Male Prisoners Who Claim to Be Women Are Not Vulnerable—In Fact, They Are More Dangerous Than Other Men
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Male Prisoners Who Claim to Be Women Are Not Vulnerable—In Fact, They Are More Dangerous Than Other Men
We have the stats to prove it.
There is a persistent narrative among trans rights activists that trans-identified male prisoners are incredibly vulnerable. So vulnerable, in fact, that they have no choice but to take shelter among women.
Never mind the fact that no other population of vulnerable male prisoners—elderly men, young men, men with disabilities, even gay men—have ever demanded accommodation in the female estate; the claim that trans-identified men are particularly vulnerable as a group is simply not true.
In fact, they are particularly dangerous.
Statistics consistently show that roughly half of male prisoners who claim to be women are incarcerated for sex offenses, which is significantly higher than the rest of the male prison population (and which eclipses the rate of sex offenders among women).
The first time this fact was brought to wider attention was with official United Kingdom Ministry of Justice statistics obtained in 2020. The data was submitted as evidence by Professor Rosa Freedman, Professor Kathleen Stock, and Professor Alice Sullivan to the Reform of the Gender Recognition Act inquiry.
It shows that nearly 60% of trans-identified male prisoners in the UK are sex offenders, making them 3.5 times more likely to be sex offenders than men who don’t identify as women. It should surprise no one that they are also nearly 18 times more likely to be sex offenders than women in prison.
Similar rates of sex offenses were found among trans-identified male prisoners in the United States.
In 2021, Keep Prisons Single Sex USA made a public records request with the Bureau of Prisons. The data revealed a sex offense rate of 48.71% for the “trans identified male to female” prison population compared to 11.2% for the general prison population and just 4.71% among the “trans-identified female to male” prison population.
More recently, journalist Genevieve Gluck discovered that Correctional Services Canada (CSC) also released two reports in 2022 that, when combined, show similar rates.
The first, titled “Examination of Gender Diverse Offenders,” revealed that there were 99 “gender diverse offenders” in custody between December 27, 2017, and March 13, 2020, composed of 62% “trans-women,” 21% “trans-men,” and 17% “other.”
The second report, “Gender Diverse Offenders with a History of Sexual Offending,” revealed that 33% of these offenders had a history of sexual offending, 82% of which were “trans-women.” This means that 44% of incarcerated men who say they are women are sexual offenders.
There were no “trans-men” with sex offenses reported.
Also note that 17% of “gender diverse offenders” with sexual offenses were placed in an “other” group, which the report defines as, “gender fluid, gender non-conforming/non-binary, intersex, two-spirited, or unspecified.”
Failing to report the sex of the offenders in this “other” group is so ridiculous that it calls into question the utility of these reports in the first place. What use and benefit is it to anyone to note that roughly 38% of people who identify as some “other” flavor of trans in prison are sex offenders if we don’t know whether they are male or female?
Unless this group is made up entirely of female offenders (highly unlikely), then the actual rate of sex offenders among male prisoners who identify as some type of “trans” or “other” is likely higher and more in line with the numbers we have seen out of the United Kingdom and the United States.
In fact, it would likely be more in line with the 50% figure noted by the former Deputy Commissioner for Women in 2019. As activist Heather Mason wrote for Women Are Human:
In a meeting on May 23, 2019 with stakeholders about transfers from men’s prisons to women’s prisons, former Deputy Commissioner for Women, Kelly Blanchette, reported that of all transfer requests from men’s prisons, 50 percent came from sex offenders who offended as men.
This meeting occured during the time of data collection for the reports.
Despite the Canadian government’s attempt to fudge the numbers, a clear picture has emerged from its own and other country’s statistics that trans-identified male offenders are not vulnerable men who need and deserve protection in women’s prisons. They are often very dangerous predators who are more likely to sexually victimize women then even the general male prison population.
Consider the damning conclusion to the “Gender Diverse Offenders with a History of Sexual Offending” report (bolding mine):
Over 80% of gender diverse offenders with sexual offence histories were trans-women. Sexual offending indicators showed that the majority of these offences were committed while living as their biological sex, and that the highest proportion of victims were children or female. In addition, a majority of this sub-group caused death or serious harm to their victim(s).
