We see the headlines in 'progressive' media. We are implored to sympathise, to withhold judgement like grown ups, as this is human rights stuff - their crimes are unimportant here. The crimes have occurred and cannot be undone, it's their treatment and how we choose to respond that we can change.
And the thing is, that's true, and for this reason, and more, I'm against the death penalty.
However, one thing that stinks of deception, narrative-manipulation and unconscionable idiocy is presenting the most predatory and violent men as vulnerable women. When it is those men who have spent their lives devastating others with those classic male crimes of life-ending violence and sexual assault, with the exclusively-male penis as weapon.
So, I'm having a long hard stare at the way in which men who at times have murdered, tortured, raped and terrorised have been giving free reign to reconstruct themselves in the media. It's sold to us as the worthy cause of trans rights, and, funnily enough, often reported on by women.
I'm fairly sure that these young journalists did not set out on their careers hoping to cover such reprehensible bastards with such nauseating simping. I imagine they are given these stories by their bosses and have the classic, vulnerable 'old school transsexual' in mind, as well as wanting to hitch themselves onto the popular zeitgeist of trans rights™.
I do wonder how they rationalise writing such glowing, ideological bilge when the reality of these crimes becomes known to them; the tropes of "we mustn't treat trans people as a monolith" are super helpful, so remember that 'not all trans people are like that' and make sure you don't allow one prisoner's crimes to spoil the picture. Even if that's their own picture.
The fact is, however, that now trans people are a monolith. One which needs sympathetic coverage or at the very least critical omissions. Any outrages are forgotten, crushed and mentioning them shamed, or justified.
It's justified with more mental images of an innocent, frightened boy gazing at the reflection of himself in a dress, then hurriedly changing before the terrible people come home. It's inspired by tales of poor transwomen like Marie Dean committing suicide in jail - again forgetting the shattered, traumatised lives they leave in their wake.
So, however much they have surely achieved the right balance of righteous indignation and perpetrator-pity, I think that's worth noting they do tend to be young, female and early on in their careers.
It's far from a one off, in fact it's now close to being a cliche.
So, let's have a look at the preconceived ideas that appear to facilitate such fawning depictions of murderers and rapists who claim to be women:
“I am a political transgender woman ‘slash’ prisoner. I strongly support the rights of LGBT brothers and sisters in the community who are imprisoned also.”
So far, so very laudable. This is another hustle worth watching out for - the presentation they are and have always been persecuted for, due to their identity as trans people. It's very unusual these men were presenting as female until long into their sentences. Invariably they are also allies, advocates, relentlessly believing in the greater good we non-rapists refuse to see. Everyone is a victim, and it's only through a religious or quasi-religious belief in love and redemption that'll save all these souls, and stop the cycle of abuse.
In
Jezebel, Aviva Stahl interviews Synthia-China Blast, who was convicted for the gang related murder of a 13 yr old girl, Ebony Williams. (Something about Morales changing his name to China when he's known to be vehemently anti-black and his victim's name was Ebony seems significant, although I should probably spare you my ruminations here and get on with the hideous shit show).
Prior to this piece by a supposedly feminist publication, Laverne Cox read out
Synthia-China Blast's letter to the world. It caused quite a stir. Blast, née Luis Morales, is in near constant lock down in segregation. As a gang member turned trans woman, this doesn't sound that surprising - but to many, it was.
Clearly we were meant to be outraged at Blast's treatment, and it does sound tough. And that's on top of what we already know about the American prison system. Unfortunately, if you give a solitary fuck about accuracy, about victims, about the fact these perpetrators of such unspeakable crimes are accessing large platforms and attracting such an adoring audience of advocates, this tends to come over a little problematic.
