I recently received a response to an article that I had published on ‘luxury beliefs’. I believed that the arguments advanced by my correspondent had simply failed to understand the relevant evidence, and so I explained the nature of that evidence and what it actually shows. For example, my correspondent supports transgender self-identification for rapists, even when the offender only decides to identify as a woman after conviction. The position of my correspondent is that in such cases the rapist should be transferred to a female prison, because “transwomen are women”. They described their justification for this position as follows:
“There is no credible evidence that policies allowing trans women in women’s prisons lead to widespread violence. John cherry-picks extreme anecdotes and ignores the broader context. The actual data shows that trans women in prison are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.”
Quote from a response to my article
It is indeed correct that I had cited one particular case in the UK where a convicted rapist had been transferred from a male prison to a female prison after identifying as transgender; whereupon multiple other women then became victims of similar assaults by the same offender. It is not difficult to find other comparable cases.
It is also correct to say that if a trans-identifying male is incarcerated in the UK, they are more likely to be the victim of an assault than the perpetrator of one. However, I pointed out that the evidence my correspondent provided to support this statement does not in fact support their preferred policy. Specifically, the official publication they cited reports that in the relevant period, there were 203 trans-identified males and 41 trans-identified females in UK prisons. Each of those 41 trans-identified females were housed in female prisons, while almost all (196) of the trans-identified males were incarcerated within male prisons. That is, of the 203 trans-identified males in the UK prison system, only 7 had been allowed to transfer into female prisons. Consequently, for any given trans-identified male being given a custodial sentence, the chances that they would go on to assault a woman while in prison were very small, because there was a very small chance of them being housed in a female prison. Contrary to the argument advanced by my correspondent, this evidence does not suggest that trans-identified male prisoners are unlikely to commit violence against female prisoners. It merely suggests that they’re unlikely to ever come into contact with any female prisoners.
I then went on to provide some additional evidence that was more relevant to the central issue. Specifically, I explained that:
- 3.3% of women incarcerated in the UK are sex offenders
- 16.8% of men incarcerated in the UK are sex offenders
- 58.9% of trans-identified men incarcerated in the UK are sex offenders
Since we are considering whether trans-identified male prisoners should be locked into a cell with women; and since my correspondent was supportive of this policy on the basis that these trans-identified male prisoners were unlikely to commit violence against women; then it would seem highly relevant to note that a large majority of this group had in fact already been convicted of committing violent sexual crimes against women and children. That is, I had not in any way “cherry-picked an extreme anecdote” that “ignored the broader context”. Rather, the case of violent sexual crime against women that I had cited was actually entirely typical of the broader context.
My article was certainly very critical of the position that my correspondent was advocating. Specifically, I stated that “the core problem with woke advocacy for transgender self-identification is that it dismisses the real harms that others will suffer as a result of this ideology”. I had believed that this was a matter of turning a blind eye to the sexual assaults that other women would inevitably suffer, in service of supporting a preferred ideology. I have since received a further response from the same correspondent though. Unfortunately, their position has now descended into offering apologetics for the most appalling offenders, by falsely denying that the majority of the relevant group have in fact been convicted of sex crimes.
A failure of any writer to understand that the evidence they are citing does not support their position, can be merely a function of an obtuse or dim-witted person. However, it is an entirely different thing to invent and publish false statements about evidence that highlights severe dangers to vulnerable women, specifically in order to support a policy that would expose those same women to a high risk of sexual assault. To publish deliberate fabrications and inventions as apologetics for a group of male offenders who have mostly committed sex crimes, as part of advocacy for them to be locked in prison cells with women, is entirely disgraceful.
The full response that was written to me is available here. The number of demonstrably false statements among all of this screeching is so large that it would be too tedious and tiresome to enumerate them all. However, the following is the mendacious and dangerous trumped-up deception that cannot be ignored.
“John cites that 58.9% of trans-identifying men in prison have been convicted of sex crimes. He conveniently ignores that this figure is based on a small, self-selected group and fails to reflect the reality of trans incarceration more broadly.”
Quote from a response to my article.
It is just false to state that the figure I quoted was derived from “a small self-selected group”. However, this statement is not just factually untrue, it is a deliberate lie that was invented out of thin air. Moreover, this not just any lie but one that seeks to hide the fact that the majority of trans-identified males in this population were in prison to be sequestered because of the danger they represent. Most of this group had lawfully been found to represent a danger to women of rape and sexual assault. The legal system had decided that women needed to be protected from these appalling violent offenders, and my correspondent invented lies to disguise this as part of their advocacy for locking the same people in a cell with a vulnerable woman.
The actual source of the 58.9% figure, as was highlighted to my correspondent in my article to which they responded, was the official UK statistics for the entire prison population in the country. There is nothing small or self-selected about this group. The official UK Offender Management Statistics published quarterly by the UK Government, indicates that during the relevant period:
- there were 78,781 men in UK prisons, of which 13,234 were sex offenders (16.8%)
- there were 3,812 women in UK prisons, of which 125 were sex offenders (3.3%)
- there were 129 trans-identified males in UK prisons
The three academics who submitted evidence on this subject to the Women and Equalities Committee in the UK Parliament, then submitted a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to the Ministry of Justice. They sought additional details behind the published statistics, and among the extra information they obtained was the number of those 129 trans-identified male inmates who had been convicted of sex offences. The full answer to their broad FoI request is here and the answer to the specific question on the 129 trans-identified male inmates is here. Extracting a few example numbers from those details:
- of the 129 trans-identified males in UK prisons, 76 of them were sex offenders (58.9%)
- of the 76 trans-identified males in UK prisons who had committed sex crimes, there had been 36 rape convictions
- among this group of 76 there had also been 31 convictions for sexual assault, attempted sexual assault, or attempted rape
This is the precise polar opposite of a “small self-selected group”. These figures are derived from the official statistics on the entire UK prison population as a whole.
If someone publishes a long list of lies about me personally, I am certainly capable of responding to point this out. Such publications say much more about the author than me. However, it is quite a different thing if someone invents mendacious lies that deliberately seek to minimise significant dangers to women, in service of a group of trans-identified males who are mostly sex offenders. It is worse still that these lies have been manufactured to support a policy of locking rapists up in the same cell as a woman. That cannot stand. Those disgraceful and irresponsible lies should be corrected immediately.