These are citizens private healthcare information. You shouldn't be able to foia this anymore than my medicare records. Citizens don't lose their right to privacy because they're in prison. Goodness.
Aggregate counts are not private healthcare information when released in a way that limits reidentification. The Privacy Act (and HIPAA) allows for deidentified data to be shared broadly.
Anyway, prisoner gender is not healthcare data, it’s administrative data that describes prisoner population demographics.
I would agree with you if the request was for individual medical information on treatment or procedures or something.
> Aggregate counts are not private healthcare information when released in a way that limits reidentification. The Privacy Act (and HIPAA) allows for deidentified data to be shared broadly.
Possibly, but you're almost assuredly looking at a sample of N=10 or fewer, so the answer would be "*" anyway.
Not if it’s just a count. Because, even with a low count it wouldn’t be used to identify someone.
Let’s say there were 3 transgender people in the state, or even a facility. If they reveal that number it doesn’t identify an individual or divulge any confidential information.
The low counts have to be suppressed when coupled with other data or linked to other data.
If you included count by age group, then you would need to change from a low count to a suppressed marker.
For example 3 transgenders in the 80+ age group might reveal their identity because there aren’t many 80+ inmates.
But just having a small count with no other info is not really a cause to remove the value.
It sounded like aggregate numbers were being requested, not names. (Though, the link is only one side of the story.) Assuming that is correct (that it is merely an aggregate count), does that not maintain medical privacy, while allowing public access to the information on how the state is running prisons?
I don't think your sex is "private healthcare information." How would sharing the total number of males in various facilities violate an individuals privacy rights? (sidebar: if you think you retain your right to privacy in prison... all I can say is you've clearly never been to prison :)
Regarding the right to privacy, what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
>I don't think your sex is "private healthcare information."
Your sex is private information under GDPR. Why would the GDPR be stricter than than HIPAA in this case?
>Regarding the right to privacy, what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
"But what about the children?" is never a good argument for taking the away the rights of others.
You're assuming male prisoners have a "right" to be housed with female prisoners, and that female prisoners have no right to sex-segregated facilities. Whether the former "right" exists is far from a settled question.
Assuming the former right does exist, then there is a conflict of rights (between the wishes of males who want to be housed with females, and females who want to be housed without males). Rights conflicts like this are not solved by simply telling one group (in this case, women) to shut up and stop complaining.
This is nonsense that serves only to obfuscate. Normally this sort of stuff is put forward by people trying to confuse and befuddle the reader.
We segregate prisons by sex. Primary and secondary sex characteristics are observable characteristics that indicate one's sex.
Your argument is like saying "You don't buy a Mazda. You go to the Mazda dealership and buy a car that says Mazda on the back, interior, and on the manual. You don't actually know the car is a Mazda."
No, my argument is people mistake a used car lot for a licensed dealership. Just because the salesman says its a Mazda and it has a little logo in the front doesn't tell you much about its history, modifications, etc. Intersex people are in fact pretty common, so much so that there are more intersex olympic athletes than there are trans ones.
Using "males" and "females" here is irrelevant and actively seeking to confuse.
People typically consider that women (cis or trans) have a right to be housed together, and separately from cismen.
If anything, the biggest problem of policy are trans-men, who would likely feel much more concerned by being housed with cis-man prisoners, but who would also make women uncomfortable.
It's so odd to me that liberals, who seem to care a lot about women's rights, just flat out dismiss women who are genuinely concerned about being raped in prison by males who were secretly transferred to female prisons.
>"But what about the children?" is never a good argument for taking the away the rights of others.
I also hope that you don't point to school shootings to argue against the second amendment then.
Why is that surprising? There is no proof that transwomen are any more likely to rape ciswomen than other ciswomen are.
On the other hand, it is well known that transwomen are much more often the victims of rape by cismen, if living in men's prisons.
If anything, I would think the biggest problem here is the fate of transmen. I doubt a ciswoman would feel very comfortable sharing a cell with a transman, but a transman also has much higher chances of being abused if sharing a cell with a cisman.
