Vienna will see a former red light district brothel owner—with a fraud conviction—sent to a women’s prison. Not national news—except the soon-to-be detained criminal was born a man.
On the eve of being sent down, 60-year-old Walter P., a former hourly hotel operator, claimed to have changed his gender. His apparent self-delusion was then recognised by the state, meaning that he could now be allowed to retire four years early—at 61—as a woman (instead of 65, the legal age for males).
Heroically, ‘Miss’ P. explained how the idea of this new role—as a kind of “denier of the state,” who “just wanted to annoy the justice system a bit”—came up while receiving a letter of imprisonment:
I thought to myself: I’ll just go to a women’s prison.
At the magistrate’s office, the Viennese man was first sent away because his appearance didn’t have any particularly feminine features:
I thought that was sexist. Because what does a woman have to look like? Do you need long blonde hair, false eyelashes and a miniskirt to be a woman?
Walter shaved off his mustache and came back with a psychiatric report. Within a week, Walter was renamed Waltraud. He could also prepare for retirement, as the retirement age for women is between 60 and 65 depending on their date of birth (instead of the male age 65).
Subsequently, Walter/Waltraud has rejected house arrest wearing an electronic ankle bracelet and instead wants a shared cell with ‘other’ female inmates. He claimed with a wink that he “particularly looks forward to showering and going for walks with the women.”
“Of course I feel like a woman,” says the inmate, whose sudden gender reassignment has surprised Austrian observers. Although married to a woman for 24 years and a father of two, he now identifies as a “lesbian transsexual,” stating:
My wife is used to a lot from me.
You don’t say.
Legal experts, however, are more critical of the case, but in a sense the system’s hands are tied, as there is no clear legal regulation on when someone can be considered a woman.
However, the Pension Insurance Institution has announced that it will re-examine the case. The calculation of Walter’s previous pension reference date is based on the entry in the Central Register of Civil Status. If there are any doubts, the individual case will be re-examined on the pension reference date. So if Walter did not look like a woman on the cut-off date, a different retirement age could result. But this drives us back to the ridiculous question Walter asked: “What does a woman have to look like?”
The case is an example of how the ‘T’ in LGBT gender ideology is twisting common sense and leaning heavily on all manner of available legal loopholes to defeat justice. Yet if Walter is playing it for laughs, placing men in women’s prisons is a deadly serious problem.
