This is such a tough issue to deal with, definitely in the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" category in my book.
There's just not good, clean answer. Sex is almost universally binary (there are exceptions, though very rare). Gender is by no means binary though, its a totally different concept that just happens to correlate well enough to sex for most people.
I'd like this to be a scenario where you just don't have prisons if you can't decide how to effectively group people and keep them safe. Most people wouldn't go for that though, we very much like punishing people for their mistakes and making them trade months or years of their life as penance.
The only sensible solution to that is segregation within male prisons, as is done for other vulnerable groups of inmates such as ex-cops, gang informants, pedophiles, child killers, and similar.
Incarcerating males in the female prison estate was an absurd and demonstrably harmful policy, and it's very good news that this will now no longer be the case in the federal prison system.
Do you believe that someone who committed murder deserves to be held against their will in an unsafe environment?
My point isn't that prisons must be completely safe and nothing could ever go wrong. They should, though, be on par with the relative safety of the world outside prison walls.
In many cultures, exile or retribution was the answer to murder, and to prevent things getting so heated, strong and secure family and community bonds go a long way.
American prisons (I'm American, and also don't know much about non-US prisons) continue to be a great way to take advantage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and thus continue to benefit from slave labor.
My military uniform was made by enslaved people, for example.
I'm with Angela Davis and numerous other abolitionists on this topic.
Let’s back up: what do we need to do to keep these (and other) inmates safe?
They can call themselves a man, woman or air fryer, it’s almost irrelevant. What’s essential (and being lost in the hair-picking exercise of trying to solve for a universal theory of gender and sex) is that they not be shanked while Twitter has an incel side panel on sex ed.
We divide inmates by more than just sex. We put sex offenders, literal rapists and pedophiles, in separate accommodation for their safety. Why can’t we do the same for trans folk? Even if you believe they’re deranged, what right does anyone have to extend their disgust to damnation?
Im curious how the status quo compares with respect to the safety angle.
Is the primary safety concern sexual violence, or hate crimes? I imagine pregnancy would also be a concern.
If the main concern is sexual assault, can imagine there are risks either way, status quo and ex-post. If the concern is hate crimes, I could imagine trans people also suffering under either case. Prison is a high risk place.
> We divide inmates by more than just sex. We put sex offenders, literal rapists and pedophiles, in separate accommodation for their safety. Why can’t we do the same for trans folk? Even if you believe they’re deranged, what right does anyone have to extend their disgust to damnation?
That seems like a super reasonable compromise: a separate, segregated unit in a men's prison.
This is good news for female prisoners, at least those in federal prisons.
Hopefully the federal government can take measures to keep male inmates out of women's prisons and jails at the state and local levels as well. Perhaps through conditions attached to federal funding.
Can we first agree that this case is a terrible one, in which a man intentionally identified as a woman in order to get the chance to rape women?
There's more cases, but if we can't agree on ground truth in such an obvious case then there probably won't be common ground for calculating statistics.
Your question made me wonder enough to read the article. It said:
> Previous data from the BOP website indicated there are 1,529 transgender women and 744 transgender men in custody. It's also unclear how many are currently housed in prisons according to their birth sex versus their gender identity.
Of course, The issue is complicated by levels of security. However, a tran-man and a trans-women prison would at least eliminate the hypothetical problem of pregnancy during incarceration. It would be interesting to see numbers on that as well in the current status that has people assigned male and female at birth in the same facilities
> Musk and his lackey Trump only cares about how much they can pilfer from the US
Musk is a failed father, particularly when it comes to his trans kid(s). This might be a personal thorn for him that will wreak havoc and waste public resources to salve.
Readit News
There's just not good, clean answer. Sex is almost universally binary (there are exceptions, though very rare). Gender is by no means binary though, its a totally different concept that just happens to correlate well enough to sex for most people.
I'd like this to be a scenario where you just don't have prisons if you can't decide how to effectively group people and keep them safe. Most people wouldn't go for that though, we very much like punishing people for their mistakes and making them trade months or years of their life as penance.
Incarcerating males in the female prison estate was an absurd and demonstrably harmful policy, and it's very good news that this will now no longer be the case in the federal prison system.
Do you believe that someone who committed murder deserves to be held against their will in an unsafe environment?
My point isn't that prisons must be completely safe and nothing could ever go wrong. They should, though, be on par with the relative safety of the world outside prison walls.
They can call themselves a man, woman or air fryer, it’s almost irrelevant. What’s essential (and being lost in the hair-picking exercise of trying to solve for a universal theory of gender and sex) is that they not be shanked while Twitter has an incel side panel on sex ed.
We divide inmates by more than just sex. We put sex offenders, literal rapists and pedophiles, in separate accommodation for their safety. Why can’t we do the same for trans folk? Even if you believe they’re deranged, what right does anyone have to extend their disgust to damnation?
The situation is complicated. But not tough.
Is the primary safety concern sexual violence, or hate crimes? I imagine pregnancy would also be a concern.
If the main concern is sexual assault, can imagine there are risks either way, status quo and ex-post. If the concern is hate crimes, I could imagine trans people also suffering under either case. Prison is a high risk place.
That seems like a super reasonable compromise: a separate, segregated unit in a men's prison.
Hopefully the federal government can take measures to keep male inmates out of women's prisons and jails at the state and local levels as well. Perhaps through conditions attached to federal funding.
Dead Comment
Tremaine Carroll is a good example of why we need to stop coddling people's feelings on this.
There's more cases, but if we can't agree on ground truth in such an obvious case then there probably won't be common ground for calculating statistics.
But like everything else, Musk and his lackey Trump only cares about how much they can pilfer from the US.
> Previous data from the BOP website indicated there are 1,529 transgender women and 744 transgender men in custody. It's also unclear how many are currently housed in prisons according to their birth sex versus their gender identity.
Of course, The issue is complicated by levels of security. However, a tran-man and a trans-women prison would at least eliminate the hypothetical problem of pregnancy during incarceration. It would be interesting to see numbers on that as well in the current status that has people assigned male and female at birth in the same facilities
Musk is a failed father, particularly when it comes to his trans kid(s). This might be a personal thorn for him that will wreak havoc and waste public resources to salve.
Dead Comment
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