read some disturbing articles about male prisoners lying to take advantage of laws designed to protect trans prisoners as I go to tweet about them, I notice much of what I've been reading is ideologically biased. but I can't find anyone talking about it who isn't somehow, so 🤷♀️
Trying to find unbiased reporting on trans prison policy
25 tweets · May 2024 · 145 likes · 3 retweets · read on Twitter
first: a meta-thing. I am confused about how culture-war-hooked I am here. I notice I'm concerned about stuff. then I read things that resonate with my concerns. and the biggest part of my concern is less even what's happening specifically (prison policy is not an arena close enough or important enough to me) and more about a sense that there's a conversation that people are afraid to have here. but the arena of difficult conversations is one that is very immediately important to me, and where I can make a difference, at least in a local sense—the same way that reading others' perspectives has made a difference for me. so I'm here, talking about it. there's something post-culture-war that I'm trying to do here, although admittedly not as well as I would like to be able to. but I am showing up, as I am, here to make sense of stuff with those who want to make sense of stuff with me. and hopefully not stepping on too many toes in the meantime. thank you for whatever patience you can have for me, and for whatever open-mindedness you can bring to the timeline today, in this thread or elsewhere.
first article I came across was an interview with a prison guard. this site has a whole series of interviews with women who've been in cells with uhhh big aggressive people-with-penises who are not making any point of female gender presentation iwf.org/cruelandunusua…
that site is from a very conservative org—not itself a problem. conservativism is one virtue that could help people avoid this situation!
but when I looked it up... seems like IWF is not exactly known for adhering that well to the truth themselves. and I could observe myself that the articles lacked any perspective on (let alone from) actual trans people who have transferred peacefully, etc
found this piece on a nonpartisan gender-abolitionist site talking about a lawsuit (which maybe got dismissed 2 weeks ago?) their gender-abolitionism is quite radical tho, not conservative. it sees gender itself as an oppressive tool of the patriarchy!
of course, gender abolitionism, while not "left" or "right", IS opposed to not just to trans ideologies but even relatively non-ideological trans ontologies. ...meanwhile, in my quest for others' perspectives, I found this law firm praising SB-132 and dissing the lawsuit as simply anti-trans (which again, maybe it also is?) it would be nice if I could trust that the phrase "basic rights" in this context from a law firm meant things like food, water, shelter, and not things that are actually deeply non-obvious as to how to apply them when gender is confusing... ...but I don't trust that—particularly in the context of them simply declaring the lawsuit bogus rather than citing specific errors, and not empathizing with any possible real concerns that the people behind the lawsuit might have. the way they speak of it here seems ideologically captured to me (or pandering, if the point of this article is to appeal to a certain demographic, and they speak differently elsewhere).
it would be great if there were some non-partisan independent journalists to investigate these topics or maybe this needs adversarial collaborations, between opposed folks who are willing to come together and see what they can agree on?
anyway, I looked up the uhhh not-exactly-nonpartisan-either but at least law-in-fact text of the bill itself, and it doesn't take a lot of red-teaming to see how this could get abused eg: calling yourself nonbinary is sufficient to access a women's prison legiscan.com/CA/text/SB132/…
this excerpt notes a less-obvious issue in the wording of the bill: those moved based on gender are given extra rights to single cells etc. makes sense for eg trans men now in a men's prison! ...but ends up making women 2nd class citizens to lying men iwf.org/2023/02/27/nig…
bill issue # 3: taking cross-sex hormones not required. seems to me that'd help stop liars, even if not usual policy for trans self-id'ing in other contexts this bill says it's about "respect, agency, and dignity", but uhh lack of agency is kinda the central deal with prisons 🤨
most prisons have way more men who are willing to lie than they have trans women so unless the screening is very good, this law will transfer more lying-men than honest trans-women
although even if there were 10 relieved trans women transferred for every 1 horny-and/or-violent lying-dude that would still have a terrible effect on women's prisons! it changes the whole vibe. one fox in a henhouse is a big difference from zero.
theoretically, the screening is sufficient. in practice? I'm not invested enough in this whole thing to go look first-hand, but there's lots of interviews with women suggesting otherwise, including multiple quotes of men calling their old buddies and saying "get over here!"
why mightn't the screening be sufficient? interviews from IWF (conservative group) suggest that people are afraid of losing their jobs for doubting peoples' gender self-id are they really? would they actually? I don't know. sounds plausible given the climate around this stuff.
if the screening were perfect, this would still only MAYBE be a win afaict. it's still probably quite triggering for women who have been raped by men to now have to deal with having people around who have masculine silhouettes and penises (but are trans and not violent)
ironically there's a DIFFERENT law which says that the problem is not allowed to be solved by putting transgender people in a third prison, because that would violate some discrimination clause from a FAQ about the bill: cdcr.ca.gov/prea/sb-132-fa…
part of why I'm tweeting about this is that I'm trying to understand how trans activists are managing to make themselves (and trans people) look so bad here like here 👇, no-brainer response is "holy shit some people are lying!? we need better screening" latimes.com/california/sto…
but instead, in response to seeing the lawsuit as denying the existence of actual trans people (and maybe it is, separate from what should happen with prisons) ...the "LGBTQ+ advocates" seem to be denying the existence of liars but surely there are both! (where by "surely there are both", I'm not intending to directly agree or disagree with a gender abolitionist ontology or an LGBTQ ontology, about what is or is not a trans person or eg a "woman", I'm just noting that pragmatically it seems obvious to me that there are at least some people who want to move from men's prisons to women's prison's because they experience themselves as women and would feel safer & more at home there, and others who want to move to take advantage of women)
I genuinely wonder what's going on here! I often suspect filter bubbles: subcultures don't realize how out-of-touch their ontology is from most people's and how many people who are happy to live and let live, don't see gender self-id as top dog
there's furthermore ofc a failure to red-team / apply security mindset / consider how the system could be exploited but I find that hard to buy here because some advocates for this bill were trans prisoners. surely they'd met psychopaths in prison!
is it selfish tribalism? these activists don't care if women get groped by lying men, only that trans people get to be where feels right? if so, that would suggest these activists are also very short-sighted, as it seems to me to be very bad for trans causes medium-term
anyway, the other reason I'm tweeting about this is because I feel crazy seeing obvious things about gender only being said by people with extreme or partisan takes—in both directions. so I show up, trying to be a kind-enough outlaw to have dialogue.
and I would like to find more people who are willing to say multiple obvious things in contexts where there's a lot of pressure to pick a side and to be against someone. so say hi! or introduce me!
one principle that helps a TON with this endeavour is being able to agree with everybody that the problems they're concerned about are real and matter, while simultaneously disagreeing with everybody that their proposed solutions are viable