This unravelled, however, when the full extent of Synthia-China Blast's crimes became clear. Cox denounced Blast and presumably learnt a little on the importance of looking a little deeper before championing causes. The video is no longer available, and Cathy Brennan is excoriated by Stahl for raising the alarm that a child rapist, torturer, murderer and defiler of the resulting corpse is gleaning public sympathy under a different name and sex to that known by the public;
"A prominent feminist who claims she does not support “irrational discrimination” against trans people but nonetheless has become known for her steadfastly trans-exclusionary views"
This is who Stahl is angry with, and she seems to firmly believe that the real harm perpetuated against trans people, even society, is by TERFs. Obviously, pitting 'trans exclusionary' feminists against those rapists and murderers who've latterly taken on the identity of trans women is exactly how progressive politics needs to go.
Brennan described Blast as a murderer and child rapist, and Stahl responds in the article that "Blast was
never convicted of raping Ebony Williams, and she adamantly denies killing her" well, there we have it! Isn't that all the justification we need, huh?
After the distancing of Cox, the uproar and outrage, things got tougher still inside "Blast was threatened and insulted online and received hate mail on the inside calling her a freak and a woman hater, according to her and her family." Shocking. This gang member, who went on remand aged 16 after being prosecuted for 12 counts of second degree murder, reckless endangerment and arson, was on the recieving end of hate mail and called a woman hater! My, the depravity. After spending almost two years inside, Blast says he was in too deep with the gangs - he'd been raped/made the boyfriend of serious men, and apparently there was no way out. Soon after his release (found not guilty on the murder of six people) his boyfriend called him asking him to dispose of a cardboard box. And, dear reader, poor Blast was too groomed to know what the right thing to do was. He disposed of it, and he's never revealed those he believes guilty. He would be home now if he snitched, he says. But this guy, he's got principles.
Stahl challenges none of the lies about how there was no evidence, she asks no tough questions. The facts of the trial, where Blast and co-defendant and fellow gang member Carlos Franco laughed, smirked and joked through the evidence, is gut-wrenching. Both men were known to be hateful towards black people. Both of them bragged widely to others about what they had done to the little girl, and how sexual sadism was their motivation. After Blast stabbed Ebony multiple times, he and Franco realised she was still clinging to life. Franco then broke her neck. The post mortem showed she had almost been decapitated by the repeated stabs and twisting.
Stahl omits all of this, and ponders "How do we make visible the violence experienced by survivors and respect their right to heal without becoming complicit in the myth that perpetrators are monsters who must be hidden away?" While never explaining where is evidence that this is a myth, or, regarding a survivor's right to heal, she neglects to mention again.
One subject which does reappear is that of Brennan "How do you think transphobia shaped the way Cathy Brennan described you—or the danger she claimed that you posed? Would you call her a feminist?"
Brilliant, Aviva. Ask the man who committed such unspeakable horror against a little girl whether a feminist is worthy of being called feminist. We are all holding our breath in anticipation! Blast responds "That woman destroyed my name in a few days what an entire trial and jury could not do". Maybe Blast needs another name change? This is the price of publicity. He continues "She is a monster. Her views are distorted and full of twists and turns. What writers say was fed to them by the police" Clearly, the police are not as thorough and fair as Blast and Stahl. "Cathy Brennan is not a feminist" says Blast "I am a feminist. I am against women being harmed. I am against women being raped. I am against men degrading women or using them as sexual objects. Cathy Brennan gives all real feminists a bad name. I never hated someone as much as I hate her." Reassuring stuff, eh?
This long, tedious interview full of cringe-inducing clichés finishes with metaphors of trash and treasure, and it's at this point not clear if the words are Stahl's or Blast's. The update ends in the ultimate credit to any nonce justice warrior - Blast is now in a new prison, where he can spend most of his time out of his cell, cook for himself, take classes and his family have never seen him so happy.
What is not mentioned is his well documented delight in screwing as many murderers as possible, and how his dream man ultimately showed himself, ending in marriage to another inmate,
Heriberto Seda, the copycat Zodiac Killer
- “I met my friend, lover and infamous husband…the NYC Zodiac Serial Killer. My sweet serial killer is a lady’s man now. Only if I was [sic] a real woman I could bring about little future serial killers to terrorize NYC like my husband did. How [New Yorkers] would of [sic] loathed the Zodiac Children.“ 
If there's ever a time lies can be repeated and someone's history should make them disposable, being a TERF is it. Child abduction, torture, presumed rape and then murder followed by desecration of a corpse, not so much.
