Much better examples are US Southwest/Californian concerns around water scarcity being imported to places where water is not scarce, or similar concerns around emissions from electricity generation being imported to places that use high amounts of renewables/nuclear energy. Another example is civilian disarmament fear mongering switching from being about cheap handguns to "assault weapons" after DC v Heller.
Around the mid-2010s, two events occurred in close succession: the Conservative government of the time proposed a policy of gender self-identification, and trans-identifying male prisoner Karen White was charged with sexually assaulting female prisoners while he was incarcerated in a women's prison. He was later convicted and it was uncovered that he'd been sent to the women's prison due to his "female" identity, despite having previous convictions of sexually assaulting and raping women.
The reaction from women was immense, organised on Mumsnet and other forums, mostly by left-wing feminists. After a lot of protest and publicity, the Tories dropped this policy. It was only later on they changed tack with policy proposals that shifted the balance away from trans activism, mostly to draw a line between them and Labour.
It should be no surprise to anyone that such a policy is very unpopular. Prisons are separated by sex for good reason.
Trying to pretend that some of these male criminals are women just because they said they are is not a particularly convincing argument.
And physiologically, someone whose outie was surgically modified into an innie is going to have just as many difficulties topping as a natural born woman.
The penal systems in California and New Jersey have had similarly horrifying outcomes after adopting such policy. Women prisoners raped, sexually assaulted, even impregnated by male inmates.
This is a direct result of trans activist policy that permits claims of "gender identity" to override sex.
Regardless of your intent, which I cannot know because I am not a mind-reader, what you write here therefore still comes across as if it was ~"it's only bad when pre-op trans women do it".
Sexual assault and rape is terrible, no matter who the perpetrator or victim is. On this, I assume we agree.
The issue here is policy changes that remove one of the most important safeguarding measures to prevent this in the prison system: segregation by sex, so that all male inmates have no physical access to any female inmates.
I am glad. There is no intent to misread, hence my caveat between the commas and the tilde: this is merely how I did perceive it.
> one of the most important safeguarding measures to prevent this in the prison system
I assert, and I thought demonstrated, that this does not in fact seem to be an effective safeguard.
There are different safeguards within each prison to protect prisoners from others of the same sex. VPUs for example.
- https://metro.co.uk/2024/07/02/inmate-filmed-sex-wandsworth-...
The Cass report is certainly not a "US talking point".
https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-r...
Still, at least it means the Tory party completely forgot about wanting to bring back the hunting of foxes on horseback.