As Jo Bartosch points out, the case of American far-right terrorist Michael Hari sets a new precedent. Not only are his lawyers trying to get him housed in a woman's jail because of his supposed new trans identity, but they're also claiming that the torment he suffered over his gender identity actually affected his mental state, and played a key part in the inner turmoil that led to his crimes:
Michael Hari now wants to be known as ‘Emily Claire’. In 2017 he was part of a far-right militia. Prosecutors allege its aim was ‘to terrorise Muslims into believing they are not welcome in the United States and should leave the country’. Hari’s gang used a sledgehammer to break a window of the Dar al-Farooq Islamic Centre in Bloomington, Minnesota. They then lobbed a nine-kilogram pipe bomb and a container full of fuel into the imam’s office. It caused an explosion which left worshippers terrified.
Hari’s group was known as the White Rabbits. During the investigation, federal agents uncovered a White Rabbit arsenal including a fully automatic machine gun, tactical gear and communications equipment. Before bombing the mosque, the White Rabbits had attempted to bomb abortion clinics.
Hari’s lawyer, Shannon Elkins, is asking for the minimum possible sentence of 30 years, instead of life imprisonment, on the grounds that Hari was apparently suffering from ‘inner conflict’ over his ‘gender identity’ at the time of the crime. Hari is also seeking to be moved to a female prison estate.
‘As she formed a ragtag group of freedom fighters or militia men and spoke of missions to Cuba and Venezuela, Ms Hari secretly looked up “sex change”, “transgender surgery” and “post-op transgender” on the internet’, Elkins explains. ‘As she purchased military fatigues for their “missions”, she also purchased dresses and female clothing for a planned trip to Bangkok, Thailand, for male-to-female surgery. She was living a double life.’ Elkins even claims that Hari, despite his violent offending, is a ‘pacifist’ at heart.
This is the latest in a stream of stories from the US in which transgender ideology and woke sensibilities have collided with common sense. Debates around transgenderism have fractured along party lines. The Republicans and Christian conservatives lobby for sex-based rights, while the Democrats push to make any mention of biology a crime.
One of President Biden’s first actions after assuming office was to sign an executive order that effectively removed the sex-based rights of the four million women who work in the federal government – and of the many more who rely on statutory services. For most legal purposes in the US, ‘woman’ now means ‘anyone who identifies as a woman’, rather than adult, human female.
This is a particular problem when it comes to criminals. Legislation has been passed in many US states that explicitly allows males to be transferred to women’s prisons. In California, the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act allows prisoners who identify as ‘transgender, non-binary and intersex’ to be housed and searched in a manner ‘consistent with the incarcerated individual’s gender identity’. According to the LA Times, in California there have been over 260 requests by males seeking to move to female prisons. Around 20 per cent of California’s male inmates who identify as trans are sex offenders….
In media reports, Hari’s bearded photo has been accompanied by the name ‘Emily’ and female pronouns. How legal professionals, journalists and policymakers could have been so easily manipulated into disbelieving their own senses is an open question.
Most of the time, when a self-declared ‘trans-woman’ commits the kind of criminal act that is overwhelmingly associated with males, we are supposed not to notice. What’s unusual about Hari’s case is that we’re told that he committed the offence because of the inner turmoil of being ‘trans’.
The dark irony at the heart of this case is that self-proclaimed liberals, the woke and Democrats are taking the side of a racist white man who terrorised Muslims over the women Hari is likely to be imprisoned with. The women who could soon be forced to share a cell with Hari will be those at the bottom of the social-justice heap. Who’s left to speak up for them?
It's hard – well, it's impossible – not to take a cynical view of all this. Does anyone outside his defence team, and outside the strangely submissive US media, really believe that this is anything but a crude attempt to pull in some of that trans sympathy that seems to be so much in vogue in liberal circles there, and to enjoy a much easier life inside a woman's jail?
As noted at the Glinner Update, gender critical feminists were accused of lying, and trading in moral panic, when they suggested that such cynical opportunism might be expected when male criminals can simply claim they're women and be believed, and then be housed in soft female prisons, free to terrorise the inmates. #ThisNeverHappens, they were told. But it does keep happening:
There have now been several examples of dangerous men saying they’re women in order to receive lesser prison sentences and/or to be housed in women’s jails.
Last year a judge in the UK jailed a man, who used a hammer to threaten a shop worker, to six months in jail. But one hour later he changed his mind and said, because the man identified as a woman, he should be immediately released.
And they exclude the analysis we ran this April and May, which found at least eight trials took place in the UK in those months of men who identify as women, and one of a man who identifies as non-binary. Seven of the nine defendants were convicted paedophiles, the other two were guilty of extreme violence and terrorism. Their judges expressed sympathy for at least three of them, due to their ‘gender identities’, and two even avoided jail because of this.
But don’t worry – #ThisNeverHappens.
Mick Hartley 
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