//
"...the other factor that was overlooked in the post is that most of the sexual assaults in prisons involve women attacking other women or men attacking other men."
That’s skirting the issue completely. //
It isn't skirting the issue to acknowledge that the problem that prompted this post is just a small part of a larger problem. In particular, the claim I am making is that it wouldn't matter *where* you housed trans people, if adequate resources were in place to ensure that the would-be sexual abusers among them were effectively denied the opportunity. Merely creating separate prison facilities solves nothing.
To Pixie's post, specifically:
// Transgender people in prison, as a percentage (Jim will know) have attacked, far more than women have. //
Statistics on this type of abuse are not readily available enough to know anything, really. For example, in 2016-2019, there were something in the region of 100 reported sexual assaults in women's prisons, of which 7 are attributed to those who were born male but identified as women. There are at least two obvious deficiencies with such a statistic: firstly, this doesn't take into account unreported incidents. Secondly, any transpeople who have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate are in fact included in the remaining 90-odd reported incidents. There is no information, nor is there ever likely to be, on how many of these 90-odd assaults were by transitioned transwomen. Could be none, some, most, or all, take your pick.
Still, it seems safe to say that, proportionally, transwomen are far more likely to be victims than assailants. We should also be in agreement that "pre-crime" isn't a thing.
Finally, it seems to me that what Naomi is advocating for is along the lines of a "separate but equal" approach to trans people. Fair enough, as far as it goes, but historically the precedents aren't great for such approaches. Firstly, such approaches are rarely successful at maintaining equality (especially if, as in this case, one of the separated groups is treated with suspicion or is a minority, so that the society is less inclined to give them truly equal treatment); secondly, because the very creation of separation is based on the premise that the groups should be kept apart at all, which is kind of the entire debate here. If in prisons, why not also everywhere else? By creating separate facilities, are we implying that transpeople are inherently more of a threat to the rest of society? Or vice versa? Any measure that separates two groups, and so implicitly sets them against each other, is discomfiting.
This is, I think, separate to the question of whether we should create a third gender or not. The answer is most certainly yes to that, by the way, although probably not for the same reasons that Naomi has in mind.