Mick Hartley

California, it has been announced, will henceforth house transgender inmates by gender identity:

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on Saturday requiring California to house transgender inmates in prisons based on their gender identity — but only if the state does not have “management or security concerns.”

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation houses men and women in separate facilities. Transgender inmates are often housed based on their sex assigned at birth. Advocates say this is dangerous, particularly for transgender women housed in facilities for men.  

How much nicer for them to be housed in facilities for women. Obviously the safety of the women in the facility is of no concern. Why would it be?

The law says the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation cannot deny those requests solely because of inmates' anatomy, sexual orientation or “a factor present” among other inmates at the facility.

But the state can deny those requests if it has “management or security concerns.” If a request is denied, the state must give the inmate a written statement explaining the decision and give the inmate a “meaningful opportunity” to object.

Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who authored the bill, said he doesn't expect that exception to be used very often.

“It's just a false narrative about transgender people and about transgender women in particular that they're somehow not really women and are just trying to scam their way into women's bathrooms or facilities in order to do bad things,” Wiener said. “Overwhelmingly the people who are being victimized are trans people.”

A false narrative? Well, here's an interesting case, in Ireland:

A teenager who was “born a male but identifies as a female” is facing four counts of making threats to kill or cause serious harm.

The accused, who has demonstrated a pattern of criminal and extreme physical and sexual violence towards women, is eager to be held in female custody while awaiting trial.

Gardaí, the national police service of the Republic of Ireland, says 18-year-old Barbie Kardashian made threats of violence against two individuals in July, August and September of this year. The youth was arrested on the night of Thursday, September 24, and has been remanded into custody.

At the time of his arrest, Mr Kardashian was free on bail on charges stemming from sexual assaults on two women. 

According to gardaí, the accused young man “made some statements” on the date of his latest arrest “that she did intend to do some harm to herself.” Michèle Finan, solicitor for Mr Kardashian, insists her client would be “exceptionally vulnerable in a prison setting,” and is “very anxious she be detained in a prison facility for females, as she identifies as a female.”

The solicitor requested that her client’s “certificate of gender recognition” be submitted to Limerick District Court, which is hearing the case. 

Barbie Kardashian?? His real name, apparently, is Alejandro Gentile. 

Yes, he's been to the Tavistock Clinic in London, where it was noted that he outlined his gender difficulties by rote, as it were, without emotion – as though he was reciting from something he'd learned. Nevertheless it seems he did manage to obtain that all-important gender recognition certificate.  

He's clearly a deeply troubled young man. [I mean, just look at him.] Sexual assaults on two women. Brought up in a highly dysfunctional family, and violently attacked his mother.

Not a typical case, no doubt. One would hope that if this were in California those “management or security concerns" would be invoked and the inmates of a woman's prison would be spared his unwelcome attentions. But still, it does rather cast doubt on the Californian senator's blithe assertion that it's just "a false narrative" that trans women could ever be a danger to real women.