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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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And to steelman the rebuttal to that, something like 80,000 prisoners are raped per year in the United States. Huge proportions of female inmates report being raped or harassed, correctional officers have storied histories of raping female inmates. Trans inmates are raped at much higher rates. When's the last time Tucker Carlson ran a segment about prison rape in general? When's the last time anyone here wanted to discuss anything other than the hyped-up rounding error that is men faking being trans to rape female inmates? It's easily possible that a policy allowing trans folks to transfer prisons would result in a net negative number of prison rapes given how often they're victimized in men's prisons.

Small comfort to the victims, I know, I do care and you are correct that those were fairly predictable mistakes, but to say that the sudden concern for the safety of inmates rings hollow would be the understatement of the year. Maybe I'll start to take your argument seriously when conservative politicians/electorates are interested in prisoner welfare more generally.

No. Men wearing wigs so they can enter women's prisons was not an issue 20 years ago. You try to shift the blame around, but conservatives didn't 'suddenly' get concerned about prisoner safety, they are concerned because progressives did something which everyone knew would end up with men putting on wigs to enter women's prisons. It was ignored however, because of progressive ideology - those who said anything were threatened into silence.

So there is no sudden concern for the safety of inmates, there is just the long historied concern about putting a convicted sex criminal in a building with a bunch of women and whistling nonchalantly as you lock the door behind you. It is the fact that the outcome was 'fairly predictable' which outrages people, because you are basically saying that you see those rapes as an acceptable price to pay for advancing your dogma. You do care but you won't take those rapes seriously until conservatives care about other prisoners, or trans rights. How is that different from not caring?