Do you think a cis woman would fear being raped more by Natalie Wynn[0] or by Buck Angel[1]? I would bet that its the latter.
To be clear: not accusing either of those above of being an actual rapist! Just asking which would be more likely to inspire this fear in someone who doesn't know them.
> Why is that surprising? There is no proof that transwomen are any more likely to rape ciswomen than other ciswomen are.
Here's an analysis of data from the Ministry of Justice in the UK, demonstrating that trans-identifying males have similar patterns of criminality to other males, including sexual assault: https://fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-male-criminality-se...
> There is no proof that transwomen are any more likely to rape ciswomen than other ciswomen are.
There is no proof males who identify as trans (transwomen) are any less likely to commit rape than males who do not identify as trans. The rape risk of being housed with a male is real regardless of how the male identifies with regards to gender. If you have data to the contrary (data indicating that trans identifying males are less likely to commit rape than other males) please share.
The article notes that the relationships were consensual. Like, do you think no one in prison would want to have sex? (The article could be misleading, but also there's presumably lots of consensual sex in prison, much as there is quite a bit of non-consensual sex).
>It's so odd to me that liberals, who seem to care a lot about women's rights, just flat out dismiss women who are genuinely concerned about being raped in prison by males who were secretly transferred to female prisons.
Really? Are there actual women who are genuinely concerned about this or is this a strawman invented by other people? You see this same issue with transwomen in sports. There is massive concern-trolling for women "who want a level playing field", but when you actually _ask_ women who compete with them (like in the case of Lia Thomas), they don't have a problem with it.
You are masking your transphobia in coddling for women who aren't even complaining about these issues. Women in prison are far more likely to be raped by law enforcement; but somehow the 3 or so transwomen who might sleep in the same cell as a woman is a bigger mark for the ACLU.
>I also hope that you don't point to school shootings to argue against the second amendment then.
That's actually pretty simple for me, I don't think gun rights are inalienable rights, no more than I think I have a right to own a playstation.
> what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
Keeping penises out of the same room with vaginas will not magically eliminate sexual assault because sexual assault is based on power and willingness to harm another, not whether not tab A physically fits into slot B.
If you think keeping penises away from vaginas will eliminate prison rape then clearly you don't know much about rape in mens' prisons.
I am having trouble following your line of thinking. You're saying that because rape is common in mens' prisons* we should not be concerned about putting males in women's prisons? Wouldn't it make more sense to say "men rape in mens prisons, so women's concerns about being housed with males is reasonable"?
In any event, I still don't see how any of this justifies keeping this whole topic in the shadows and making public discourse impossible by keeping the scope of the question secret from the public.
* I'm taking your word for this, haven't looked it up.
The goal (I assume! You haven't spelled this out.) is to reduce the rate of sexual assault between cellmates in prison.
The system has to determine who can end up in the same cell. Prison wardens have access to some data about prisoners. The question is which data is used to partition prisoners.
Your claim appears to be that one prisoner having a penis and the other having a vagina is a strong predictor of an increased odds of sexual assault.
My point is that that claim requires some level of supporting evidence since the widespread accounts of prison rape in same-sex prisons implies that simply avoiding penises and vaginas in the same cell does not appear to be sufficient to lower the chances of rape.
Implicit in your comment is only looking at this from the perspective of the woman in the cell who doesn't have a penis. But the other cellmate has to end up somewhere and the overall goal should be to reduce the rate of sexual assault for all prisoners, not just cis ones.
So, if you don't allow trans women into women's cells, where do you put them? And do you really think putting a trans woman in a cell with a male prisoner is going to lead to a lower incidence of assault?
