It's entirely possible that transwomen commit sexual violence more frequently than other males. But the data you cite don't tell us anything about transwomen in general; they only tell us about transwomen in prison. It could be the case, for instance, that transwomen commit non-sex crimes at lower rates than other males but sex crimes at the same rates. It could also be that males in prison for sex crimes are more likely to claim a trans identity in the hopes of getting transferred to a woman's prison, either for nefarious reasons (access to women in prison) or self-protection (recognition of the higher risk that other male prisoners might commit violence against them). Both of those situations are consistent with the data you cite. It's just hard to know what fraction of transwomen commit sex crimes, because our estimates of their population are so uncertain.
That said, I share your concern about transwomen in women's prisons. My preferred solution is to construct separate wings of men's prisons for any males at higher risk of violence from other prisoners. Transwomen, feminine gay men, disabled men, and older men can all be housed in those wings. This solution balances women's safety with transwomen's safety and has the additional benefit of making other groups safer.
I've been waiting for someone to write this article in a shareable form that doesn't come off as paranoid and hysterical so I can share it and hopefully help some of my "good progressive" friends to think more critically about this issue. Thank you!
A couple years ago, I was explaining to a good friend, some of the issues around gender ideology, including that transIDed males were being transferred to women's prisons; I was highlighting the fact that sexual predators aren't likely to have a problem "identifying as female" if it gives them access to victims. She turned white and said, "this sounds like my brother" who, I didn't know until this conversation, had been in and out of prison for sexual assault and who liked to wear dresses when he wasn't incarcerated. Have we really come to believe that those men--who likely had difficult childhoods and do indeed deserve "fair treatment"--should be allowed access to spaces that are designed to offer safety from assault for women and children? Have we forgotten the fetishes of flashing and intimidating those physically weaker than than the offender? How do we not see that by throwing the door open to any one who claims to be a woman normalizes men coming and going and puts women and children in danger? The reasonable transsexuals that I follow seem to totally understand this; anyone with a penis who is insistent on access to women's spaces is suspect in my opinion.
My first instincts was to think that you are about to be cancelled for stating such an obvious point- which makes me really sad for the state of discourse. I truly don't understand how women are being treated so appallingly in the name of inclusivity. I'm not a feminist but this looks like old fashioned misogyny in high heels
Also, I wish you (who know better) would stop using the Orwellian language of the cult.
There is no such thing as a "transwoman".
There are only men who wish they were women, and who go to extreme lengths of drugs and surgery to pass as women.
But they are not, and never can be, women.
"Transition" from one sex to another is a biological impossibility for mammals.
This is a plain fact of science. Mammalian sex is encoded at the cellular level. No amount of drugs or surgery can change it.
The cult has been extremely successful in forcing its Orwellian use of language on the rest of us. For example, "sex assigned at birth" is an absurdity. Sex is not "assigned" at birth, it is DETERMINED at birth, by a procedure (looking at the newborn's genitals) that has a 99.98% success rate.
So please, those of us who know the truth, let's stop going along with the cult's indoctrination and language.
I will simply comment with my own experience here, because I think the liberal compulsion to reflexively label as “racism”, “transphobia” etc anything that doesn’t neatly fit the utopian views they hold is simplistic, unintelligent and just plain terrible for us as a society.
30 years ago, long before “being trans” was a la mode, I was good friends with a woman-in-the making who gradually transitioned through surgery to recreate the exterior of a woman as much as is possible for a middle-aged man, because “he was in the wrong body”. This man — because that’s how I always perceived him, even though in conversation I made great effort to use the feminine pronoun in order to not hurt anyone’s feelings — proved always and unfailingly to be nothing but male. S/he reacted violently to verbal arguments with strangers, became first a prostitute and then a madam, imprisoning women from another country by confiscating their passports and forcing them to prostitute themselves for him/her. There was none of the greater agreeableness of a typical woman, and much more of a tendency towards interruption, physical solutions to disagreements and even pride in all of the above.
