No males – however they identify – should be housed with female prisoners
WE WRITE in response to your article ‘Trans prisoners accommodated according to gender at birth’. The article repeatedly confuses and misuses the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, and there is no doubt that the lack of clarity in their use is extremely unhelpful when discussing the subject of how people who identify differently to their biological sex are accommodated fairly in society.
Your headline refers to ‘gender at birth’. Humans are not born with a gender – we are born with a sex. The article also refers to ‘sex assigned at birth’. Sex is not ‘assigned’ randomly at birth, it is factually observed (often before birth by means of scans) and it is duly recorded. It remains unchanged throughout life irrespective of anything that anyone might do, including chemically blocking puberty, taking opposite-sex hormones, or having cosmetic surgeries.
We would encourage striving for clarity when reporting on this sensitive subject.
We are pleased to see that Guernsey Prison has updated its previous policy on the housing of trans-identifying persons and has adopted the recent UK Ministry of Justice advice (following the case of the male double rapist Isla Bryson who was placed in a female prison) that males identifying as transwomen who have committed sexual offences and/or who still have male genitalia should not be housed with women. Approximately 95% of transwomen retain their male genitalia.
UK Ministry of Justice figures show that as of 2019, 58.9% of males identifying as transwomen in UK prisons were incarcerated for sexual offences. This compares to 16.8% of the general male prison population and just 3.3% of the female prison population.
It is the view of WRN Guernsey that no males, however they identify and whatever surgery they may have undergone, should be accommodated with female prisoners. In our view, it is not only about women’s safety but also about women’s privacy and dignity. Prison accommodation should always be segregated by biological sex.
On a connected point, we understand that in Guernsey crimes are recorded by self-defined gender (for crimes where separate records are kept).
Males and females have very different crime patterns and levels of criminality, irrespective of how they self-identify. We would therefore urge Bailiwick Law Enforcement to ensure that records are amended so that crimes are recorded according to biological sex and not self-defined gender.
Stonewall, the leading UK LGBTQ+ charity, define ‘trans’ as ‘including transgender, transsexual, gender-queer, gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois’. While we defend the right of every individual to adopt whatever personal identity they wish, we are clear that biological sex is immutable and no self-declared identity should ever override it in situations when the safety, dignity, privacy and rights of women and girls are at stake.
JANE ROPER
Co-ordinator, Women’s Rights
Network Guernsey
www.womensrights.network
@WRNGuernsey
WRN.Guernsey@gmail.com