Thread by @jakephillips

Okay I can’t stay quiet any longer.

I’m increasingly seeing a narrative about criminologists not speaking out about transgender people in prisons because of ‘how allegations of bigotry can be used to silence’ as if all criminologists agree with them.

Well, those criminologists don’t speak for this criminologist

I’ve seen other ‘gender critical feminists’ present a similar narrative that all women agree with them but are afraid to speak out. I have yet to see evidence to substantiate this - the same goes for criminologists.

But it’s true that I don’t tweet much about transgender people in prison (although I do talk about it). This is not for the reasons given by people purporting to speak for criminologists. Rather it’s because:

1) this is not my area of expertise- I’ve never researched with transgender people - and so I don’t feel like I should use my platform to talk about something on which I don’t have expertise, have researched or published on.

2) i disagree with gender critical feminists. A blanket ‘keep prisons single sex’ approach is an overly simplistic response to a complex issue. I don’t tweet my personal opinion about it because I’ll get grief for saying it. I’ll be accused of being captured by an ideology’.

There is probably some overlap in opinion here: the level of debate is so polarised and hateful. I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with it. I know I’ll get abuse from this post (and I know people I disagree with get abuse too - that’s not right either)

So, when some people complain about criminologists not speaking out about keeping transwomen out of women’s prisons, remember, it’s not because we’re scared of being called transphobic it’s because we don’t agree and also because ‘cancel culture’ cuts both ways.

I’m gonna mute this thread as soon as I’ve posted it so apologies for not responding.