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

Captive Genders…you’re trying to take my identity from me. You’re trying to take my soulfrom me, you’re just trying to take everything from me. You’ve alreadytaken my freedom, but I had a large part to play in that, so there’s not ablame game going on here. But, come on now, you can’t, that’s all I haveleft is who I am and they are trying to take that from me.Individuals whose gender identity is outside the traditional genderbinary of masculine and feminine for the bodies they are perceived to havechallenge gender expectations. I am using “transgender” as an umbrellaterm that encompasses several types of gender transgressors. This umbrellaterm includes transsexuals, cross-dressers, masculine-identified femalebodiedpeople, drag kings and drag queens, androgynous people, ungenderedpeople, two-spirit individuals, intersex people, and others who donot neatly fit into the two boxes of a gender binary. This study 3 involvesindividuals who were medically assigned as female at birth and who identifyas masculine. Most are content to be in their female bodies, while somefeel they are men and are interested in transitioning socially and physicallyto live their lives as men. One prisoner lived as a man for over twenty yearsbefore arrest, though without any medical changes to his body.Since most states where this study was conducted house prisonersaccording to their genitalia, including California, people identifying asmen are living in women’s prisons, and individuals identifying as womenare housed in men’s prisons. Some attention has been paid to transwomenand feminine men incarcerated in men’s prison facilities. Their issues andabuse—verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual—is portrayed in the 2006documentary movie Cruel and Unusual. 4 Legal issues surrounding housing,access to hormones and sex reassignment surgery, and safety from sexualassault have been written about in legal journals. 5 Transgender rights andprison rights activists have written reports about the range of concerns oftransgender prisoners in documents such as “It’s War in Here.” 6 This studyexamines the less-known concerns of masculine-identified people in twowomen’s prisons in California.Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW) and Central CaliforniaWomen’s Facility (CCWF) vie for the recognition as the largest women’sprison in the world. Located in Chowchilla, California, in the San JoaquinValley in Madera County, they are literally across the street fromeach other. Both were designed for just over 2,000-bed capacity, but eachhouse just under 3,900 people today. CCWF opened in 1990, and VSPWfollowed in 1995.190