"Patricia" Patrick Trimble
Centre, Jasmyne René Cooley with Patricia Trimble, right, and, presumably, Patton Oswalt or Ron Pearlman, left.
Patricia features in Vice's
how trans prisoners are getting each other access to treatment inside, written by Pierre Bienaimé, who I'm going to use my bigot powers to identify as a man. It begins by describing how Trimble, convicted of murder, only realised he was a woman after a sexual assault in prison in 2015. Trimble is painted again as the advocate, the tireless freedom fighter within a prison system filled with unnecessary cruelties. To be clear, America's prisons are an outrage. I'm horrified by many aspects of it and yet when it comes to people like Trimble, I'm far from convinced the punishment even fits, let alone exceeds the crime.
Trimble has become house expert, by the weight of injustice forced upon him. “You have a bunch of psychologists and therapists talking to us that really have no clue,” Trimble said. “So we kind of have to educate one another.”
This goes unchallenged, of course. The message is clear - this is a prehistoric institution fixed on brutality and neglect, and if it weren't for the selfless service of Trimble there would be no let up in the endless stream of misery. Convicted murderer Jessica Hicklin is Trimble's best buddy in there- "She's a mom and I'm a mom,” Hicklin said. “That's probably the shortest way of putting that. We both try and help each other and everybody else." This is heartening to read, and fits with Bienaimé's presentation of Trimble as committed to the welfare of others.
Nowhere does Bienaimé raise the troubling issue of such serious offenders changing their name and recorded sex, or what the consequences could be.
Nowhere does he explain what Trimble actually did - lure two 9 year old girls into woodland before raping and sodomising them. Once serving on remand he decided that it would be better to serve time under murder charge than as a paedophile. So he turned his attention to Jerry James Everett, 20.
Everett was, according to the judge, 'mentally retarded', and 6'1", 210 lb Trimble began dismantling the younger, smaller, far less depraved man by sexual humiliation, forcing a 5'10", 145 lb Everett to show other inmates what Trimble had forced inside of his rectum, forcing him to walk around the prison in a bra. This escalated into oral and anal rape, and pimping Everett out to other prisoners. After telling other inmates of his plan to murder him, Trimble instructed Everett to write a suicide note before strangling him with a towel.
Judge June P Morgan in State v. Trimble, 638 S.W.2d 726 This is all a bit too unpleasant, and probably irrelevant to Bienaimé "After a lifetime spent in the dark about the reality of gender dysphoria, Trimble, now 59, answers more questions than she asks" by which I suppose he means he's not asking anything awkward, just reaping the rewards of this remarkable advocate's wisdom. Again, the words of the offender are taken as gospel, with the pontificating Bienaimé citing activists and prisoner support groups and yet never one for survivors and victims.
Trimble often says he's a mother. On his
Medium articles he, without a flicker of shame, refers to himself this way. It's a grotesque appropriation of one of the most important and prized roles on the planet, one that only women can fulfil. It's also laughably deluded, although having credulous journalists repeat this shit makes it seem less so.
On Medium, Trimble has multiple published pieces. All dripping in pathetically hackneyed prose and ridiculous self importance, they reflect the piece in Vice - The morning is spent reflecting, reading through cases to find anything to help his 'children'. By waking at 5am, he has "my only time to cry and to be emotional without showing weakness. I can put my bra on without stringing a curtain across the cell for a small bit of privacy."
"Privacy is something many take for granted, but in a place like this, well, a girl really has none" okay, groomer. "Prisons are full of children and very young adults who lack guidance. There is no mother figure nurturing them or teaching them about respect. Many of them hold extremely misogynistic beliefs" Found your calling now, huh Patrick? "As a woman in a men’s prison, normal activities others wouldn’t think twice about on the outside, suddenly become an exercise in creativity within these walls. It’s a consistent dance between maintaining your dignity and ensuring your safety. I’ve had 40 years behind bars to master it" only the last couple have been as 'Patricia', though. I suppose it could make victimising other, genuinely vulnerable inmates with horrific sexual violence and then murdering them a little more tricky.
