> You've just named countries. Pick one. Read the actual policy. It might surprise you.
Sorry but this is just vague insinuation. You haven't given any hints as to what you believe will be a surprise. Could you enlighten me please?
I mentioned those three regions because they have self-identification policies for "gender identity" that extend to prisons, and men who call themselves women are currently incarcerated in women's prisons there.
> If trans women behaved the same as men, you'd expect them to – as a population – behave the same as men. From the evidence I have access to, they don't.
Okay then, please share your evidence? Keeping in mind that any man can call himself a woman.
> One can't change how reality works by sheer force of rhetoric.
Agreed, so please refrain from implying that these men are female, as you did with your mention of "male-on-female violence". I'm sure you know they are male.
> What happens when you put people with breasts and soft features and lower-than-average physical strength in a men's prison?
You are presumably referring to men with self-induced gynecomastia. This will likely be a subset of, or at least have a significant intersection with, men who call themselves women.
The same argument I made in other comments applies to these men too - their safety is an issue for the male prison estate to deal with. Men's prisons have plenty of experience handling at-risk prisoners, for example paedophiles, ex-police officers, ex-gang members. If men with breast tissue are at elevated risk, they can be handled in the same way. There is no reason to place these men in women's prisons.
> It's likely not safe to place trans women into male prisons either though, so I think there ought to another axis than just male/female along which we can segregate, such as violent/non-violent criminal history/tendencies.
Male-on-male violence is a problem for the male prison estate to solve within its walls. It doesn't make any sense to put women at increased risk of male violence to protect men from male violence. Women don't exist as some sort of violence shield to protect men from each other.
Men's prisons already have safeguards in place for vulnerable male prisoners, such as paedophiles, ex-police officers, ex-gang members and so on - putting them on separate wings of the prison, moving them to a different category of male prison (which is in practice similar to your suggestion of violent/non-violent separation). If men who call themselves women are at elevated risk from other men, the same safeguards can be applied to them. There is no reason whatsoever to house them in a women's prison.
> This does not apply to the actual policies I assume you're complaining about. Please read the policies – or name them, if you have found some that work that way.
California, Washington, Ireland, for example. All places where prisoners are being incarcerated based on their claims of "gender identity" rather than sex.
> Nobody's disputing that (much as I'd love to live in a world where I could). You haven't demonstrated the risk that trans women pose to the women around them.
Sorry, but this isn't how this works. It is already well established that men present significant risk to women, particularly in spaces where women are vulnerable. If you want to claim that a subset of these men - that is, any man who calls himself a woman - poses a significantly lower risk to women, then you need to argue this based on evidence, rather than simply assuming it.
> I'll provide one: male-on-female prison violence is a well-established phenomenon. What do you think is going to happen when you put a handful of women in an all-male prison?
I entirely agree that women who call themselves men must not be placed in men's prisons, just as men who call themselves women must not be incarcerated with women. As I argued above, this is the whole point of sex-segregated prisons, safeguarding women from male sexual abuse and violence.
I'm talking about men in women's prisons. Any man can call himself a woman, and under policies that elevate "gender identity" over sex, will be believed. Effectively making women's prisons mixed-sex environments.
Sex-segregation of prisons (and other spaces where women are vulnerable) exists for good reason: the safety and dignity of women. The need for this has been well-documented since the 19th century, when reformers campaigned for improvements to prison conditions, including making them separated by sex. Elizabeth Fry in particular kept extensive diaries of the horrors that women had to endure in mixed-sex prisons.
This isn't "pearl clutching", as you put it, it is based on significant evidence of the risk men pose to women. Evidence that has since been added to with these cases I've cited, that resulted from prison authorities deciding to reintroduce mixed-sex environments.
On the flip side, you've presented no argument whatsoever as to why men should be incarcerated in women's prisons. You appear to have simply assumed that this should be the case, and are basing your rhetoric upon this assumption.
Even one case of women prisoners being raped by men who are incarcerated in a women's prisons is sufficient to show that this recent experiment in removing this safeguarding measure for women inmates has been a failure, and must be abandoned.
That we have several documented cases already only supports this point further.
The full expression this term is taken from is: "a few bad apples rot the whole barrel".
Women don't know in advance who the bad apples are amongst men, so in contexts where women are particularly vulnerable to predation from such men, the whole barrel must be considered as being rotten. This is why we have sex-segregated spaces.
Here are some search terms for you, these are examples of men in women's prisons who have sexually assaulted or raped women inmates while incarcerated: Janiah Monroe, Karen White, Ramel Blount.
None of these men should have been there in the first place, of course.
> women prisoners raped and impregnated by male guards
This is why in the UK, women's prisons have a policy where at least 50% of prison officers must be female, and only female officers are allowed to conduct intimate searches where needed, to mitigate against the risk of sexual abuse by males.
That there is an existing, mitigated risk of male sexual predation from prison staff, does not justify further increasing this risk to female inmates by locking them up 24/7 with men, just because these men call themselves women.
We have sex-segregated prisons for good reason, this was the result of very well documented evidence, from prison reformers of the 19th century, of the harm and abuse of woman that is enabled by mixed-sex prisons.
> I'll add: the current fuss about "protecting women's spaces" is pointless
> rather than just appealing to hypothetical situations
These aren't hypothetical situations. In some jurisdictions, prisoners are housed based on their self-declared "gender identity". So men who declare themselves as women are being incarcerated in the female prison estate. Women inmates have been raped, sexually assaulted, and even impregnated by some of these men.
This is what happens when this polite fiction becomes law and policy, abusive men take advantage of it - undermining the very reason why we have sex-separated spaces in the first place. Protecting women's spaces from men who call themselves women is very important for the safeguarding of vulnerable women.
Sorry but this is just vague insinuation. You haven't given any hints as to what you believe will be a surprise. Could you enlighten me please?
I mentioned those three regions because they have self-identification policies for "gender identity" that extend to prisons, and men who call themselves women are currently incarcerated in women's prisons there.
> If trans women behaved the same as men, you'd expect them to – as a population – behave the same as men. From the evidence I have access to, they don't.
Okay then, please share your evidence? Keeping in mind that any man can call himself a woman.
> One can't change how reality works by sheer force of rhetoric.
Agreed, so please refrain from implying that these men are female, as you did with your mention of "male-on-female violence". I'm sure you know they are male.
> What happens when you put people with breasts and soft features and lower-than-average physical strength in a men's prison?
You are presumably referring to men with self-induced gynecomastia. This will likely be a subset of, or at least have a significant intersection with, men who call themselves women.
The same argument I made in other comments applies to these men too - their safety is an issue for the male prison estate to deal with. Men's prisons have plenty of experience handling at-risk prisoners, for example paedophiles, ex-police officers, ex-gang members. If men with breast tissue are at elevated risk, they can be handled in the same way. There is no reason to place these men in women's prisons.