ADAM GRAHAM/ISLA BRYSON IS NOT A MOMENT FOR REJOICING FOR TERFs.

A particularly despicable Australian politician who is an opponent of multiculturalism held Bosnia up as an example of the failure of multiculturalism. Bosnia is an extreme example, and only someone who could be described as an anti-intellectual cherry picker would highlight it. And let’s not forget that Bosnia was a country forced to be part of a country by the allied powers after the Second World War!

In Australia, there was the case of Paul Denyer, who now identifies as Paula, who was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years as a serial killer, who wanted to be moved to a women’s prison. Now, in Scotland, there’s the case of Adam Graham/Isla Bryson, who was in a women’s prison but was moved to a men’s prison after an intervention by Nicola Sturgeon, and the TERFs are naturally excited and using it to claim that they’re justified as being TERFs.

Just like people such as Helmuth von Moltke shielded Jews from the Nazis, and Japan was both able to fill its prisons with draft dodgers and dissenters, among them Yoshida Shigeru, who was a post-war prime minister, AND despite horror stories from POW camps, one common thing I have found from reading memoirs of former POWs is that all reported and remembered a guard who treated them humanely if not decently. My grandfather’s old workmate actually owed his life to a Japanese guard, who, after he intervened to stop the guards from beating up a fellow prisoner, was told by a guard to sleep in one hut one night and the guard kept watch over him, so that the other guards couldn’t find him, and the next morning wouldn’t fill his stomach with water and jump on it.

I have read stories of transwomen in men’s prisons, and one such case was of one who wanted access to hormones while in a low security prison, but the vast majority of trans folk are law abiding citizens who have very little if any contact with the criminal justice system. Adam Graham/Isla Bryson is a rare case and should not be used as an argument in favour of transwomen being denied access to women’s spaces. The vast majority of transwomen want to access a women’s toilet to pee, and the vast majority of transwomen want to simply be accepted as, well, women. What people often forget or wilfully ignore is that most transwomen are harmless and many have also been able to be a woman’s good friend when they presented as a male, but not as a woman’s boyfriend. Yes, some have married and had children, but some have also had it that their wives have said, “More like a best friend and confidante than a lover.”

So, Adam Graham/Isla Bryson is an individual and a dangerous one, and should be treated as an individual, not as an argument against trans rights.