Keep Prisons Single Sex – Oh no, Canada!

Gender identity has become a sacrosanct principle in Canada, with trans inclusivity privileged over sex-based security claims. Transwomen with a history of violent crime are not disqualified for transfer, even though we have no evidence that an individual’s psychopathology disappears with a change of gender identity. A serial pedophile; a serial sex offender; a contract killer; a child killer; a murderer: All have been approved for Canadian women’s prisons or halfway houses.”

  Anyone with more than two neurons to rub together can see the idiocy of prioritizing male gender feelings over the physical safety of women.

“Brad Hunter, a reporter with the Toronto Sun, has written up several of these cases. Steven “Sam” Mehlenbacher, for example, was convicted 16 times for bank robbery. Having escaped from more than one halfway house, Mehlenbacher was classified as a dangerous offender by the Toronto Police. After declaring a new gender identity, Mehlenbacher was moved to the Edmonton Institution for Women, and from there to Kitchener’s Grand Valley Institute in May 2019. Mehlenbacher was charged with sexual assault in March 2020.

The government’s rationale for its policy is that transwomen in men’s prisons are at increased risk for harm. At a 2019 Senate committee hearing on human rights related to imprisonment, Dr. Aaron Devor, Inaugural Chair in Transgender Studies at the University of Victoria, adduced statistics attesting to trans inmates’ high rates of “sexual victimization” (which may include anything from body-shaming insults to sexual assault). He spoke passionately of the need to accommodate transwomen in the prison system on the ground of their right to safety.

But Gearóid Ó Loingsigh, an international expert/consultant on prisons, questions the trend to trans exceptionalism in prison reforms. He argues there are many groups at elevated risk for harm in prison populations: gays, certain ethnic groups and (especially) those with mental or physical disabilities, none of whom may request transfer to women’s prisons. Loingsigh writes: “The trans are not the most vulnerable collective, not by a long shot, and … some predators self-identify as women with the aim of being transferred to women’s wings.”

  Completely shocked that predatory males would ‘self-id’ as female to be place in the female prison system.  Your prey is locked up with you, with no escape and no recourse…

“Indeed, the U.K. Ministry of Justice has acknowledged that since 2010, seven out of the 124 sexual assaults against females in custody — or 5.6 per cent — have been perpetrated by transwomen, who account for about one per cent of the prison population.

Requests for transfers to women prisons are escalating in the U.K. and the U.S. The L.A. Times reported last week that the California prison system has received 261 applications for transfer since Jan. 1 from transgender and non-binary inmates. Inmates at Central California Women’s Facility told the Times that staff had warned them of potential sexual violence from trans imposters.

Clearly a certain percentage of transfers are gaming the system. Even trans advocate Aaron Devor admitted in his senate testimony, “(T)here are people who will take advantage of the system and show up and say … I’ll just claim I’m a woman.’” Consequently, we now have an unfair prison situation in which both transmen and transwomen are housed with women for protection from violent men, their right to security trumping the right to security of the women for whom these prisons exist.”

We have an election coming up soon.  When the Pols come begging for your vote see what there point of view is about putting males in the female prison system.  See if they will support the idea that female safety is more important than male gender feelings.  If the answer is in the negative, tell them you are not voting for them until they can stand up and protect half of the members of Canadian society.