The phrase sounds oxymoronic to me, but then I’m just a poor boy from downtown Russia. So I get terribly confused with all those pronouns, identities and genders.
I even used to be confused with the definition of a transgender woman. Is it a woman who becomes a man or a man who becomes a woman? Well, at least that confusion has been cleared up by the trial of Lexi-Rose Crawford, né Dominic.
“Miss Crawford” is a former man who tends to use “her penis” for criminal purposes. The incongruous phrases in quotes came from the trial, where they were used throughout by the defence, prosecution and judge.
The new-fangled woman used her penis to rape a friend, who was naturally female and therefore not strong enough to fight “Miss Crawford” off. It took the jury a lightning-quick two hours to convict, and Lexi-Rose was sentenced to nine years – in a men’s prison, which is something new, or at least recent, in the history of such crimes.
After several transgender women were sent to women’s prisons, they used their penises to rape other inmates and even guards. Hence the Ministry of Justice went against its instincts and issued guidance under which women who use their penises to commit sex offences will automatically go to male prisons.
Rather than clearing up my confusion, this guidance exacerbates it. Are transgender women, with their penises intact or removed, women or men? If they are women, they should go to female prisons and, if they happen to rape someone there, that’s just collateral damage in an ideological war.
But if they are still tacitly regarded as men, then by all means, off to the male pokey they go. But in that case, they shouldn’t be addressed as “Miss” anything, and their penises should keep their original personal pronouns.
“Miss Crawford” had some previous. When she was still a he, Mr Crawford was sentenced to four years for sex with a minor, otherwise known as statutory rape. But he was then released on licence (parole, to my American readers) and realised he was really a she.
By way of celebrating her new identity, Miss Crawford then used her penis as a shortcut to nine years in prison. However, those unfamiliar with the mysterious ways in which our jurisprudence works should know that things aren’t all that grim for “Miss Crawford”.
In spite of being a recidivist sex offender, she’ll probably be out in less than five years, entering the free population with her penis at the ready and looking for action. But that’s not the reason I’d describe the trial as a resounding victory for Lexi-Rose and everything she represents.
Some may argue that nine years is too soft a term for a repeat offender, and I for one fail to see how our society will be improved by a continued presence of Crawford in our midst, whatever he/she/it is called. Had the judge added a zero at the end of her sentence, I wouldn’t have objected.
But that still isn’t the point. Neither – and I hope you won’t think me heartless – is the pain suffered by Crawford’s past and doubtless future victims. (You don’t think her penis will stay idle when she is at large, do you?)
The real damage was done by all the other participants in that trial, those who referred to Crawford as “Miss” and spoke of “her penis”. A society, in which bewigged ladies and gentlemen, one of them wielding a gavel, can utter such phrases without flinching or being smitten by lightning from high above, has gone totally, probably irredeemably bonkers.
The use of such phrases endorses and perpetuates the madness plaguing society, precluding any possibility of successful treatment. Any normal person would balk at saying “her penis” for aesthetic reasons, if no other.
Injecting this kind of poison will eventually kill the English language – there are only so many toxins it can absorb and still survive. It won’t die as a means of communication, only as a vehicle of coherent expression laden with useful, sometimes beautiful, nuances.
And when the language goes, everything else does, at least everything that matters. If the word was in the beginning, it’s not illogical to fear it may also spell the end. Notice that all social perversions and revolutionary upheavals started with an assault on language.
For words convey concepts and concepts convey thoughts. Hence whoever controls language imposes his reign on people’s minds, and that’s the worst – and longest-lasting – of all possible tyrannies.
Political tyrants can be deposed in minutes, the shackles of economic bondage can also be shed quickly. But despotism imposed on people’s minds takes permanent residence there, and it may take centuries to abrogate its squatting rights.
So fine, if His Honour thinks nine years, in reality no more than five, is an adequate punishment for a brutal rapist with a history of sex offences, let’s not quibble. But what sentence would you suggest His Honour and both counsel merit for raping the English language and what’s left of collective sanity?
All sorts of bloodthirsty ideas are crossing my mind, but I’ll keep them in check. Perhaps if “Miss” Crawford used “her penis”, and Mr Crawford his, to rape, respectively, the women and men involved, it would be fitting and sufficient punishment replete with poetic justice.
Striking them off afterwards wouldn’t go amiss either. In a country ruled by law, crazy laws will impose a crazy rule. And the only way to keep the law sane is to rid the ranks of its practitioners of crazed saboteurs.
My first thought was of “My Fair Lady” and Henry Higgins’ declaration: “By law she should be taken out and hung, for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.” A bit harsh, perhaps, but a case could be made (if we fail in criminal court, we can always try civil). And thinking of hanging led to Mark Twain’s “A Burlesque Autobiography”: “This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart’s poor witticism that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter, and summer.” Twain is one of my favorite authors, but I don’t read him five to six days a week, as I do Boot.
Although you are right, Mr Boot, to be concerned at the possibility of too light a sentence for rapists and other recidivists, I would direct your attention to BAILLI, where you will find reports of current legal cases which reveal that there exists a substantial number/class of prison inmates who are kept in custody long after their nominal sentence has ended. Their continued incarceration is reviewed in a systematic fashion and they are able to request review, but it appears as though they are actually imprisoned until the chance of re-offending is judged to be minimal. However, I do not know what brings a prisoner into this category.
Perhaps the UK public ia, in fact, well protected.
” she’ll probably be out in less than five years, entering the free population with her penis at the ready and looking for action”
Tell Lexi-Rose he can only be assigned to a prison for women if he has his entire pudenda cut off first. I can hardly wait for the response.