Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex

Awful Acts and the Trouble with NormalIn a nation without an adequate or affordable childcare system, nouniversal healthcare, expensive to prohibitive costs for higher education,and a minimum wage that is not a living wage, there are no registries forthe officials and employers who routinely implement policies that activelydamage all people, including or even particularly children.SORs are expanding. Civil commitment laws, passed in a dozenstates by 2006 and upheld by the Supreme Court in a 2005 decision, aimto geographically detain and segregate certain categories of sex offenders,indefinitely, after release. 17 Escalating housing and employment prohibitionsmake life difficult for those convicted of sex offenses and, mostcentrally, do nothing to make our communities safer or better. And, ina nation of compulsory heteronormativity and cissexism, what is normalsexual and gender development?The relative silence from anti-prison activists, feminists, and queersregarding carceral expansion is troubling. Historically, assimilation, or the“price of the ticket” to borrow from James Baldwin, 18 is often promised atthe cost of participating in the demonization of those of lesser value. Yetcolluding with this framework does nothing to make our lives safer. Weneed people to ask questions and to dialogue. What are the factors thatsupport and naturalize the expansion of the SOR? Which children (andadults) benefit from the construction of the child as vulnerable and inneed of protection and surveillance? How do SORs protect those withthe most power and privileges? How do we, especially those most impactedand harmed, humanize the lives of those convicted, or not, of sexualoffenses? How might public dialogues about these questions shift ideasabout health and safety in homes and communities, and even perhaps,shift conceptions about childhood, sexuality, family and gender?This analysis is not new. Organizations and individuals are workingto make changes, including generationFIVE, that is dedicated to endingviolence against children in five generations without state interventionand Critical Resistance that works towards ending the nation’s prison industrialcomplex and for prison abolition. These organizations, and manyother small, local, and unfunded collaboratives, work in communities tocreate alternatives without stigmatizing populations and without usingand legitimating punitive systems. This is much easier to write about thanto practice.Martin, the part-time building maintenance worker, can’t find anywhereto live. Landlords won’t take him, he doesn’t have enough money, or there119