"When I shower, I try to keep my back to the entrance to avoid displaying my breasts to watching eyes. (Sometimes)... I force myself the indignity of standing to pee. Otherwise, one of the men will assume my sitting position is an invitation to show me an erection, as if it was catnip that would cause me to suddenly fall to my knees"
Well, that was repulsive. Maybe Trimble would be better off petitioning the prison to transfer in some young meat? I mean, it seems more his style, and if the sight of this ugly, elderly nonce's grey-haired gynecomastia is enough to entice another inmate there must be dearth of options about. I'm also fascinated in the anti-cock precautions Trimble and every other inmate has to take when having a shit? If it's really an issue, possibly it's unwise to brag about "how good my head game feels". I wonder if this is just his limited ability to present himself as the wiley victim he wants to be seen as. It all seems ripped from 80's soaps.
No time for such obvious baiting, however. Apparently in "most searches feel like I’m being groped, violated" which is just too bad, although the new rule-enthusiast Trimble does say that when "done respectfully in line with transgender search policies...I can tolerate them."
'If you want to get to know me' on Medium is Patrick's shameless attempt at appearing like the bad-girl-turned-good via the medium of poetry. It's fist-clenchingly cliched, tacky and banal, listing his supposed attributes of sultry swaying hips, living as a streetwise sex worker and claiming he was gang raped age 8. "And believe me, that dude with his dick in my mouth ain’t hittin’ on me with a better job proposition, all he’s offering me is another fifty dollars to put me in the face down ass up position so his friend can fuck me too, since you want to get to know me" got me thinking that's a pretty high charge for a rent boy prior to 1983. Still, Patrick loves to talk about how being mauled by four guys in the prison court helped him to really feel womanly.
"If you want to get to know me you need to know how I flow,
there’s more to me than looking pretty and the way my hips sway to and fro" - Patrick's soul-recoiling, vomit-inducing, foot-curling dirge
Throughout the Vice article Bienaimé reliably reports the kind of partial, often self-reported and skewed statistics we see everywhere in the coverage of trans people. He lets the advocacy groups and offenders tell it as they see fit, letting huge lies and omission go unchecked. However it still contains far less preaching than the writers of the other two articles I'm looking at here, far fewer references to himself and his thoughts of ethical standards. Consequently he's catching far less heat from me, however much of a trite, lazy, misleading piece of propaganda for a worthless old man this is.
The most irredeemable are, of course, the TERFs.
*Trimble is now
giving lectures from his cell, clearly pounding his Trans Vulnerability™ license for all it's worth: "Reliving much of my past took more out of me than I had expected. But without a face to the story, it is just another story.. .. suicidal thoughts and actions, the experience of gang rape, promiscuity, a lifetime of self-hatred and anger being thrown at so many undeserving victims should never be just another story" says Trimble. Talking about himself.
"Sarah Jane" Alan Baker
Sarah Jane Baker, previously known as Alan Baker - is introduced as a lifer for the attempted murder of a sex offender, and I can't help but feel the way this is mentioned is used as a defence. A sort of "It's ok, he (she! Sorry folks!) hurt a terrible person" which categorises Baker on the violent but convict-justice side, living by another set of rules. This works for me, but it doesn't make a violent man a woman, or any male so. It's also in such conflict in this regard to the other stories, somehow it feels expedient.
This attempted murder happened when Baker was already in prison for the kidnap and torture of his step-mother's brother. He also reportedly has convictions for drug dealing and armed robbery. This is another extremely violent person
Amelia Abraham is our reporter here, and it seems incredibly important to her that we side with her on what she sees as an unconscionable breach of human rights. I'm wondering, how does liberal feminism justify its special interest in violent men who claim to be women, when it never serves women like this?
