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

Out of ComplianceThere is no official count of how many transgender prisoners thereare in the California system. Woodward wrote in 2006 that based on activistestimates, there were probably 200 transgender people (who had orwere interested in transitioning) and another thousand who were gendervariant and did not fit the gender binary. This takes on heightened significancebecause prisons are highly gendered spaces in terms of masculinityand femininity, and also in terms of sexuality. Men’s prisons are set up toemasculate men, and women’s prisons are designed to reinforce dependenceand passive roles for women. 7 Both environments mirror a hyperexpression of traditional gender roles. While violent control over men inprison breeds violence in return, either through the violence of guardsover prisoners or the violence among prisoners through gang violence,sexual assault, or guards allowing prisoners to prey upon each other, thisis seen as an inevitable result of concentrated masculinity. That is, thecontrol is designed to be violent, to reinforce the hyper-masculinity ofcompetition, dominance, control, force, suppression of emotion or weakness,and especially heterosexuality, where punks, or “women,” are forcedinto sexual submission.Female prisoners are expected to be passive, emotional, weak, submissive,and dependent. Since non-feminine behavior landed them in prison,incarceration should “restore them to it.” 8 They should display subservientbehavior, including in heterosexual relations. Due to the constantmonitoring of sexual behavior (where any touching between prisoners canbe defined as sexual) and the fact that more guards are male than female,there is a highly sexualized environment that includes flirting betweenmale guards and prisoners, whether due to dependence on them for accessto goods and privileges or in search of attention, kindness, or fatherfigures. This dependence mirrors the traditional relationship outside ofprison in which women are supposed to be at the beck and call of men intheir lives. Furthermore, Lutze reminds us, this leads to women continuing“to see themselves as a commodity to be used by men.” 9 That incarceratedfemales have defied feminine expectations and morality is shown ina comment by gender-non-conforming Cookie: “They just feel that thisis part of my delinquency. You know, they attribute it to my delinquency.They don’t attribute it to just me as a person.”The SampleTwenty-two masculine-identified people at CCWF (16) and VSPW(6) filled out surveys, and fourteen of this group were interviewed in191