The case of Jayney Sutherley, who was acquitted for threatening or abusive behaviour for misgendering a fellow prisoner, is proof that a reckoning is coming
Under Section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, a person may be charged with “threatening or abusive behaviour” if they behave in such a manner in ways likely “to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm” and that this behaviour is either intended to cause said fear or alarm or is “reckless” as to whether or not it would do so.
This is the charge Police Scotland levelled against Jayney Sutherley and of which she was acquitted in Greenock sheriff court last week. The 51-year-old was alleged to have behaved in a threatening and abusive manner towards Alexandria Stewart over a four-year period. The basis for this charge, the court heard, was Sutherley’s determination to refer to Stewart as “he” or “him”.
Since Stewart was formerly known as Alan Baker, Sutherley might have been guilty of being impolite but in point of objective, demonstrable, fact she was entirely correct. Stewart is a man and remains such even if he insists he is not. This is a matter of biological reality. If this is “transphobic” then the truth is transphobic.
As Baker, Stewart was convicted of murder in 2013 and subsequently jailed for life; Sutherley was convicted of culpable homicide and would have been eligible for parole in 2023 but for the case brought against her by Stewart. Prosecutors, however, produced no corroborating evidence against Sutherley beyond testimony offered by Stewart and his lover, Nyomi Fee, who is also serving a life sentence for murder.
The kicker to all this is that the offences were alleged to have taken place between 2019 and 2023, when Sutherley and Stewart were housed together at Greenock prison. Stewart claimed to be “highly mortified that she had outed me as trans to those who didn’t know I was trans”. You can believe this if you wish to but if so I have a number of lightly-used ferries for you to purchase.
This combination of personnel and circumstance suffices to make this a lurid and macabre affair of the kind even the darkest satirist might struggle to countenance. Yet it is all true and a reminder that in certain respects modern Scotland has thoroughly lost its mind.
The Scottish Prison Service insists no trans woman who is “a risk to women” will be placed in the female estate. Consequently, even Scotland’s prison service, thoroughly captured as it is by gender theory woo-woo, these days draws the line at putting male rapists into women’s prisons. The case of Adam Graham, subsequently convicted as Isla Bryson, is what is now considered a “learning”.
Other crimes of violence are treated differently. The four male-born, female-identifying murderers currently incarcerated in women’s prisons in Scotland are presumably considered no great risk because in each instance their victims were male. I am not convinced this is enough to reassure the women obliged to share a prison with these men but there we have it.
At the last census fewer than 20,000 people identified as trans or as people with a trans “history”. Almost half of these described themselves as “non-binary”. The number of people identifying as a trans man, a trans woman, or simply as generic “trans” amounted to about 0.2 percent of the adult population.
Meanwhile, in 2023-24 there were typically 564 people imprisoned in Scotland following convictions for murder or culpable homicide. Of these, at least four serving their time in the female estate are trans women or, in old money, men who now wish to be considered women.
While acknowledging that these are small numbers, either trans-identifying people are unusually likely to be murderers or killers are unusually liable to subsequently identify as trans. I know which of these hypotheses I find more credible and I suspect you know too.
The Scottish government insists these are “operational” matters for the prison service and the prison service does not comment on individuals or operational matters. This is how you keep the public in the dark.
According to the most recent figures, some 20 trans-identifying people are imprisoned in Scotland. The SPS no longer reveals how many of these people are biologically male or female or whether they are housed in the male or female estate. Scotland’s prison service continues to operate on the basis of self-ID and defines “affirmed gender” as “the gender in which a person lives their day-to-day life”. Incorrectly, the SPS says this “may differ from the gender assigned at birth”. Incorrectly, because sex, not gender, is noted and registered at birth.
Still, since men account for 96 per cent of prisoners it is reasonable to infer that the vast majority of trans prisoners were born male. Not all of these prisoners are housed in the women’s estate because some trans women prisoners have not requested a move to a woman’s prison. This is significant since it demonstrates that biologically male prisoners who identify as women can be housed in the male estate. Those that do make such a request, however, may typically count on it being granted. Piecing all of this together we may reasonably infer that at least two per cent of the prisoners locked up in female accommodation were actually born male.
Doubtless some people will insist this is only a small number of people and that these decisions only impact a small number of people who, being prisoners, are not always sympathetic cases anyway. When push comes to shove, who cares?
Similar arguments are sometimes trotted out about male participation in women’s sport. Not many men are invading women’s spaces like this so where, really, is the harm? Yet women, who make up half the population, are not a small number of people and it is remarkable that they are routinely expected to give way, or sacrifice their entitlements, to the demands of, yes, a small number of men.
Sometimes these demands are truly extravagant. In the case of Stewart there is evidence, quite remarkably, that he and his partner Fee are granted indulgences far beyond those customarily afforded prisoners serving a life sentence. The pair appear to have been spotted openly indulging in what are coyly deemed “sex acts” with, we may only conclude, the prison authorities’ covert blessing. Some prisoners are more equal than others and those with post-conviction sudden-onset gender dysphoria (sic) are the most equal of all.
Eventually there will be a reckoning for all this and when it comes it deserves to be a thundering one.
Source: The Times
https://archive.is/6Mg54#selection-1547.0-1681.103
or