Well, it doesn't get close to even asking this. Here, our brave and strident reporter goes forth. This has a whiff of investigation, it cites 'experts' and she really goes for the descriptions when recounting how she visited a real prison. This is journalism that labours the same point ad nauseam, while brushing over the inconvenient, the difficult questions, with evasion, derision, moral superiority and misrepresentation.
Abraham depicts the incredible infiltration of gender identity ideology in our institutions as one of agonisingly slow progress held up by hysteria and bigotry. "On the one hand, some (especially “gender critical feminists” and the right-wing and tabloid press).." - Scare quotes on gender critical not elaborated on, but the 'right-wing' links to a piece in The Times on women being raped by 'trans' prisoners with penises, as does 'tabloid' for The Sun. The contempt within this flippant dismissal is nothing less than sickening.
Abraham contines "..push the idea that allowing trans prisoners into jails that correspond with their lived gender could mean putting convicted male rapists into women’s prisons. They do this by using one or two extreme cases such as the
Karen White case, where the prisoner was immediately remanded to a women’s prison (contravening the Ministry’s own policy at the time) and subsequently sexually assaulted fellow prisoners." One or two cases? Well, Karen White, who sexually assaulted four women is one case. Jessica Winfield, née Mark Ponting, had to be moved after he, as a convicted rapist (who, like White then claimed a trans identity after imprisonment) began assaulting and harassing female prisoners. There is Kayleigh-Louise Woods, who tied up, tortured and murdered her flatmate Bethany Hill (after taking up with her boyfriend, who was co-accused) and had to be moved after sexual activity, and Paris Green, who also tied up, sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered, this time an older man, had to be moved after 'predatory behaviour'.
The rate of sex offenders identifying as trans in UK prisons is disproportionately high. Around 20% of the male prison population are serving sentences for sex offences, but among trans women in prison a staggering 48% are there for sex crimes (
prison resources). This is clearly not a concern to Abraham, who lists two suicides of trans people in men's prisons. One of these is Vikki Thompson, who is undoubtedly a sad tale of childhood adversity and struggle. Thing is, had Abraham been bothered to do her job properly, she would know that Thompson had never even asked to move to a woman's prison, and, unbelievably, neither had Latham.
Latham was in prison for first trying to kill a female friend and then committing another two, separate, attempted murders. But anyway, obviously these people would not have committed suicide if they were in the female estate, that's our lesson here. Despite the fact the women's prisons system has nowhere with high enough security to accommodate someone this violent. The suicide rate among trans people is high, before and after surgery, in and out of prison.
What's an absolute fuckin shambles is the arrogant, deliberately blinkered bias of happy-clappy 'feminists' who fawn over the fate of violent, sex offending males without dedicating a moment's thought to the fact women in prison are far more vulnerable than any of these men. Women who commit different crimes to men and for different reasons. Women who's estate has far less funding, a much smaller population with hardly a sex offender among them.
Abraham speaks righteously, saying that denying trans prisoners their corresponding prison is abuse, talking about how every inmate is in a heightened state of awareness about what they're getting comparative to others. She postulates anything might be used for personal advantage, whether it's religion, special interests, sport and being trans is just one more which could potentially be seen as a soft option. Why, Baker asks, would anyone decide that constant misgendering, taunts, sexual harassment and isolation was a soft option?
Well, interesting you should ask, Alan. How about you check out the prison magazine Inside Times?
Here "I find it pretty suspicious that the majority of these trans-jesters, as I call them, are sex offenders, and it turns out that transgender people do not have to do the Sex Offenders Treatment Programme ...there are SOME genuine transgender prisoners in the system, but surely not the amount crawling out of the woodwork even in the last 6 months?"
