Like all liberals, I favor equal treatment for transgender people, including using the pronouns that they choose for themselves. Previously, though, I’ve drawn the line at sports, in which transgender women, some of whom have undergone neither surgery nor hormone replacement, are allowed in some places to compete with biological women. Given the greater strength and heavier musculature of biological males, this bestows on them what I see as an unfair advantage when competing with women born as women. Even hormone replacement, it seems, can’t provide a level playing field, and so there’s an issue: what do we do to allow transgender athletes to compete but retain fairness for women athletes?

Well, one thing we shouldn’t do is to allow purely biological males who identify as females—without having undergone either surgery or hormone replacement—to compete with biological females. This is the current rule in Connecticut, which has allowed biological males to clean up in women’s track and field. As I wrote in February,

I’ve written about this before (see here and here), and, as always, I remain conflicted. Clearly transgender people should be able to participate in athletics, but what are good criteria for competing in “men’s” and “women’s” events?  Should there be a third category: “transgender women’s sports”? I don’t know.  But I do believe that simple self-identification that conflicts with biological sex is not sufficient to allow you to compete in a gendered event. In 2018 in a Connecticut state high school track meet, both first and second places in the women’s 100-meter dash went to transgender women (see the video here). As I wrote at the time:

 In Connecticut, where first and second place went to transgender women in the race above, “self identification” is the rule, so you can be a fully biological male, not having transitioned in any way, and enter a race if you say you identify as a women. Other states are more stringent: Texas, for instance, insists that you compete as the gender given on your birth certificate.

Both seem problematic.  Surely there is something unfair about the above: in which transgender women who are physically men, by virtue of greater strength, clean up in a women’s athletic event by “self-identifying” as women. That may well be true and not just a ploy, but the problem is not psychology but physicality. A liberal response would be “the civil rights of gender self-identification outweighs the disappointment of non-transgender losers.” But that answer doesn’t satisfy me. The unfairness is deep and pervasive, and “self-identification” seems a dubious solution.

As for putting limits on hormone titers, as the Olympics do, that too may not achieve “fairness”, at least to many, as the hormone limits are several standard deviations above that of biological females, and do not eliminate the physical advantages of maleness before a male transitions.  I have no solution, but as more people change their gender, the problem will increase. I suggested above a third category for competition, “transgender athletes”, but that seems unwieldy.

Now an article in Quillette (click on screenshot below) raises another issue of differential treatment for transgender people, again most often transgender women.

As Halley reports, both the UK and Canada have had difficulties with transgender women prisoners, and this may soon be happening in the U.S.. The problems are of two types. First, biological men who haven’t had surgery or hormone therapy, and who assert that they are women, can, in some places, request and be placed into women’s prisons. This has happened in Ireland (the individual was “a fully intact male sex offender”), in the UK, in Canada, while the California Senate recently voted that “self-identification”, independent of any medical transitioning, is sufficient to warrant placement in a prison with individuals of another sex.

Second, even with some surgery, like castration, transgender women, often in prison for sex offenses, have harassed and assaulted biologically female inmates. Here are a few stories:

Matthew Harks recently was released from the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Ontario. He is a serial pedophile who has been convicted of three sexual assaults against girls under the age of 8. He has claimed to have abused 60 girls and to have committed 200 offenses. A 2006 psychiatric assessment of Harks maintained that he has an “all-encompassing preoccupation with sexually abusing underage girls.” Like Laboucan, Harks has undergone SRS [sex reassignment surgery], but this has not stopped him from facing multiple accusations of harassment and assault while incarcerated in a women’s prison. In 2016, the Calgary Herald reported that Harks was potentially facing charges for “three alleged offences that took place recently while [Harks] was in custody: assault, unlawful confinement and sexual assault.” The Vancouver Sun has reported that Harks has assaulted two female inmates who were “childlike in appearance.”

Here’s the case of Karen White, whose transitioning appears to have consisted solely of self identification as well as wearing makeup, a wig and false breasts. There was neither surgery nor hormone therapy.

The activism of these British women brought the case of Karen White to my attention. White is a male rapist who was admitted into a women’s prison in Wakefield, England in 2017. White has been convicted of sexually assaulting two female inmates during his three months of incarceration in Wakefield. He was subsequently sent to a male prison.

I’m baffled by a mentality that would put a male rapist without any medical transitioning procedures into a women’s prison.

Here’s one more, a prisoner who did undergo SRS:

Dangerous offender Adam Laboucan is currently housed in the Fraser Valley Institution for Women in British Columbia. To receive the designation of “dangerous offender” under Canadian law, there must be evidence that the offender has a pattern of brutally violent behavior that is overwhelmingly likely to persist. Laboucan was convicted of sexually assaulting a 3-month old baby, yet he is now living in a women’s prison that participates in the Institutional Mother-Child Program, which is run by the federal government “to foster positive relationships between federally incarcerated women and their children by providing a supportive environment that promotes stability and continuity for the mother-child relationship.” One feature of the program is that it allows young children to live with their incarcerated mothers in detached buildings referred to as “cottages.”

A CBC report on a 2010 decision to deny parole to Laboucan relays that he had threatened to kill a female guard, and that he had confessed to murdering a 3-year old child at the age of 11. (The Province reported that Laboucan also was denied parole in 2018. He had appealed this decision citing bias on behalf of the Parole Board but this was unsuccessful.)

Laboucan is not in a women’s prison as a result of Bill C-16 (which was cited to justify a policy of self-ID). He has been accommodated because, while incarcerated, he has undergone SRS. The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has allowed men who have had this procedure to apply for transfers to women’s prisons since 2001. This policy stemmed from a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling (Kavanagh v. Canada), which declared that not allowing castrated male offenders accommodation in women’s prisons was discriminatory on the basis of sex and disability.

Halley notes that women’s groups have been silent on this issue, despite the fact that vulnerable female prisoners are exposed to violent and sexually aggressive transexual women, some of whom, like White, have transitioned only by wearing wigs, makeup, and prosthetics. This doesn’t seem fair to the women inmates, already incarcerated but then facing further dangers from government policy.

Halley’s article goes in about her long and frustrating attempts to get official information on the number of transgender offenders transferred to women’s prisons (they’re apparently few but almost all were convicted of violent crimes). The article is in fact marred by Halley’s largely superfluous digression about the Canadian government’s unwillingness to give information, as the digression dilutes the issue at hand: how do we deal with transgender prisoners? One could, I suppose, put them in isolation, but that doesn’t seem fair: nobody should be given extra punishment for being atransgender individual. And yet we must protect women already in prison from further violence.

The only thing I know for sure is that there is no rationale for putting biological males who have not undergone SRS or hormone therapy into prisons with biological females. While such “self identified women” may well think they are women (and of course some may be pretending to feel that way), and should be addressed with the pronouns they prefer, they should be treated, in both athletics and in prison, as if they are biological males.

As for what to do with SRS-experiencing transgender women, well, you can weigh in below.