Stop the presses: Sanity prevails!
High Court weighs the human rights of transgender rapist against those of her [sic] potential victims
While in Parliament the government continues to fend off the bill to ban the gender transitioning of minors, Denmark’s Eastern High Court has rendered a judgment on another dicey aspect of transgender exceptionalism (DK).
A convict at Herstedvester [Men’s] Prison has lost her appeal to be transferred to a women’s correctional facility. This unnamed 62-year-old, who six years ago changed her gender (juridisk kønsskift) to “woman” in a legal sense (and is therefore entitled to pronominal “respect”), is still an intact biological male. She sued the prison system, arguing that it is a violation of her human rights to be incarcerated with dudes.
The convict, who is serving a custodial sentence (forvaringsdom) of indefinite duration for felons who are considered dangerous, feels unsafe in the testosterone-infested slammer. Her lawyer, Julie Stage, noted that her client had been advised not to wear a dress in prison because of the risk of assault. The plaintiff had also sought exemption from strip searches by male prison staff and from giving urine samples in their presence. She had applied unsuccessfully for prison leave in order to get a sex change operation.
Penal justice for “people with penises”*
Upholding an earlier judgment by the Copenhagen City Court, the High Court found that, since the convict was a biological male and was not subject to inhumane or demeaning treatment, her assignment to a men’s facility was not a breach of the rules. Her placement, it determined, was not owing to a lack of recognition of her legal gender but was based on the rights and freedoms of others.
The Court gave some weight to the fact that she had previously been convicted for two instances of extremely violent rape (a sentence that lets the cross-pronoun resonate). The plaintiff was “a not insignificant security risk for the female inmates,” wrote the Court, also noting that her current incarceration was not a violation of Article 8 of the European Human Rights Convention (DK).
Identitarian incarceration
The plaintiff’s lawyer complained that the prison system had set up segregated units to protect the safety of gang members and pedophiles, but none for trans people. She has a point there, assuming these “people” are good-faith transwomen, since criminal transmen don’t seem to be clamoring to get into male prisons and some foxy transwomen have apparently transitioned de jure in order to gain access to the chicken coop. England and Scotland have seen cases of rapists self-identifying as women, being assigned to a women’s prison, and then raping their sisters in crime.
Shit happens, gender edition
Meanwhile, when the bill banning “gender-affirming medical care” was brought to the floor of Parliament on 9 May, Danish People’s Party MPs Mette Thiesen and Mikkel Bjørn, now with the support of the Liberal Alliance party, reiterated their arguments against irreversible interventions on adolescents. Minister of Health Sophie Løhde and allied MPs sounded increasingly defensive as they emphasized repeatedly that no surgical procedures had been performed on minors and the number receiving hormone treatment had been drastically reduced.
Undaunted, the Danish Rainbow Council has continued its informational campaign for the measure, noting among other things that prominent opponent Susanne Brammer of LGBT+ Danmark acknowledges that some children will have their bodies ruined for life (DK) so that others can get treatment before they have undergone puberty. The bill will have two additional hearings in Parliament before coming to a vote.