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

Captive Genderstenant bank imagineno passport jail shelter claimIt’s connecting across a chorus of activist spirit—amid break andtoward something more safe, more whole, more true and free—that pullsme out of bed to shower and dress myself.I pull on what I explain to housemates as my policy disfraz: a sternstriped femme suit, the texture smoothed out of my hair, and the sturdyleather bag, usually in the bottom of my closet, slung over shoulder.Once at the office, I settle more into this suit shape containing my queer,Chinese-American, female-assigned/identified and gender-fluid, collegeeducated,“able” body. I check online for the morning roundup of capitolgossip. I review talking points for all twenty seconds that the committeechair will likely afford me come hearing time, when I’ll say again—insuit voice—that it’s a bad idea to build more prisons and that callingthem “gender responsive,” “community-based alternatives,” or “homelessshelters” wasn’t gonna cut it. I shuffle a stack of papers into my bag, rolla 30-foot-long petition into a tube, and begin the drive north from Oaklandto Sacramento.gender heartbreak, fraud tagThe once uncomfortable routine of shape change and code switching toplay policy in service of containing the prison industrial complex becamemore and more practiced for me from the late 2005–2006 California legislativesession through the first half of the 2007–2008 legislative session. Iwas serving as the campaign and communications director for anti-prisonorganization Justice Now. We were knee-deep in a contentious battle overwords, ideas, jobs, moneys, ego—most significantly, the names, bodies,and lives of gender-oppressed people imprisoned and targeted for lockupin California prisons. At the heart of our quickly escalated fight responsewas the vital need to give shape and sound to what our movement bodyhad held for too long: the break and tire from the feeling of unendingfight against more and more criminalization, more and more stolen, moreand more disappeared, more and more prematurely dying. 2The specific proposal our pushback targeted was California’s proposalfor a near 40 percent expansion of California’s women’s prison systemin the shape of a new system of mini prisons—“Female RehabilitativeCommunity Correctional Centers” (FRCCCs)—throughout the CentralValley and beyond. Originally packaged as part of a portfolio of so-called282