Would You Like to Share a Prison Cell with This Person? **MNHQ edit, this post contains rather graphic material**

[CKDexterHaven]

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/laverne-cox-launches-media-campaign-in-support-of-transwoman-synthia-china-blast-convicted-for-the-rape-murder-and-abuse-of-the-corpse-of-thirteen-year-old-ebony-nicole-williams/#comments

I particularly like the bit about giving birth to little baby serial killers. Is this the kind of campaign feminism should be getting behind?

[TheGirlFromIpanema]

I thought not at first, but then I realised that anyone sharing a cell with a convicted child killer was likely to be a convicted child killer themselves...

[CKDexterHaven]

I can't help but think if there is such a thing as 'feeling like a woman' then it would involve understanding why women don't like the idea of being housed with a rapist and murderer.

Note how Synthia China Blast says 'If I was a real woman ...', acknowledging that performing a submissive, hybristophiliac, fetishised hyper-femininity isn't the same as being biologically female and experiencing life as such from birth.

[lildupin]

“I want my voice to be heard, I want my dreams to matter, I want people to know who I am because tomorrow is not promised,” reads Cox

Words fail me.

[SevenZarkSeven]

I think that article needs a warning for the link I found some of it quite disturbing.

I also don't like the author referring to the actor as male throughout. I really think people should be addressed according to what they prefer.

That aside.

What the actual fuck? I mean just, what on earth? Talk about blinkered. As pointed out in the piece, the extreme activists are totally going to shoot themselves in the foot with this sort of thing. If they want support they are not going to get it this way. Which from the perspective of people who disagree with them is great, I guess.

The idea as well that they are getting young trans people to write to convicted peadophiles in prison.... Mind-boggling.

It reminds me of all that stuff about the National Council for Civil Liberties in the 70s where people were so busy trying to be liberal they forgot that paedophilia was a bad thing - you know that stuff with PIE in the news.

[FloraFox]

Did I pick this up right? This killer was only out of prison for three months and during that time he raped and murdered a 13 year old girl? Now he wants to be transferred to a woman's prison and Laverne Cox thinks this is a good cause to be championed. Wow.

[lildupin]

I also don't like the author referring to the actor as male throughout. I really think people should be addressed according to what they prefer

Where does it refer to Cox as male? Cox is referred to by name throughout, as far as I can see.

And WRT the writer referring to the murderers/paedophiles as male, I think that once someone has chosen to murder a child, or download and enjoy videos of children being raped, it's permissible to stop tiptoeing around their preferred gender pronouns TBH.

[juliascurr]

we are repeatedly told this has never happened, will never happen and only bigots could imagine such a thing

[EdithWeston]

Child killers are in solitary in all parts of UK for their own protection.

The chances of anyone sharing a cell with someone convicted of that are approximately zero.

How many transgender convicts are currently incarcerated (for any offence) in the home jurisdictions of UK?

[SevenZarkSeven]

Oh in the comments the actor is referred to as male a lot (I have never heard of the show or the actor but that's another story!). For some reason it opened on the comments for me so I read them a bit confused, then realised that I wasn't in the right place.

I don't like it though. I really don't. I don't like it when people call me something other than what I want them to.

Someone's name / pronoun is the least of anyone's worries with all this IMO and it can distract from everything else. Calling someone "she" doesn't harm anyone. Putting a male bodied person / someone convicted of rape in a female prison might well do.

Just my opinion though, I know others don't share it.

[FloraFox]

Get a grip. This report is about a transactivist supporting a child rapist and murderer trying to get into a woman's prison and you're going on about pronouns.

Some gender critical feminists have made a political decision to use the pronouns that correctly relate to a person's sex. Many of them used preferred pronouns in the past however it has become apparent that vocal transactivists will accept nothing less than complete capitulation to the "transwomen are women" mantra as it relates to every aspect of being and living as a woman. Now some transactivists are rejecting the term "preferred pronouns" and, in fact, calling that term transphobic. There's no reason to call anyone any pronoun other than the correct one unless you believe that transwomen (including those who simply declare themselves women with no other intervention) are women.

[lildupin]

Calling someone "she" doesn't harm anyone

I know I sound like a precious tool but I feel that it does actually "harm" me. Being forced to lie distresses me. I really dislike being told that I have to claim to believe something when I don't actually believe it at all, and that's what the whole pronoun thing feels like to me - like the "how many fingers?" passage from 1984. I genuinely find it deeply objectionable that people can demand that I effectively lie for their benefit.
That being said I would never do it to anyone's face and I don't actually do it in public online forums either. It's easy enough to get around using "she" without using "he" if you want to.

[CKDexterHaven]

I know as a feminist it is annoying when people tell you what you should be campaigning about but, given that transwomen of colour make up by far the majority of transwomen murdered by men, shouldn't that be the kind of thing Laverne Cox raises awareness of? What about using your profile to campaign against male violence against women or for better conditions for women in prisons? Of all the things to fight for, why fight for the rights of a rapist and murderer to gain access to a prison full of vulnerable, voiceless, trapped potential victims?

It comes to something when campaigning for 'all women' means you have to campaign on behalf of offenders against women. There was also this incident where an American hospital board altered its policies so that a transwoman rapist of girls, Paula Witherspoon, could access the women's toilets while Paula's 'husband', also a rapist of girls, waited outside.