That early experience, along with my ongoing interactions with supposed “trans youth” in my professional work has left me completely unconvinced that people who believe themselves to be “trans” are in any deep and fundamental way “in the wrong body”. In my experience thus far, they continue to manifest the psychology and persona more typical of their actual sex.
I feel pity for these people who are now, through cultural influences so pervasive everywhere, convinced that if they happen to have a preference for something that isn’t entirely stereotypical for their sex, irreversible surgical and hormonal alterations are the solution.
Back in my high school years I recall a man in long blond hair and a pink suede mini skirt and white go-go boots who attracted no attention in his work place, as people were used to seeing him that way and that was that. How much easier it would be if everyone felt the freedom to simply express themselves as they wish, the way he did, instead of through profound self harm cramming themselves into narrowly defined predetermined categories.
Your great and thoughtful writing is much appreciated!
I think there is such a thing as being too compassionate or too fair and in those cases it harms instead of helps. I wonder if the too compassionate or too fair has nothing to do with compassion or fairness but is instead some kind of neurosis in us. It feels self destructive.
With regards to the prison issue, in fact with regard to ALL women only spaces.
I think the only solution is to make men’s prisons safer for men who don’t conform to society standards of masculinity.
Whether it’s a separate wing for trans prisoners or private body guards to make them safer among the rest of the population, the only solution is to keep men a.k.a. males in with other men.
The problem with compromise is the men ALWAYS win and the women ALWAYS lose.
We got to the situation we’re in by inches. You can see it in the language used, first it was transwomen are transwomen we use “she and her” pronouns because it makes them feel better.
Then it was trans women or women and you have to use she and her pronouns.
Now, Not only are transwomen women they’re actually female and if you don’t use she/her pronouns you’re literally murdering them.
It’s a tale as old as time, we give an inch they take a mile.
Also, it could be that they’re unsafe in men’s prisons not because they’re trans, but because it seems a lot of them are arrested for being paedophiles and paedophiles do not do well in prison.
I think there’s a very important consideration not touched on in your post, which I believe undermines your conclusion that because trans women in prison seem disproportionately likely to have been convicted of sex crimes, this has ramifications for non-trans women in single-sex public spaces. That is the nature of sex crimes themselves, which represent a big umbrella of convictions, as listed in your post.
Most sex crimes take place between people who know each other. The vast majority of rapes, sexual assaults, and the entire category of sex crimes involving minors take place between parties known to each other - domestic partners or casual romantic encounters, family friends, fathers or uncles or older siblings or other male relatives. You include people convicted of the possession of child porn in your list, despite the fact that someone in prison for that might never have touched a child in their lives. This is not to say these crimes aren’t serious and harmful - just to say that the line from “trans women are disproportionately convicted of sex crimes” to “therefore women in public bathrooms are in danger” is an extremely faint line, when you take into account how sex crimes tend to happen. If trans women are (1) proven to be disproportionately likely to commit stranger-danger assaults, (2) proven more likely to offend *after* identifying as and transitioning to women such that they could believably use a women’s restroom pre-conviction, and (3) public attacks on cis women by trans women are provably on the rise as opposed to just more likely to be covered in the news because they’re controversial, then I think this argument would hold more water.
> Ask yourself why women have often had spaces apart from men. Is it because all men are dangerous predators? Does any woman think that?
> No. It is because a very small number of men are dangerous predators. The existence of a very small number of dangerous predators has justified keeping all men out and maintaining single-sex spaces for women. Non-predatory men understand that they are not being personally excluded, insulted, or suspected of being predatory — all men are excluded to keep women safer from the predatory few.
You just made a very compelling argument for racial segregation.
It's entirely possible that transwomen commit sexual violence more frequently than other males. But the data you cite don't tell us anything about transwomen in general; they only tell us about transwomen in prison. It could be the case, for instance, that transwomen commit non-sex crimes at lower rates than other males but sex crimes at the same rates. It could also be that males in prison for sex crimes are more likely to claim a trans identity in the hopes of getting transferred to a woman's prison, either for nefarious reasons (access to women in prison) or self-protection (recognition of the higher risk that other male prisoners might commit violence against them). Both of those situations are consistent with the data you cite. It's just hard to know what fraction of transwomen commit sex crimes, because our estimates of their population are so uncertain.
