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After California began placing biological males in women’s prisons, female inmates reported that they were being sexually assaulted and women’s rights groups began calling for an end to the practice, but now other states are ignoring those warnings and adopting California’s policy in their own prisons.
Soon after West Coast states began moving biological males who say they identify as female to women’s prisons, reports of assault and women setting up sleep schedules to prevent being raped began to surface. After female prisoners who claim to have been grabbed and sexually assaulted filed suit, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation censored their statements to change any masculine term to transgender woman or female.
Women’s organizations such as the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) have sent letters requesting that states end such practices.
Instead, efforts to pursue these policies are increasing. The Maryland House of Delegates approved a similar bill this month. One controversial measure in this bill doesn’t affect inmates but correction officers. Transgender inmates may choose their preference when it comes to searches, meaning a woman officer would have to search an anatomical male and is not allowed to object. The Maryland bill says, “The department may not deny an inmate’s search or housing placement preference based on a discriminatory reason, including the inmate’s anatomy or sexual orientation.”
The bill not only grants an inmate’s preference for a male or female prison but also in cell placement. The text states, “When considering a housing decision within a facility, including granting single cell status, housing an inmate with another inmate of the inmate’s choice, or removing another inmate who poses a threat to the inmate, staff shall consider the inmate’s perception of health and safety.”
In Washington, legislators are moving to block the release of information regarding transgender inmates. The legislation prevents the public from learning “health information” about prisoners including transgender status and anatomy. Included are “the records or information created or maintained pursuant to the federal prison rape elimination act.”
On a federal level, the Bureau of Prisons under the Biden administration took a slightly more nuanced view when it recently released new guidance to protect transgender individuals in federal corrections facilities. Although it requires corrections officials to use the preferred name and pronouns of transgender prisoners, it also gives them some latitude in placement decisions, explaining, “In deciding whether to assign a transgender or intersex inmate to a facility for male or female inmates … the agency shall consider on a case-by-case basis whether a placement would ensure the inmate’s health and safety, and whether the placement would present management or security problems.”
Are these progressive state legislators so naïve that they believe convicted male heterosexual criminals won’t lie to get themselves placed in a women’s prison, whether for sexual reasons or because it’s a lot safer to live with women than hardened male prisoners? Or is it just that they are so beholden to the most radical activists in their party that they’ll do anything to keep their jobs and power?
Either way, how easy they’ve made it for criminals to game the system and abuse women. Either way, how easy they’ve made it for criminals to game the system and abuse women. While transgenders are not necessarily dangerous to women, these policies are such that any male criminal need only say that they identify as female to get sent to a women’s prison — they don’t need a counselor to certify it, they don’t need a history as evidence, they don’t need to take cross-hormone supplements or go through surgery to prove their commitment.
All they have to do is check a box, and suddenly they’re living 24/7 with vulnerable women who they can ogle, harass, or assault or they’re forcing a female corrections officer to touch their male anatomy during strip searches (something that would be considered a sexual assault on the woman in any other instance). Of course, those who game the system for their own gain won’t suffer any real consequences because no corrections officer or official is allowed to speak up for fear of being fired or labeled transphobic.
It seems pretty fair to say that, at this point, the #MeToo movement and feminism is dead. Transgender rights trump the basic rights of every woman and even every young girl to be safe from sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Worse, these abused women are told to shut up and take it in the name of tolerance.
This was seen recently in California where parents of middle school girls, ages 10-11, say several “non-binary” biological male counselors using pronouns of they/them were allowed to sleep in the same overnight cabins with young girls during a school-sponsored four-day-long educational camp.
One girl told her parents that her non-binary counselor “threatened to pull girls from their bunk beds by their feet if they got up too early, threatened to pull their braids, threatened to turn their showers off if they took longer than five minutes.”
The school never made the parents aware that non-binary biologically male counselors would be housed with their children. And when parents confronted the school, its response was to ignore their concerns, saying only that the camp had “complied with legal requirements in ensuring individuals participated in sex-segregated facilities in accordance with their gender identity.” The camp’s owner denied the girls’ claims…sort of. He stated, “We can tell you for sure that did not happen … as much as we can without looking down somebody’s pants.”
When women prisoners and schoolgirls end up abused and traumatized by these insane policies put in place by legislators and bureaucrats, who will be held accountable? Likely not the politicians. But we do know who will definitely pay the price: women and girls.