These men are requesting transfers to prisons that have their preferred pool of victims, and they are getting away with it. Keep in mind that Canadian women’s prisons also have mother-child programs.
I would also point out that these men are still “living as their biological sex,” as that doesn’t change.
For the real-life implications of this horrifying state of affairs, consider the case of Matthew Harks, who now goes by Madilyn.
Harks is a serial pedophile with over 60 victims and an estimated 200 offenses. According to the Toronto Sun, a 2006 psychiatric assessment said Harks has an “all-encompassing preoccupation in sexually abusing young girls.”
In 2014, he began “living as a woman,” and the Canadian government rolled out the red carpet for this monster. He was transferred to a women’s prison where he targeted the most “child-like” women for harassment and assault.
On Twitter, Heather Mason shared a grievance that a woman had filed with Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI) for its failure to intervene with Harks’ harassment of her.
Here are some excerpts from the letter:
GVI permitted a male-bodied person who committed hundreds of sex crimes against children… to be confined to the same unit as me and then failed to intervene when this person began sexually harassing me.
We were informed that a prisoner would be moving in and told not to judge based on crimes. This warning from CSC functioned to keep most of us quiet when issues arose with this person.
I could not escape this individual. I became very fearful, and spiralled into a trauma response with nightmares, sleeplessness, and flashbacks… Among other things, this individual followed me around, told me I was the reason they returned to GVI, told me I had a “young spirit” and engaged in other grooming techniques… When I engaged in conversation, in an attempt to be nice, they told me they were horny and their eyes went wide… I began to dissociate, self-harm, and became suicidal.
I write this grievance because I know there are other female prisoners, who have serious histories of trauma, who have also experienced sexual harassment and even sexual assault by this individual and by other self-identified prisoners transferred to women’s sites from the men’s prisons.
Recognizing that this issue affects women in prison across Canada, I am requesting a National external review of the policies and practices allowing trans-identified prisoners to transfer from men’s prisons to serve their time in women’s prisons, specifically investigating the impact of these policies on the lived realities of female prisoners.
CSC’s response was, in a word, disgusting. In three words, it was callous, dismissive, and patronizing.
First, it provides some context to help the woman reframe her trauma from being sexually harassed by a serial pedophile in prison:
Context must be provided to help you understand the decision to place or transfer offenders according to their gender identity to a men’s or women’s institution, if that is their preference.
In light of the coming into force on June 19, 2017, of Bill C-16, the Canadian Human Rights Act was amended to add “gender identity and expression” as prohibited grounds of discrimination. Accordingly, Correctional Services Canada (CSC) has a duty to accommodate based on gender identity or expression, regardless of the person’s anatomy (i.e. sex) or the gender marker on identification documents.
Somehow, the letter manages to get even worse by the end.
The CSC wants to assure you that it is committed to ensuring a safe, inclusive and respectful environment for everyone, including staff members, offenders, contractors, volunteers and visitors. The CSC firmly believes that this can be achieved while ensuring that offenders serve their sentences in institutions aligned with their gender identity and have the same protections, dignity and treatment as other offenders.
CSC, the Government of Canada, and all other governments that have allowed psychopathic men like Harks into women’s prisons can spew all the useless platitudes they want: the reality is that they made the clear and deliberate choice to offer women up to these predators on a platter.
None of this had to happen. Common sense should have stopped the transfer of male prisoners, particularly sexually violent male prisoners, into women’s prisons. But that seems to be in short supply these days.
And, if we needed “studies” to show us that this was all a terrible idea then, well, we’ve had those for a long time, too. As Genevieve Gluck has also pointed out, the fact that trans-identified male prisoners are more likely to be sex offenders was discussed in a 2009 study from the University of California, Irvine.
This was well over a decade ago, and these findings have only been corroborated since, yet here we are in 2023 watching the situation spiral further into stupidity and madness.
It should come as no surprise that men who demand access to women’s spaces are more likely to be predators. Any sympathy afforded to them for their declarations of womanhood is disastrously misplaced. It belongs with their victims and only with their victims.