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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Dreher's Law defied? Transgender rapist Isla Bryson moved to men's prison

After years of haranguing feminists and critics for suggesting that things like self-ID would lead to women being potentially at risk as unsafe males entered women's spaces, the topic has burst unto the scene as a rapist in Scotland sought movement into a female prison because he "transitioned" after being caught.

The basic economic logic of "if barriers are removed from socially deleterious activities people will do them" proven once again. Yet it somehow evades certain parts of the political spectrum.

Isla Bryson was remanded to Cornton Vale women's prison in Stirling after being convicted of the rapes when she was a man called Adam Graham. She has since been moved to HMP Edinburgh.

Bryson decided to transition from a man to a woman while awaiting trial.

She was taken to a male wing of HMP Edinburgh on Thursday afternoon.

It came after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced that Bryson would not be allowed to serve her sentence at Cornton Vale.

This situation seems to have proven to be a boondoggle for the SNP. Sturgeon faced resistance in her own party to passing gender legislation already and the UK government even blocked it for equality concerns (leading to a -cynical imo - row on devolution as well, which I'm sure Sturgeon would prefer to be the issue).

Now this case came up and caused a bit of a stir. Sturgeon came out proactively and reassured everyone, saying that no rapists will be allowed into female prisons, making it clear where she stood & using the "risk assessment" argument to save face: every trans applicant will go through risk assessment therefore there's no problem unless they come to a wrong decision. Of course, the problem seems to be that a) these people are assessed at the female prison and b) maybe the best system is no system. All this effort won't change the fundamental reality of males vs. females so why not use the rule of thumb that works the vast majority of the time? Certainly, if the FM has to come out and reassure Scots that the right decision will be reached in each of these cases that says something about their confidence.

Of course, I've not seen even a hint of reflection on this from the very people who called it bigoted to suggest that weakening gender barriers and implementing self-ID would lead to these ludicrous situations. If anything, activists seem to be doubling down on the claim that anyone who raised the alarm about this was just being bigoted instead of letting the process play out.

Meanwhile, a second plane has struck the Towers

The problem for the SNP is that the Scottish courts could overrule her based on her own law. Why would a woman be imprisoned with men even if they are a high risk to women? The best to hope for is isolation within the women’s estate.

The prison estate is still divided by gender, if not by biological sex. If a transwoman is a women as Scottish law assumes, she must go into the proper estate.

(The SNP might be saved by British courts but rather than help Scottish nationalism this may hinder it).

Why is a Scottish nationalist party making this an elemental part of their program anyway?

Why is a Scottish nationalist party making this an elemental part of their program anyway?

The SNP styles themselves as the most-progressivest party in Scotland, cruelly held back by those evil evil Tories that England votes for. So you should vote for them so they can leave the UK and implement loads of progressive policies! Such as running to hand their leash to the EU immediately, and implementing loads of extra welfare! Somehow! After amputating 60% of their trade... when they're net receivers from the UK treasury already...

Honestly, don't think too hard about it. Their manifesto is basically "we're not the Tories, watch as we advocate the opposite of everything they say." Their speech restrictions and laws are even more draconian than the rest of the UK, they proclaim "refugees welcome!" despite having almost no refugees (and the ones who are placed there aren't happy about it and don't want to go), they call the rest of the UK horrible racists while basically being an ethnostate... give Humza Yousaf, their Health Secretary, a listen, and pay particular notice to the way he spits out the word "white" like it's venom and complains about the majority of positions of power being held by white people in a 96% white area.