Confused by letter about transgender prisoners
I AM very confused by the letter from Jane Roper of the Women’s Rights Network Guernsey about transgender prisoners on 8 March. They stated that: ‘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’. Did they not read the article? It states that ‘Guernsey has a mixed prison and as of mid-February had 80 inmates – 75 male and five female. Genders are accommodated separately for living and sleeping, but the prison is mixed during the working day.’
We assume that they are, therefore, about to start campaigning tirelessly to have the women separated from the men during the day. One would assume this would be number one on their priority list if they really do think women are in as much danger as they suggest from the men in Guernsey’s prison – or are they only worried about trans prisoners really?
Maybe if they are happy that the prison is mixed during the day then they accept that the prison’s safeguarding measures will keep everyone safe regardless of their gender or the time of day.
On one of her connected points – we are all ‘assigned a sex at birth’ based on what our genitals look like. For some people, who have disorders of sex development, the sex they were assigned at birth may not actually be their biological sex as they may have the opposite sex’s chromosomes, certain reproductive organs that are at odds with their genitals and/or produce the opposite sex’s hormones when they hit puberty. Biological sex is not as simple as everyone is wholly male or female – this may be true of the majority of people but not everyone. People can be born with mixed-sex characteristics but we are only ‘assigned a sex at birth’ based on one of our sex characteristics (our genitals) and humans are very complicated beings, even biologically – so we are ‘assigned a sex at birth’ and it’s not always correct in every case.
BECKY LE CRAS
St Peter Port