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

Captive GendersJoy told me, “I feel like if I was a femme and I go to the cop shop and doall the smiles—‘cause I’ve watched it, you know—‘Oh, sure, you can getin,’ or ‘Go ahead.’” Another way the femmes are treated differently thanthe aggressives is through favoritism. Kango said, “They give them thingsthat, like, we’re allowed one, let’s say laundry soap, we get laundry soapevery month, and they give us a bag of laundry soap. So, this officer mightgive this femme two or three bags of laundry soap.”One reason why staff treat aggressives so harshly is because of theirhomophobia. They conflate their masculine gender presentation with beinggay and this challenges their own sexuality issues or their religious views.The other major perspective is that the aggressives’ maleness threatens themasculinity of the male staff. Male staff often flirt with women prisoners;hence, aggressives are seen as competition for the femmes’ attention.Moosey Baby, an aggressive stud, states, “The correctional officers get jealousbecause the aggressives are more aggressive than they are and we (aggressives)get more attention from the female inmates and correctional officersthan they (men) do.” Rae feels that some male officers are attracted tohis girlfriend, “so they have problems with me because they can’t get to her.”Sadly, sexual abuse and sexual assaults of women prisoners by maleofficers in correctional facilities around the country is too common. Documentedin the report All Too Familiar, 19 some male officers take advantageof the vulnerability of prisoners (both that they are locked up and thatthey are frequently survivors of incest, rapes, and domestic violence priorto incarceration). It cannot be denied that a sexualized atmosphere exists inprisons, whether as flirting, manipulation, or outright abuse and assaults.Sometimes the flirting behavior between male staff and femme prisonerscreates problems for aggressives. Kool talked about this experience,[One officer] used to flirt with my girlfriend, the one that I’ve beenwith since ’89. “Hey, you need to be with a real man,” and all kindsof stuff, and I used to tell him all the time, “Quit disrespecting me.”And he’d laugh. He used to flirt with my girlfriend all the time infront of my face. I can’t hit no man, what could I do? I was scaredto say anything, because if I say anything, he’ll probably put me onanother yard in another unit, but I should’ve because that’s what hedid anyway when he couldn’t get his way with my girlfriend. He wentafter somebody else who lived in my cell. And still made me feel uncomfortable.That’s one example. When he talked, he would grab hisprivate part; [who] he think he be super fly?202