Thread above details links between Guardian Trustees and the funding of Gender Identity Ideology. Below is an expanded reflection on the first tweet. The Marie Dean case.
As a lifelong Guardian reader I expected it to be at the vanguard of fighting for women’s rights, instead it seems to be, wilfully, campaigning to disregard the privacy, dignity and safety, of the most vulnerable women in our midst.
One of the earliest warning signs, for me, was the coverage of the Marie Dean case. This was a piece of campaign journalism highlighting the vulnerability of a trans prisoner, who had been housed in the male estate. The article covered, a burglar, Marie Dean, whose Hunger Strike was staged to obtain a move to the female estate.
Women, who engaged with the article, immediately highlighted that the Burnley Local Press had provided more accurate coverage. The prisoner had broken into homes to engage in “sexual acts” involving the underwear of teenage girls. It total they had committed over 30 offences of voyeurism and violence. In addition they were found not guilty of a previous charge related to indecent videos of children. Only after a storm of protest was the article amended to include the sexual nature of the offences. Even now these are located far down the article and only after parallels are drawn to Bobby Sands, an IRA prisoner, who also went on Hunger Strike to secure concessions re his incarceration.
The revised article is here: Guardian Marie Dean
Sarah Ditum’s article, in The New Statesman, also asks pertinent questions about the nature of the Guardian piece and why it was calling for someone convicted of sexually motivated “burglaries” to be housed in the female estate. Marie Dean.
Here is more Guardian coverage of another Trans prisoner Tara Hudson
The article mentions that Tara had 6 years of reconstructive surgery but omits to detail that this did not involve any genital surgery. In fact Tara Hudson worked as a “shemale” escort, servicing male clients with a “seven inch surprise”. Tara Hudson has not applied for a Gender Recognition Certificate. This means they are not even entitled to the “legal fiction” that allows, limited, application of women’s sex based rights. A petition to have Tara moved to a women’s prison garnered over 150,000 signatures. Given the woeful coverage how many of those signatories knew the full context?
Tara’s case was also raised in the Houses of Parliament on a number of occasions.
Not one of them reflected on the danger, to women, of incarcerating a biological male, with a history of violence, in the female estate. Do I think Marie Dean/Tara Hudson are at a higher risk , than other males, in the prison system? Yes. Do I think the answer is to raise the risk for female prisoners? No. Clearly there are some specific vulnerabilities requiring due consideration by the Prison authorities. Unfortunately, at present, we are witnessing a blatant disregard for females prisoners, some of the most vulnerable in our community, because “gender identity/expression” is being privileged above the rights of women. Sex is a protected characteristic for a reason and this is being cast aside for political expediency.
We had already seen the consequences of housing biological males in the female prison estate. Here is another case which ended badly. Guardian coverage foregrounds that this was someone who was “manipulative” and that the risk assessment was at fault. Truth is that any policy, if it relies on a subjective sense of an internal identity, is vulnerable to just this kind of manipulation. Karen White.
I will leave you with these. First up a submission from the British Association of Gender Identity Professionals. This was a submission to the Transgender Equality Inquiry. It highlights the naivete of assuming nobody would take advantage of a policy which allows self-identified, male-bodied prisoners to access vulnerable women.
Our politicians were warned. Here is Francis Crook from the Howard League for Prison Reform:
And here is a BBC fact check of Fairplay For Women statistics which were based on an FOI request.
Some prisons don’t keep records. Some of the crimes are, we now discover, male crimes recorded as female crimes. Is this about predatory males who are assuming a transgender identity, or a problematic rate of sexual offences committed by transgender individuals? Either way we have a problem. Women should not be acceptable collateral damage while we figure this out.
The Media seem to be terrified of this “debate” which women were told to “skip”. The background to the Guardian Trustees gives us an insight into their stance. How many more media organisations are cognitively captured by this ideology?
You can support my work here. Only if you have a surplus and don’t prioritise me over crowdfunders for important legal cases.
Researching the spread of Gender Identity Ideology and the impact on women’s sex based rights as well as gay rights. Particularly concerned about the harm done to young kids and teenage Lesbians / Gay boys.
£10.00
How many applications are there for transmen to be located to the male estate? And if the authorities consider that too dangerous why do they have so little regard for women’s safety in prison?