The "penis and vagina" characterization is too reductive. What's at issue is that males are generally bigger, stronger, and more sexually aggressive than females. These factors in aggregate create increased risk when forcing proximity between men and women while in vulnerable contexts. But none of this needs extra demonstration, this is all common knowledge.
hrt is effectively chemical castration by another name. one of the primary effects of estrogen and anti androgens is erectile dysfunction combined with the shrinking & atrophy of the genitals along with a typically highly diminished sex drive.
on balance, this issue, just like sports, is incredibly optically poor for trans people regardless of the facts at hand. the suggestion that mtf trans create an elevated risk for rapes and assaults is a deeply unfair cultural bias that is probably not going away for at least a generation. similarly putting mtf trans into the male prison system seems likely to subject them to incredibly high risk. there are other nations & cultures that have had a legally recognized 3rd gender for much longer than trans rights have been an area of focus in the west, i imagine we could learn a great deal from them on these issues in particular.
> Your claim appears to be that one prisoner having a penis and the other having a vagina is a strong predictor of an increased odds of sexual assault.
> My point is that that claim requires some level of supporting evidence.
The DOJ says 99% of rape and sexual assaults are by males, and that 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault are female and 9% male [1].
This is generic data, not trans specific or prison specific. But in the absence of specific data, it seems pretty relevant.
I’d argue if prisons have significant rates of sexual assault that prisons are doing little to prevent then prisoner’s should have a right to a private cell. You don’t get to engage in huge rights violations against people who can’t defend themselves for budgetary reasons.
> Your claim appears to be that one prisoner having a penis and the other having a vagina is a strong predictor of an increased odds of sexual assault.
If you don't think this is an issue, can you explain why we should have any sex segregation in prisons at all?
It sounds like you're arguing for mixed sex prisons, even within individual cells.
> If you don't think this is an issue, can you explain why we should have any sex segregation in prisons at all?
Historically, mostly patriarchal misogyny; specifically, the belief that while women were inherently more virtuous, those who had “fallen” a state subject to imprisonment had fallen further, and less correctibly than men, and that they were a corrupting influence that would impair the rehabilitation of imprisoned men (that's also why imprisoned women, originally segregated within prisons rather than in separate prisons, were often given fewer meals, not encouraged to socialize, and otherwise treated worse than male prisoners.)
More recently, in order to avoid reexamining the actual policy of segregation, societies have tried to retcon a more modern rationalization, but that rationalization is not actually the reason for the policy, just an excuse for it.
Let me take a step back and look at this another way. The initial comment I replied to looked at the issue only from the perspective of the woman in the cell. It treated it as "should a trans woman be with her: yes/no?".
But that's not the actual choice prisons have to make. The choice they have to make is "which cell does the trans woman go into"? Given that there likely aren't enough trans women prisoners to put them only with other trans women, the choice is "with a cis man or with a cis woman." And I believe pretty strongly that putting a trans woman in a cell with a cis male is more likely to result in assault than putting a trans woman with a cis woman.
I could be wrong. But given what I've read about trans women being the target of sexual assault outside of prison and sexual assault among males in male prisons, I think it's a fairly safe bet.
I guess the question hinges on whether you imagine a trans woman to be more "like a man" (stereotypically stronger, aggressive, and more prone to perpetrate assault) or "like a woman" (stereotypically weaker, passive, and more prone to being the victim of assault). What I know about trans women suggests the latter more than the former.
Obviously, individual behavior trumps all. Any particular woman (trans or not) who has a history of violence or sexual assault towards women should not be housed with another woman. The same should be true for men (again, trans or not).
The name of the game should be keeping perpetrators away from victims, and my belief is that "has a penis while other has a vagina" is a relatively poor proxy for that. Yes, there is a strong correlation, but that's a Simpson's paradox from combining the much smaller trans population with the very large cis population. If you were to separate out the datasets and consider cis men and women separately from trans men and women, I suspect you would see no or the opposite correlation.
> why we should have any sex segregation in prisons at all?
Or age segregation. Just because a 50 year old man has a penis and is 3x the weight of a 13 year old girl doesn't mean that they shouldn't be locked in a cell together. That's just your bigoted assumption that he's a violent person, you don't even know him.
Ironically, a lot of the arguments I've seen could be construed as misandrist because they're operating under the presumption that men are rapists and thus transgender people in women's prisons must be rapists. That's why the argument always focuses around transgender women while failing to address that their same argument would send transgender men to the far less safe male prison.
