Mick Hartley

Meanwhile, fightback in California:

California has been sued over a law allowing transgender inmates to be held in jails based on their gender identity.

The Women’s Liberation Front (Wolf) filed a lawsuit alleging that the bill puts female prisoners at risk of being raped or sexually assaulted.

One of the women suing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) claims she was “grabbed” by a transgender inmate. Another who alleges she was sexually assaulted said “the psychological distress caused is exacerbated by the prison’s refusal to acknowledge the sex of her perpetrator”.

The lawsuit refers to transgender female inmates as men and is seeking to have the law overturned. Mahri Irvine, the executive director of Wolf, said: “CDCR has unequivocally violated the basic human rights of incarcerated women by subjecting them to traumatising, terrifying conditions.”

The law allowing transgender, non-binary and intersex prisoners to be held in prisons based on their gender identity came into force this year. Scott Weiner, a Democratic California state senator behind the law, accused its critics of being transphobic. “To broad brush the trans community and claim basically all trans women are sexual predators is false,” he told The Sacramento Bee.

This, of course, is entirely disingenuous on the part of Scott Weiner. No one is claiming that "basically all trans women are sexual predators". The claim is that the potential is there. Some men, like the Washington state rapist who conveniently changed gender to get himself into a woman's prison, will always try to game such a flawed system. The need for women to have safe spaces away from potentially predatory men – especially the often vulnerable women in prisons – must override the need for trans men to have their gender identity confirmed by virtue-signalling politicians.