Males Pour into Women's Prisons, as Progressives Look Away
Tomorrow a family camp we attended for decades, gets underway in Seabeck, Washington without me and my partner Bruce. As discussed in a prior article, we’ve been expelled for our gender critical views.
By excluding us, camp leaders exclude the pesky information we have in our heads. In our absence, camp goers will not be subjected to inconvenient truths about what is happening 30 miles away at the female prison in Purdy, Washington, for example. They won’t have to hear about males pouring into that facility and other women’s prisons across North America as a direct result of the gender identity policies they promote. They won’t have to think about the intense suffering that results.
Those who attend the Seabeck camp and other self-proclaimed progressives are eager to remain ignorant. Exchanges with various friends, family members, and acquaintances over the past year have made that commitment to ignorance quite clear.
We have had the same bizarre back and forth too many times to count, and we know from other gender critics that what we’re experiencing is typical. First, someone tells us that trans-identifying people have a right to live how they want as long as they don’t violate other people’s rights. We respond that we agree completely and explain that our concern is that others’ rights are being violated, citing incarcerated women as an example. At that point, the person reiterates their disgust with our failure to go along with gender identity’s self-ID mandate, and they say good-bye. They completely ignore what we have said about males in women’s prisons.
It’s as if we haven’t said what we’ve said. It’s as if women prisoners forced to cohabitate with male inmates don’t matter. It’s as if they don’t even exist.
But those incarcerated women do exist, and they do matter. And progressives everywhere who are steadfastly looking away will not be able to do so much longer. Incarcerated women are increasingly organized, and we, their allies on the outside, undeterred by banishments and the collective tut tutting of so-called progressives, are publicizing and supporting their efforts.
How Many Men?
When people filed public disclosure requests under Washington State law three years ago to find out the number of males housed in female prisons, the ACLU, which has been captured by gender ideology, challenged them in court. The state legislature then swiftly amended the right-to-know law to prevent access to that information. Proponents of gender ideology badly want to keep the travesty of males in female prisons hidden from view.
Amazing women have been hard at work investigating, however. They’ve been communicating with inmates, talking with a prison staff whistleblower, and engaging in other research. So, we do have some numbers.
As of 2023, there were eleven known male inmates in the Purdy female prison. Since then the number has increased slightly. In a youtube interview, a former guard at the prison said: “I was told by one of my superiors there that it was….well over a hundred more [men] attempting to come to the women's prisons.” According to the guard “once the precedent was set that men can pretend to be women and get into the women's prison, it was like that door opened, and there was a flood of men trying to get over to the women's prison."
In California, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has so far transferred nearly 50 trans-identifying men into two female prisons. Hundreds of additional males are on a waiting list for transfer.
Washington State and California are not anomalies. Males are entering women’s prisons in significant and growing numbers across North America. In New Jersey, for example, 27 males are housed with females at the state’s female prison. Males are being assisted in their entry into women’s facilities by well-funded gender identity organizations.
A Recipe for Disaster
Women prisoners are greatly harmed by forced cohabitation with males. To understand how horrendous the situation is for them, it’s important to grasp a number of realities:
Biological Realities. Women are vulnerable to harm inflicted by males because of various biological realities. Men are larger and possess much greater strength on average than women. While some women are bigger or stronger than some men, overall, men can overpower women. For various characteristics like hand grip strength, male dominance is nearly universal. Importantly, women can get pregnant. Males can impregnate.
These biological differences are part of why international norms mandate separation of incarcerated individuals based on sex. Rule 11 of the United Nations Standard for Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners recommends that “[m]en and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions, in an institution which receives both men and women, the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate” because of the risk males pose to females.
Incarceration Realities. Women’s vulnerability to males is massively increased by the reality of incarceration. To be incarcerated is to be locked into a confined space, unable to leave. Vulnerability is most pronounced when women are sleeping in their cells near male cellmates, and when they are fully or partially disrobed such as in the shower or the bathroom. Many prison areas are not on surveillance cameras. According to the US Department of Justice, 54.1% of nonconsensual sexual acts in prisons occur where there is no video surveillance.
Realities of Violence and Incarcerated Women. An estimated 91% of victims of rape and sexual assault are female, while nearly 99% of perpetrators of those crimes are male.
Perhaps most important of all, incarcerated women are overwhelmingly survivors of sexual violence. A 2017 study put the number at a whopping 86%. Many fear men because of the trauma inflicted upon them by males.