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/shame-on-dallas-voice-news-editor-anna-waugh/

It's postmodern, neo-liberal insanity where everything is so left it becomes right and people are so busy tripping over themselves to be the least offensive, most inclusive person in the world that they end up advocating against the most vulnerable people in society.

[CKDexterHaven]

Incidentally, I can't wait until Roslyn Holcomb (from the comments section) makes the time to blog about this. She has the most awesome turn of phrase and a great way of taking down all this bullshit.

[SevenZarkSeven]

I can understand both your points but for me personally, I think that it comes across as petty and distracts from the matter at hand.

I also think that insisting on calling trans people by their birth sex is mean, and calling some trans people by what they prefer and others not, based on whether you agree with them or not is inconsistent.

I also think that it is extremely important that stats etc capture that people are trans, so as to avoid diluting stats around things like male violence and women being under-represented in certain areas.

However like I say I know people disagree with me. I just read the comments and they made me flinch a bit. That's all.

On the topic of the article, I have no idea who Laverne Cox is. Does she have form for this sort of thing? Is it possible she doesn't know the extent of the crimes of the criminal? I just find it a bit surprising that of all the things to pick to speak out about she chose that one. As per what the OP said in her post just now.

[CKDexterHaven]

Laverne Cox is an actor in Orange is the New Black, the first transwoman to make the cover of Time and the first transwoman to be nominated for an Emmy. Laverne is very high-profile and influential at the moment.

[lildupin]

I think that it comes across as petty

I don't think that being bullied into lying is "petty." Horses for courses though, I suppose.

[SevenZarkSeven]

Thanks CK.

That makes it even odder - big star types are usually very careful about what causes they support and what the speak out about aren't they.

I may do some more googling.

[CKDexterHaven]

I remember reading somewhere that Laverne first came to notice in some kind of make-over show where transwomen 'fixed' frumpy, unsexy women.

[EdithWeston]

She may be currenty high profile, as was April Ashley MBE in her day, but that does not mean that either is/was right about everything.

And what might or might not be the right issue to campaign about in the USA does not necessarily translate as equally correct, or otherwise, for other countries.

[SevenZarkSeven]

Has anyone looked at the petition?

I don't know if people tend to read petitions before they sign them, but in the opener it has this bizarre statement:

"While we were not surprised to read the horrors outlined in the Solitary Watch articles, we hope the publicity will bring attention to our work to abolish the prison system in the long-run and provide immediate safety measures to reduce the harm faced by those presently incarcerated."



That's just utterly random.

The thing also outlines the treatment of the prisoner they are focussing on - which I am sure has been poor - as is the treatment of all sorts of people in many US prisons. Prisons are notorious aren't they and the US ones have had a lot of reporting about atrocious conditions for various groups of people etc etc etc

However at no point do they mention or even allude to what her conviction was for in the first place. Which is a bit of an oversight isn't it.

This part is also particularly offenisve: "Because of stories like Synthia’s, the Department of Justice, through the Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations, has specifically identified safer housing for transgender people as necessary to the prevention of sexual violence in correctional settings across the country." While I am a sort of nicey lefty person who is abhored by the popular idea that sex offenders will "get what's coming to them" in prison, by linking the provision of safety of trans people in prison (as should be the case for all people in prison) by citing this person's story they are taking the fucking piss.

[grimbletart]

A male pedophile rapes and murders a child, then fancies call himself a woman while a transgender actor campaigns on his behalf.

Frankly the sensitivities of this murdering raping man/woman don't matter a damn and the fact that some transgender actor appears to think they do just confirms to me that the world appears to be going mad.

Utter utter bullshit.

[CKDexterHaven]

I'm all for transwomen being protected in prison, or even all transwomen prisons if the numbers make sense, but I don't get why the answer to men suffering violence at the hands of other men is always to expose women to greater risk of violence. It's such a male way of thinking to never consider the consequences for the women involved. Paris Green, a British transwoman convicted murderer, was moved from one women's prison for having sex with the inmates but into another women's prison. There was no question of the sex being non-consensual but women in prisons are often vulnerable, suffer from mental health conditions and don't have access to contraception.

[CKDexterHaven]

Given Synthia's aim of sleeping with famous serial killers is there any doubt that the transgenderism in this case is motivated by autogynephilia and the idea that womanhood = pornified sex-slave? Maybe if you like raping women and are put in a situation where you can't gain access to women your recourse is to fetishise yourself as a submissive, female sex-slave and get your kicks that way.

[BriarRainbowshimmer]

Wow why the fuck would you use your celebrity status to defend a child rapist and murderer...

[SevenZarkSeven]

No idea. Clearly an extremely fucked up individual.

What I don't understand is why this organisation have chosen this individual as the "cover story" for their cause. There must be other transgender people in prison in the US who have stories that people would feel a lot of sympathy with. Choosing someone as repugnant as this is clearly not going to garner the maximum amount of support.

So why have they done it?

Mind you they want to "abolish the prison system in the long-run and provide immediate safety measures to reduce the harm faced by those presently incarcerated" so not sure their motivations for anything are going to be particularly understandable.