That said, I share your concern about transwomen in women's prisons. My preferred solution is to construct separate wings of men's prisons for any males at higher risk of violence from other prisoners. Transwomen, feminine gay men, disabled men, and older men can all be housed in those wings. This solution balances women's safety with transwomen's safety and has the additional benefit of making other groups safer.
I've been waiting for someone to write this article in a shareable form that doesn't come off as paranoid and hysterical so I can share it and hopefully help some of my "good progressive" friends to think more critically about this issue. Thank you!
A couple years ago, I was explaining to a good friend, some of the issues around gender ideology, including that transIDed males were being transferred to women's prisons; I was highlighting the fact that sexual predators aren't likely to have a problem "identifying as female" if it gives them access to victims. She turned white and said, "this sounds like my brother" who, I didn't know until this conversation, had been in and out of prison for sexual assault and who liked to wear dresses when he wasn't incarcerated. Have we really come to believe that those men--who likely had difficult childhoods and do indeed deserve "fair treatment"--should be allowed access to spaces that are designed to offer safety from assault for women and children? Have we forgotten the fetishes of flashing and intimidating those physically weaker than than the offender? How do we not see that by throwing the door open to any one who claims to be a woman normalizes men coming and going and puts women and children in danger? The reasonable transsexuals that I follow seem to totally understand this; anyone with a penis who is insistent on access to women's spaces is suspect in my opinion.
It IS an easy problem: segregate by biological sex, period.
This solution has worked for thousands of years. We don't need to invent a new one, or pretend that the old one doesn't work. It does.
My first instincts was to think that you are about to be cancelled for stating such an obvious point- which makes me really sad for the state of discourse. I truly don't understand how women are being treated so appallingly in the name of inclusivity. I'm not a feminist but this looks like old fashioned misogyny in high heels
Also, I wish you (who know better) would stop using the Orwellian language of the cult.
There is no such thing as a "transwoman".
There are only men who wish they were women, and who go to extreme lengths of drugs and surgery to pass as women.
But they are not, and never can be, women.
"Transition" from one sex to another is a biological impossibility for mammals.
This is a plain fact of science. Mammalian sex is encoded at the cellular level. No amount of drugs or surgery can change it.
The cult has been extremely successful in forcing its Orwellian use of language on the rest of us. For example, "sex assigned at birth" is an absurdity. Sex is not "assigned" at birth, it is DETERMINED at birth, by a procedure (looking at the newborn's genitals) that has a 99.98% success rate.
So please, those of us who know the truth, let's stop going along with the cult's indoctrination and language.
Speak the truth. Live not by lies.
I will simply comment with my own experience here, because I think the liberal compulsion to reflexively label as “racism”, “transphobia” etc anything that doesn’t neatly fit the utopian views they hold is simplistic, unintelligent and just plain terrible for us as a society.
30 years ago, long before “being trans” was a la mode, I was good friends with a woman-in-the making who gradually transitioned through surgery to recreate the exterior of a woman as much as is possible for a middle-aged man, because “he was in the wrong body”. This man — because that’s how I always perceived him, even though in conversation I made great effort to use the feminine pronoun in order to not hurt anyone’s feelings — proved always and unfailingly to be nothing but male. S/he reacted violently to verbal arguments with strangers, became first a prostitute and then a madam, imprisoning women from another country by confiscating their passports and forcing them to prostitute themselves for him/her. There was none of the greater agreeableness of a typical woman, and much more of a tendency towards interruption, physical solutions to disagreements and even pride in all of the above.
That early experience, along with my ongoing interactions with supposed “trans youth” in my professional work has left me completely unconvinced that people who believe themselves to be “trans” are in any deep and fundamental way “in the wrong body”. In my experience thus far, they continue to manifest the psychology and persona more typical of their actual sex.