Women who’ve been assaulted by men experience extreme distress when placed in confined and vulnerable conditions with males. Many endure debilitating episodes of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.) A 2020 Urban Institute report found that 53% of incarcerated women demonstrated lifetime prevalence of PTSD.
Religious Realities. Some incarcerated women feel especially uncomfortable being seen by or being housed in close quarters with men because of their religious beliefs. Muslim women may be distressed by being unclothed near unrelated males, for example.
All of these realities combine to make the placement of trans-identifying males in women’s prisons tremendously harmful to women.
The Extreme Harm of Males in Female Prisons
The harm done to incarcerated women when trans-identifying males are placed in their prisons is massive and unending. Women endure what must be considered “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
In female prisons across North America, women are experiencing problems like those laid out in a complaint filed by incarcerated women in California against the state Department of Corrections: “Plaintiffs have experienced and continue to experience fear, depression, anxiety, and distress from the presence of biological male inmates worsening their post-traumatic stress disorders because they are forced to share close-living quarters, shower, go to the bathroom, and sleep with biological males.”
Some women are suffering stress-induced problems like migraines, panic attacks, and hyperventilation. A female inmate in New Jersey described it this way: “It’s like you are living in an abusive situation.”
Women have also been forced to forfeit their privacy and dignity. Those who are religious are coping daily with being forced to violate the basic tenets of their faiths regarding not being housed with or seen undressing by males.
Rapes and sexual assaults by male prisoners against women prisoners have been reported in the U.K. Washington State, California, Illinois, New York, Texas, and other locations. Read the updated complaint filed on behalf of incarcerated women in California for details regarding assaults endured by women there. Read this article to see what a woman prisoner in Purdy, Washington, has been going through: sexual harassment and pressure by a male cell-mate to have sex, waking up in the night to find him touching her, and intimidation after she reported what had happened. For a glimpse of the hardships endured by incarcerated women in Canada as the result of the widespread presence of males in female prisons there, read this open letter.
Women have become pregnant as the result of males placed in their units. Two women prisoners in New Jersey’s only female-only prison have been impregnated by male prisoners who claim to be women. Prison officials deem the sex that led to those pregnancies “consensual.”
Before it began admitting trans-identifying males into female prisons, California prison officials did not distribute condoms to female inmates, and they didn’t provide unlimited access to other forms of birth control. After passage of the state law mandating the entrance of those males into female prisons, budgets were increased in anticipation of a need for condom and birth control access for female inmates.
Gender identity believers sometimes maintain that none of the harm described here is happening, because the males transferred to female prisons are women, by virtue of self-declaration. There aren’t any men in women’s prisons, they say.
But it is the reality of male biology that makes cohabitation with trans-identifying males so stressful for women prisoners---a reality they have experienced in an all too painful way, as survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse. It is generally male sexual anatomy—anatomy that remains intact for most males in women’s prisons—that is employed in rapes that are occurring. (Males who have undergone genital surgery are capable of raping women in other ways, which is one of the reasons that medical transition does not make the transfer of males to female prisons okay.) It is the quintessential male characteristic of sperm production that puts women at risk of pregnancy—a risk that women alone bear. It is the reality of male physical advantage in size and strength that increases the odds exponentially of female prisoners being overpowered by male prisoners.
A person’s professed “gender identity” is irrelevant. Sex matters. A man may claim to be a woman, but biology is real. Scientific facts, including the facts related to the biology of sex, don’t care about feelings and identities.
Supreme Deference to Trans-Identifying Males
The deference shown to trans-identifying males by prison officials is quite striking, especially in contrast to nearly complete disregard for the feelings and needs of incarcerated women. In California, a law passed in 2020 (SB 132) requires state officials to place trans-identifying males in female prisons upon their request. It explicitly prohibits denial of requests based on “any discriminatory reason” including “the genitalia or other physical characteristics” of the inmate. In other words, the law blocks consideration of the biology-based implications of females being confined with males.
The California Inspector General noted in a report that SB 132’s broad language “may prohibit the department from denying the person’s transfer request based solely on the prospective transferee’s history of raping women.”
