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HAWORTH: Gavin Newsom’s Transgender Inmate Law Could Put Women At Risk

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SAN FRANCISCO - MAY 25: San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom smiles during a news conference May 25, 2010 in San Francisco, California. Mayor Newsom signed fee deferment legislation that will stimulate development and and generate construction jobs by allowing developers to defer upfront city development impact fees.
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This past weekend, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law which requires state prisons to house transgender inmates based on the gender with which they identify. During the intake process, officers must now ask inmates — in private — if they identity as transgender, nonbinary or intersex. Those who wish to do so can then request to be placed in a facility which houses the gender of their choice. 

According to The Associated Press, the law says the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation cannot deny such requests solely because of “inmates’ anatomy, sexual orientation or ‘a factor present’ among other inmates at the facility.” The state does have the power to deny a request if it has “management or security concerns.”

The bill was authored by Democratic California State Senator Scott Wiener, who also introduced the controversial bill SB-145, which “exempts from mandatory registration under the act a person convicted of certain offenses involving minors if the person is not more than 10 years older than the minor and if that offense is the only one requiring the person to register.”

Sen. Wiener said that he didn’t expect this “management or security concerns” exception to be used very often, saying “It’s just a false narrative about transgender people and about transgender women in particular that they’re somehow not really women and are just trying to scam their way into women’s bathrooms or facilities in order to do bad things,” and that “Overwhelmingly the people who are being victimized are trans people.”

Firstly, it’s important to acknowledge that transgender people are certainly subject to increased levels of victimization in prison systems, and protections should be put in place to provide for their safety while in the custody of the state. However, the fact that transgender people are victimized does not justify the full embrace of the demands of the transgender movement with a complete disregard for any potential consequences.

Sen. Wiener’s claim that it’s “just a false narrative about transgender people and about transgender women in particular that they’re somehow not really women and are just trying to scam their way into women’s bathrooms or facilities in order to do bad things” includes several fundamental flaws. Firstly, transgender women are not biological women, by definition. Legislation based on concrete issues like biological sex cannot be presented as objective if they are built upon subjective and scientifically disputed notions. Secondly, while it is certainly untrue to claim that every transgender woman is “trying to scam their way into women’s bathrooms or facilities in order to do bad things,” it is utterly naive to draw the invalid conclusion that such a risk does not exist.

The brutal fact is that prisons house people who have broken the law. Sometimes, the laws broken involve violence against others. Sometimes, the laws broken involve sexual violence. Wiener is assuming good intent among those who have demonstrated a willingness to break the law and harm others.

When Democrats approach issues, they routinely use the argument “if it could save one person.” By that logic, we should ban so-called “assault weapons” if it saves just one life, and we should enforce a national COVID-19 lockdown if it saves just one life. However, if they assume that premise, why do they cheer for legislation which will likely lead to an avoidable victimization of at least one person? More specifically, why do they cheer for legislation which will put at least one vulnerable woman at risk?

The reason why they cheer is that Democrats have made a choice. This choice involves the latest step in their rejection of true feminism in favor of an LGBTQ+ agenda. The fact that feminism and transgenderism are in many ways antithetical is irrelevant. The fact that women continue to be one of the most victimized groups in our society is irrelevant. The fact that some men who think they are women will likely abuse this system to place themselves among vulnerable women is irrelevant. What matters is “progress,” regardless of how truly regressive such progress is.

Just like SB-145, this legislation claims to protect today’s “victims.” The abandonment of yesterday’s victims is a price the Democrats are all too willing to pay.

Ian Haworth is host of The Ian Haworth Show and The Truth in 60 Seconds. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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