I feel pity for these people who are now, through cultural influences so pervasive everywhere, convinced that if they happen to have a preference for something that isn’t entirely stereotypical for their sex, irreversible surgical and hormonal alterations are the solution.
Back in my high school years I recall a man in long blond hair and a pink suede mini skirt and white go-go boots who attracted no attention in his work place, as people were used to seeing him that way and that was that. How much easier it would be if everyone felt the freedom to simply express themselves as they wish, the way he did, instead of through profound self harm cramming themselves into narrowly defined predetermined categories.
Your great and thoughtful writing is much appreciated!
great summary. the trans activists will probably slander you for this, as they always do to anyone revealing they are liars ..
I think there is such a thing as being too compassionate or too fair and in those cases it harms instead of helps. I wonder if the too compassionate or too fair has nothing to do with compassion or fairness but is instead some kind of neurosis in us. It feels self destructive.
With regards to the prison issue, in fact with regard to ALL women only spaces.
I think the only solution is to make men’s prisons safer for men who don’t conform to society standards of masculinity.
Whether it’s a separate wing for trans prisoners or private body guards to make them safer among the rest of the population, the only solution is to keep men a.k.a. males in with other men.
The problem with compromise is the men ALWAYS win and the women ALWAYS lose.
We got to the situation we’re in by inches. You can see it in the language used, first it was transwomen are transwomen we use “she and her” pronouns because it makes them feel better.
Then it was trans women or women and you have to use she and her pronouns.
Now, Not only are transwomen women they’re actually female and if you don’t use she/her pronouns you’re literally murdering them.
It’s a tale as old as time, we give an inch they take a mile.
Also, it could be that they’re unsafe in men’s prisons not because they’re trans, but because it seems a lot of them are arrested for being paedophiles and paedophiles do not do well in prison.
This is a thread I made on Twitter of crimes committed by 'trans' individuals in the UK:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ILOVETINY/status/1502954339815464962
There's a couple philosophers named Dembroff and Byrne who have been debating this topic. I recommend if you want an academic perspective.
I think there’s a very important consideration not touched on in your post, which I believe undermines your conclusion that because trans women in prison seem disproportionately likely to have been convicted of sex crimes, this has ramifications for non-trans women in single-sex public spaces. That is the nature of sex crimes themselves, which represent a big umbrella of convictions, as listed in your post.
Most sex crimes take place between people who know each other. The vast majority of rapes, sexual assaults, and the entire category of sex crimes involving minors take place between parties known to each other - domestic partners or casual romantic encounters, family friends, fathers or uncles or older siblings or other male relatives. You include people convicted of the possession of child porn in your list, despite the fact that someone in prison for that might never have touched a child in their lives. This is not to say these crimes aren’t serious and harmful - just to say that the line from “trans women are disproportionately convicted of sex crimes” to “therefore women in public bathrooms are in danger” is an extremely faint line, when you take into account how sex crimes tend to happen. If trans women are (1) proven to be disproportionately likely to commit stranger-danger assaults, (2) proven more likely to offend *after* identifying as and transitioning to women such that they could believably use a women’s restroom pre-conviction, and (3) public attacks on cis women by trans women are provably on the rise as opposed to just more likely to be covered in the news because they’re controversial, then I think this argument would hold more water.
This post prompted me to compose a response, where I explain why I disagree with your conclusion:
https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/contra-dolly-on-trans-criminality
> Ask yourself why women have often had spaces apart from men. Is it because all men are dangerous predators? Does any woman think that?
> No. It is because a very small number of men are dangerous predators. The existence of a very small number of dangerous predators has justified keeping all men out and maintaining single-sex spaces for women. Non-predatory men understand that they are not being personally excluded, insulted, or suspected of being predatory — all men are excluded to keep women safer from the predatory few.
You just made a very compelling argument for racial segregation.
There’s no such thing as “transwomen.” There’s no such thing as “trans.”
They’re men.
Men in dresses, men in wigs, men on estrogen, mentally ill men with irrational ideas in their heads.
They’re just men, and men commit the vast majority of crime.