Similarly, a Washington Department of Corrections policy makes clear the state’s commitment to serving trans-identifying prisoners, while including virtually no references to the needs and rights of female prisoners who are forced to cohabitate with males. Prison officials are instructed to treat trans-identifiers equitably, to consider their views about personal safety, to subject prisons where trans-identifiers are moved to “a cultural awareness course facilitated by a Gender Affirming Mental Health Specialist and/or Gender Affirming Program Administrator (GAPA)”, to keep the trans-identifier’s sex secret, and to get the trans-identifier “gender affirming medical care.” (In 2022, the DOC paid for a male inmate’s breast implants, and three members from the prison’s specialty emergency-response team drove the inmate multiple hours, on multiple trips, from Purdy to Spokane for appointments and surgery.) In contrast, the DOC policy is silent about the needs and concerns of females in the prisons males enter.
Female prisoners in Washington State and elsewhere report heavy bias on the part of prison officials in favor of trans-identifying male inmates, to the exclusion of women’s needs. Males have more say over who their cellmates are, for example. By contrast, when women file complaints about sexual harassment or assaults, they are often ignored or even punished for doing so.
When incarcerated women allege rape, they are frequently not believed. When a woman prisoner in Illinois reported that her new cellmate had raped her, prison officials claimed that the sex was consensual. They punished the woman for alleging rape, suspending her privileges like use of the gym and the ability to make phone calls. The male involved was large and strong. He had previously strangled a male cellmate to death.
It is extraordinary that this woman’s allegation was so cavalierly rejected, given the violent record of the man she accused. It is even more extraordinary that prison officials don’t acknowledge that the concept of “consensual” sex is problematic in a setting where a woman is locked in a cell with a violent man. The woman’s lawsuit against the prison officials was dismissed on procedural grounds.
No One Is Saying That All Trans-Identifying Men Are Rapists.
Trans rights activists often resort to a red herring argument to prevent discussion of the facts regarding males in female prisons. They falsely accuse gender critics of claiming that all trans-identifying males are rapists.
Gender critics oppose trans-identifying males in women’s prisons not because they are trans-identifying, but because they are male. Just as all other men—including our sons, brothers, husbands, and other loved ones whom we know to be non-violent—are excluded from female spaces, so must trans-identifying males be excluded. Even though most men are non-violent, it is impossible for incarcerated women to know which ones are. Women will not have peace of mind, nor will they have other benefits of women-only spaces, if some males are allowed in. Women have a right to female-only private spaces, period, for all sorts of reasons.
For the most part, gender identity proponents do not argue for an end to sex-segregated prisons. They agree that there should be separate men’s and women’s facilities. They maintain, however, that males who declare themselves women must be considered women and treated as such. This position denies the material reality of biological sex and is destructive of women’s rights.
At times, gender identity proponents imply that trans-identifying males are less dangerous than other males. By virtue of their self-declarations and transitional steps they may have taken, they imply that the threats they posed have been diminished. But there is no evidence of reduced criminality among trans-identifying males as compared to males in general.
Substantial Numbers of Trans-Identifying Male Inmates are Very Dangerous.
We do not claim that all trans-identifying people are sex offenders or violent. But the truth of the matter is that a disproportionate number of male convicts seeking to be placed in female prisons are indeed sex offenders.
According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 33.8% of trans-identifying male inmates seeking placement in women’s prisons in that state are registered sex offenders.
In Washington State, at least 5 of the eleven known male inmates in the female prison as of last year were sex offenders, and a 6th was a serial killer of prostituted women. Males locked in with women in Washington state include an individual convicted of murdering three women (who claimed to have murdered six more); a man serving a 30 year sentence for the violent rape of an 11 year old girl and the attempted kidnapping of a 9 year old girl; and a man who sexually assaulted and killed a seventeen-year-old girl. This article provides information about the trans-identifying males in the Washington State women’s prison at Purdy.
According to the Bureau of Federal Prisons, as of December 2021, approximately 48% of trans-identifying male inmates had committed sex offenses, as compared to 11.6% of the general male population.
In Canada, for the period of 2017 to 2020, 64% of trans-identifying male inmates had a “current sexual offense” conviction. Nearly 88% had a past sexual offense conviction, and 41% were imprisoned for homicide-related crimes, compared to only 21% of non-trans-identifying male inmates. 85% of trans-identifying males were convicted of violent crimes that caused either “serious harm” or death, and 58% of the victims of these crimes were women or children.