Or how about
Littlehey? "It is with utter disgust and concern as a non-sex offender trans’ prisoner that I find anyone can and does say they are trans, just so they can continue their sexual deviant ways or avoiding having to do the SOTP programme...The sickest part of this is the system can do sod-all about these trans’ bandwagon-jumpers, because policy states they must be treated as transgender ‘if they say they are’... You do not have to be transgender here, only to say you are and you do not even have to ‘live in role’. So if you want to avoid addressing your offending behaviour, ‘go trans'"
There's more
here; "I have witnessed 17 sex offenders jump on the trans bandwagon..and having had the misfortune to live amongst these characters I can tell you with the exception of about two of them, I would hate to see any of them in a female prison"
Still, no one at Dazed thought to look at the counter arguments those 'gender critical' types use, and certainly don't want to confuse the subject with other prisoner's, even trans one's, concerns. So we are stuck with Abraham as she shudders with the horror of Baker's suffering;
"At times, other prisoners have attempted to end her life. I tentatively ask her the lowest point in terms of transphobic abuse: “Getting raped in the prison showers by five people,” she says, holding my stare brazenly, before quickly moving the conversation onto sunnier subjects" Wow, so multiple murder attempts and a gang rape by five people. Any reports of these? I'm not saying it's a lie, but considering the cynicism towards actual women's concerns, I'm surprised at the lack of detail or scepticism here. I'm also wondering what exactly has happened to Baker's claim from 2014 that following a visit to Charing Cross hospital the prison guards beat and tortured him? It was of course denied by the prison, and it isn't mentioned here.
Throughout this pretty long article, which I found more and more infuriating to read, Abraham continuously quotes a Dr Sarah Lamble of the organisation
Bent Bars. Dr Lamble is 'reader of criminology and queer theory at Birkbeck College'. What, if any, experience she has of working with offenders is unstated, which I assume means she has none.
It is with Dr Lamble these difficult subjects are routinely flashed up as important before being shat on and then shoved under the carpet, with an unholy dose of Febreze (in the liberal feminism range). There's no 'gender critical' feminist to give input, it's all sewn up with a neat and colourful running stitch. "It’s also a myth to think that cis women don’t want trans people in prison with them" Abraham continues, without citation. “I would say that, for most women in prison, there are way more pressing issues,” says Dr Lamble, who has also heard from trans prisoners who actually felt welcomed at a women’s prison and have been actively supported by non-trans women prisoners" Well, isn't it nice to know their opinions matter at least sometimes? Great work, ladies. May your social justice, feminist stripes forever precede you. "Yet, instead of hearing from prisoners, too often it is the media that shapes the narrative." I know, right! "This is why we have started to believe that cases like Karen White are the norm, rather than the outlier. In reality, cases like this are in a minority" - I would really like to ask Lamble and Abraham, how many rapes of extremely vulnerable, traumatised women with no escape are acceptable?
"We can tell that a lot of discourse around trans prisoners stems from out and out transphobia simply because we don’t apply the same fears towards other types of prisoners" concludes Abraham. It's a damn fucking shame this bright eyed young ideologue didn't dirty her pristine mind with the thoughts of feminists. We could have told her, these "types of prisoners" are being treated exactly the same as the vast majority of prisoners are. That is, they are male. They are male, they have often committed sex crimes and crimes involving violence against the person which are classic male pattern offending. We exclude males from women's prisons, refuges, bathrooms, changing rooms and recovery wards and clinics not because we have an irrational fear and hatred, but because they commit 98.8% of all
recorded sex crimes. In the UK two to three women a week are killed by a present or former partner. This plays out across the world and is historically stable. The only changes have been recent, for instance since the introduction of self id in Ireland, the reported rate of female sex offenders has increased.
It isn't hatred to respond with women-only spaces, and it makes me ineffably angry to see two women so gleefully flinging their poorer sisters to the wolves.
For all the moralising of Abraham, the smug certainty she betrays of what she believes to be well rounded, nuanced and realistic approach to crime, it's in equal measure pitiful and also bitterly hilarious that we began this article with this admission;
"We approach the prison gates I am grateful that I have read Carl’s book, because until I did, all I knew about prison came from TV and films"
Brilliant.
Poppy Cox