The actual problem is that prisons are unsafe for everyone and there's little done to make them safer. But they'd rather use transgender people in their culture war because they don't care about the actual violence problems.
You mean they'd rather fix the problem that is entirely an own goal than tackle the problem of reorganizing the entire penal system in a deeply unpopular and expensive way?
Once prison is organized like a summer camp with a 2:1 guard to prisoner ratio, we can do them co-ed.
One would assume surgery or hormones are required to change your gender designation in Washington State, but in fact this is not the case (neither is required). Here's the form to change gender designation on your driver's license in WA, anyone living in washington state can do it today: https://www.dol.wa.gov/forms/520043.pdf
It's all about 'gender identity' these days, not hormones and surgery.
Indeed, in trans circles, expecting the latter as a required factor is often considered highly offensive. This, and the notion that a person needs to experience gender dysphoria to be trans, is now derisively known as the 'truscum' point of view.
I think the vast majority of binary trans people consider gender expression to be an integral part of gender identity, and at least a majority also consider HRT or surgery to be a significant component. I think there are close to 0 people walking around with a beard and wearing masculine suits that identify as transwomen.
Non-binary people are another discussion, and how they should fit into male/female spaces is of course unclear.
Overall, I would agree that prison assignment should depend on more than reported identity. Especially since it is conceivable that people in prison are likelier to lie about their internal identity if they believe they can get something out of this lie. This is much less relevant for lower risk environments, such as bathrooms (in my country at least, unisex bathrooms are anyway quite common) or gym lockers.
> Regarding the right to privacy, what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
Any argument here about privacy is entirely independent of sex and gender. Prison is dehumanizing, address that. Don't be a transphobe.
Edit: There's a bunch of mistaken comments here assuming that this will protect women prisoners in some capacity. That's totally wrong! Women in prison are sexually assaulted, raped, and even impregnated by men all the time and have been for years. Those men are guards[0]. And this happens at a vastly higher rate per capita and overall than any assault by trans inmates. Anyone here with a legitimate interest in protecting women in prison would be attempting to address that harm, because it is far more dire for numerous reasons.
Is a woman a transphobe for not wanting to share a jail cell with a person who has a penis? I think most people would consider safeguarding female prisoners from males common sense.
I think you should take a moment to consider the (female) women in this situation. Imagine you're a woman 100% at the mercy of the state, and the state locks you in a cell with a male person. Put yourself in their shoes, and try to extend some empathy to them.
I never made any comment about women in prison. I have empathy to anyone in prison. Like I said, its deeply inhumane.
I think people in prison should be protected from other people in prison if they are dangerous, and I think prisons fail to do that today. I don't accept your presumption that having a penis makes someone inherently more dangerous.
Again: if your goal is to protect women in prison, the best way to do that is to advocate for reform that makes prisons safer for everyone. Not by being transphobic, which you're doing instead.
> people in prison should be protected from other people in prison
I strongly agree; if you deprive someone of their liberty, then you take on the responsibility of protecting them - because you've deprived them of the ability to protect themselves.
I'm not aware of any prison regime that takes the safety of prisoners as a key objective. [Edit] Nor do I know of a state that handles the deliberate negligence of prisoner welfare as a criminal offence.
The data showing 99% of perpetrators are male doesn’t count forcible envelopment as rape. In order to rape a man a woman has to penetrate him in some way for example sticking a finger in his ass.
>"Again: if your goal is to protect women in prison, the best way to do that is to advocate for reform that makes prisons safer for everyone. Not by being transphobic, which you're doing instead. "
Perfect is the enemy of good and while it's hard to disagree with the sentiment of "reform that makes prisons safer for everyone ", we have no idea what that actually entails and that's so much of a monumental task that it's basically a non-starter. I feel like the sentiment here is "this wouldn't be a problem if we changed everything, so why don't we?"
> Women in prison are sexually assaulted, raped, and even impregnated by men all the time and have been for years. Those men are guards.
Indeed and this is why feminist organizations, and others with an interest in women's rights and safety, push for policies of only employing female prison guards in women's prisons.