A 2019 study in the UK reported that 58.9% of trans-identifying male inmates had committed sex offenses, with 28% having committed rape and 18% having committed attempted rape.
Read this article about “Perry Cerf” and his sadistic boastful descriptions of what he did to a woman he killed. Cerf is a trans-identifying male placed in a female prison in New Jersey. Read this article detailing the crimes of trans-identifying males in Washington State.
It is vital to acknowledge the extreme danger posed by so many trans-identifying males being placed in women’s prisons. Fearful of being considered bigots, progressives refuse to look at the actual data. Incarcerated women deserve better.
Beyond Betrayal
Not long ago the very same people who now insist that trans-identifying men must be treated as women, were donning “pussy hats” and speaking passionately about the importance of women’s rights. They were celebrating the Me-Too movement. Now they’re ignoring what is happening to incarcerated women as trans-identifying men flood into their facilities. They are covering their ears when people attempt to share information about the harm that flows from the ideology they’re promoting. They’re actively participating in deplatforming and otherwise canceling gender critics.
Progressives are clinging to the idea that gender ideology is a simple matter of people living the way they want to live, which doesn’t affect others and is therefore none of our business. But the sex self-ID core of gender ideology has always led directly to massive violations of other people’s rights. Egregious harm done to women, lesbians and gay men, and children has been the issue all along. It’s our responsibility to stand up against that harm.
Some progressives are old enough to remember take-back-the-night efforts. And the hard work that went into creating safe spaces for women survivors of male violence—places where women can be with just women, healing and safe, their PTSD untriggered. Now, these individuals are attacking anyone who doesn’t agree that men should be welcomed into female rape shelters, female prisons, and other female spaces.
Misogyny is alive and well and has found fertile ground in progressive circles. It is time to reclaim the fight for women’s rights from those who have appropriated and undermined it.
Many of the people most eagerly pushing the core authoritarian beliefs of gender ideology are also heavily into “fighting white supremacy.” Yet they don’t seem to care about what happens to incarcerated women, a group that is disproportionately composed of women of color. The hypocrisy is breath-taking.
Sex is real. It is binary and immutable. And it matters. One place it matters a great deal is in the prison system. There’s no getting around it. If you place males in female prisons, this creates great hardship for the female inmates. It puts them at risk. All of this flows inexorably from biological differences between males and females, and from the different experiences we have had in our lives as a direct result of our sex.
Progressives can’t have it both ways. They can’t care about women’s rights, and also insist that trans-identifying males must be considered women. The core tenets of gender identity ideology throw marginalized women under the bus. Progressives need to start standing up for these women instead of betraying them.
Join the Fight Against Men in Women’s Prisons.
On July 19th, the Women’s Liberation Front filed an amended complaint in a lawsuit brought by incarcerated women in California against the Department of Corrections, challenging the state law that has facilitated the transfer of trans-identifying males into female prisons. Read more about this here. This lawsuit is extremely important, not only for female inmates in California, but also with respect to the precedent it will set for women elsewhere, and on gender identity issues in general. Please support this worthy effort, by clicking here.
On July 30th, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) launched a comprehensive advocacy campaign on behalf of women incarcerated in Purdy, Washington. The women are filing grievances with the state Department of Corrections. A letter was sent to the head of the Department requesting a meeting, laying out concerns about males in female prisons, and putting the department on notice that a lawsuit will be filed, if the travesty of males in female prisons continues. The letter notes that “…any policy allowing prisoners to select housing based on gender identity, rather than biological sex, inherently results in discriminatory treatment of females.” FAIR has also contacted the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division which has the authority to investigate the state DOC and could choose to sue it for civil rights violations. Please publicize the FAIR effort and make a donation to it. (You can specify that you want your donation to go to the women prisoners’ litigation fund.)
All absolutely spot on, but tragically the gender sheep are unlikely to listen, precisely because, as you say, no matter what you say to them "It’s as if we haven’t said what we’ve said". I don't know how to get through to people that what they're saying makes no sense. Even more sadly, if the spell is ever broken, I don't know if I want to have these people back in my life
I feel so upset and angry about this situation: women in prison having men imposed on them and being unable to escape because they are incarcerated. It is incredible that so many people are tolerant of this. Here in the UK it has been rolled back to some extent but not completely. I have just heard that there will be a day of action outside all the women's prisons but I don't know how to find out about when it will be, as I am not on twitter.