally avoidable and was in fact predicted ahead of time.

  2. It's motivated by a maladaptive ideology that will not be content to stop here.

  3. It is worse than a previously used or easily implemented alternative.

My problem with this is not that one person did it. I don't freak out at every car accident or serial killer. That's a real random, individual act that is probably not driven by policy - i.e. doesn't require large masses of people (or a small mass of dedicated elites) to buy into an ideology I find perverse and then instantiate that, even partly.

The fact that this - a rapist man - was even potentially a possibility is bad. Because going from an absurdity to a possibility for social ills is bad. Going from an absurdity to a possibility despite being clearly warned about it and the consequences being utterly predictable should make you worry about the ideological gulf between you and the lawmakers of your country.

Women sexually abusing other women is a thing that also happens; is the implication that that is less concerning?

The argument is simple:

  1. Women are less aggressive and physically powerful than men

  2. Therefore women are less likely to be in prison for violent crime. In fact: less women exist in prison period.

  3. Women are less likely to commit violent sex crimes.

  4. Women are also more likely to be the victims of said crime at the hands of men.

  5. Thus segregating women can not only reduce incidences of said male-on-female crime, but women's spaces can be more appropriately designed given their different crime patterns.

  6. Allowing men into female prisons breaks all of this. Not only are more powerful and aggressive men more likely to assault women (they assault men right now and they're harder targets), this will almost certainly lead to changes in female prisons to minimize this (e.g. more restrictive to provide more safety)

  7. Of course, as mentioned, there're far more men in prison than women so even a small transfer can have disproportionate impacts.

  8. Even worse than that: there are other practical considerations. The most obvious being the fewer men in female prisons the less the risk of pregnancies that the state will have to pay to take care of.

This situation seems like it makes women worse off for...minimal gain to say the least, while not helping the vast majority of men who do face more violence in prison. Women face increased threat from men. A few men get to transfer to women's jails while everyone else suffers. The more of them that do get to transfer, the more female jails simply resemble male jails and defeat the purpose.

I frankly see little to recommend this as a policy. If I had a metaphysical belief that TWAW then maybe I would feel differently. But I do not, and I think there's limits to how far people's self-making should go.

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