It's no stretch to see why they don't want male prisoners to be incarcerated there too, no matter how such males identity.
If the male guards can't be trusted not to sexually abuse women, how can you expect the same from cohabiting males?
If you read his link, it states the request is for counts, not individual names.
1. A complete and accurate count of inmates who identify as transgender (gender identity differs from sex identified at birth) in the custody of the Washington Department of Corrections [please break this information down by location]
2. Number of inmates that have been transferred from a men’s facility to a women’s facility since January 01, 2021
3. Total number of male persons who identify as female, non-binary, or any other gender identity that are currently housed in a women’s facility
4. Number of inmates who have transferred from a women’s facility to a men’s facility from January 01, 2021 to March 18, 2021
5. Number of female persons who identify as male, non-binary or any other gender identity that are currently housed in a men’s facility
For some the issue so sensitive that even a broad and impersonal question is hugely offensive. And negative intent is immediately assumed of the questioner.
It breaks down the N by location, which... what defines a location here? Is it a state? Is it a single prison? For a small N, narrow location is definitely a de-anonymization factor.
How would knowing "1 Transwoman is currently housed in a female prison on the territory of Washington state" in any way risk causing harm to that transwoman, or help you identify her in any way?
It doesn’t. I think GP is confusing small cell counts in micro data (a real problem) with small numbers in aggregate data (sometimes a problem).
In this case, just a count and prison is not a privacy issue as someone would have to already know the individual is trans to identify them. And that’s the only information contained in the data release.
this FOIA request arbitrarily mixes sex and gender, which actually does show a lack of understanding towards trans and non-binary people (as well as willingness to understand, materialized as fear. fear is the phobia part of transphobia)
so even though GP tried to be accurate and progressive-enough in their admonishment of the ACLU to find a way to have a rational way of expressing and discussing their fear, the people involved have made a malformed FOIA request and are expressing their calcified opinion conflating sex and gender identity.
What does that have to do with denying a FOIA request? Sorry, you used the wrong pronouns, you are denied FOIA? Intent of the FOIA request is irrelevant, otherwise the government could deny FOIA for people who want to make the government look bad, which honestly is probably the case here.
its not about a pronoun, so looks like you're also conflating concepts
no pronouns need to be added or used to correct the malformed FOIA request
it conflates sex and gender, I said what I said, its accurate that it is doing that.
> Total number of male persons who identify as female, non-binary, or any other gender identity
The request would be "Total number of male persons that identify as women". The sex doesn't change, the gender does. The FOIA request would say invalid, or zero, and be accurate, regarding the ones identifying as "female". The "other gender identify" may cover it, but not necessarily. Males identifying as men wouldn't have been transferred. So "other than what"? "Female" is not a gender, unless we are accepting that any arbitrary identification is valid, but would that be grounds for transfer?
But yes that can just say "males transferred", because they remain male.
Its a conditional argument because legal circumstances follow conditional logic. So if it seems obtuse, oh well, thats how it works.
> The request would be "Total number of male persons that identify as women". The sex doesn't change, the gender does. The FOIA request would say invalid, or zero, and be accurate, regarding the ones identifying as "female".
Actually a lot of them now do identity as female, and claim to have literally changed their sex from male to female.
The old idea of "man/woman refers to gender, male/female refers to sex" no longer applies these days.
Not content with colonizing the word "woman", they've now done the same to "female".
This is contemporary trans discourse for you, erasing women and trampling all over women's rights.
from what I can tell, consensus hasn't been made and there is a lot of regional consensus. For example, I see US English honing in on "man/woman refers to gender, male/female refers to sex" while some Commonwealth English not having that exact distinction. On the internet, this makes things very confusing because its not clear where consensus is, and its not clear if someone is saying something exclusionary when they're critiquing the nomenclature. obviously, if you are fearing something that doesn't make sense, this ambiguous regional discourse masquerading as consensus only will validate your suspicions.
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Anyway, prisoner gender is not healthcare data, it’s administrative data that describes prisoner population demographics.
I would agree with you if the request was for individual medical information on treatment or procedures or something.