I’m sorry, did we not just endure months of frenzied #MeToo posturing, saying that men were beasts, women were victims, the male gaze was toxic, women needed safe spaces at all times to navigate their lives in peace? Did that happen, or was it the equivalent of that season of Dallas, which turned out to be a bad dream. Must be the latter, because once again, transmania has put paid to those safe spaces:
Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 132, The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, into law last year. The law allows “transgender, non-binary and intersex people to be housed and searched in a manner consistent with their gender identity,” according to a press release from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Translation: men are now being transitioned into women’s prisons, allowing violent criminals to bunk with what in quaint terms use to be called the opposite sex. Sane feminists, calling themselves Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, are raising the alarm on the obvious danger this poses to women prisoners, whom officials are planning to “protect” by the dispensation of condoms and abortion-inducing pills.
Women incarcerated in California’s largest women’s prison are describing the conditions as “a nightmare’s worst nightmare” after the introduction of new pregnancy resources in the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) medical clinics. The new resources are a tacit admission by officials that women should expect to be raped when housed in prison with men, where all sex is considered non-consensual by default within the system. Women’s prisons across the state appear to be making final preparations such as these for a massive wave of transfers after nearly 300 requests were initiated following SB 132 going into effect in January of this year. So far, only about 20 of the transfers have been processed (and exactly zero transfer requests have been denied) — leaving hundreds of men, many of whom are sex offenders, awaiting entry into the women’s estate.
The women are already in prison meaning they cannot escape this manoeuvre; many come from unstable backgrounds, many are in process of long-term healing from difficult lives that led to poor decisions, and now they are kicked in the teeth by the system itself.
At a recent CCWF Captains’ Meeting, one woman read a statement in which she pleaded for help and accused COs of ignoring their previous concerns about being housed with a serial rapist:
“How do we feel safe in our community? When we reach out for help we get nothing… There has been an assault on a woman and we still are silenced. We have had our hope taken away once again. Does anyone care that we are being forced to house with 6’2, 250+ lbs men with penises that are here for brutally raping women? We have been warned by the officials in this prison, more are coming with worse charges. Where is the safety concern for us. If we say we are in fear, we are the ones locked up.”
Recent years have pitted many identity groups against others, for example when Muslims attack gays, or Blacks offer anti-Semitic remarks — then advocates for these sub-groups need to assess the situation and take sides. (Merely affirming virtue and human dignity isn’t an option.) It would seem as though some animals on the farm are more equal than others, sayeth the pigs. And yet this is something stalwart feminist JK Rowling knows very well.
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