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

The Only Freedom I Can Seeto survive in any wayCause parole is set up for failureIf you have no family on your sideSo the only freedom I can seeIs death in a prison cell. 23R’s poetry echoes Michel Foucault’s concept of “circular elimination,”where the cycle of violence and incarceration experienced by so manypeople on the edges of heteronormativity, white supremacy, and neoliberalcapitalism functions as “a machine for elimination…a kidney thatconsumes, destroys, breaks up and then rejects, and that consumes in orderto eliminate what it has already eliminated.” 24 R’s poetic life narrativedemonstrates the ways that poverty, sexual violence, the criminalization ofcrimes of survival, and the dismantling of social support networks underneoliberal restructuring intertwine to over-determine the presence of poornon-normatively gendered people in the US prison regime.R’s poetry and writing also highlight the forms of extra-legal violencethat imprisoned queer people are subjected to in the form of physicaland sexual assault at the hands of other inmates and guards. Protectingoneself against this violence can lead to extended sentences, so that one’sattempts to survive the inconceivable horrors of captivity are met withan intensification of one’s subjection to state violence. R was originallysentenced to twelve years for burglary but was then charged with multiplecounts of “possession of a deadly weapon” and “attempted murder” whileshe was incarcerated. R writes,At one time if you were gay in this man made hell you were in trouble.Cause the guards did not care about you. Then the white people youwere doing time with hated us that were gay and white. For theyclaimed we made the white race weak. So they were out to get us….But then again this is the way all gay people were treated. Not justwhite gays…. And when gay people were getting beat down, raped,hogged, jacked, killed, used and abused, the guards would turn theirhead…there was always a group of us that would fight back…andwe kept weapons, and had records of keeping them, and using them.And most of the time this was the only protection we had…. I keptweapons on me 24 hours day…in my bunk when I was asleep…evenin Ad. Seg [administrative segregation]…I kept weapons to protectmyself and at times to protect my sisters. 25177