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

Captive GendersDuring CR10, the Gender Liberation/Self-determination workinggroup, which was part of the CR10 planning committee, struggled withhow to have gender self-determination and trans histories and communitiesheld in that space, and it was a constant negotiation. However, wesuccessfully engaged all of the planning process and ensured gender liberationthroughout the entire weekend: from childcare, to plenaries, as wellas logistics like bathrooms access and pre-conference prioritizing outreachto trans and gender-non-conforming communities.CG: In thinking about the legacy of trans activism against prisons andpolicing and the bio and necropolitical dimensions of incarceration—bethey the regulation of gender expression and hormonal access, or the outingof HIV status and denial of care—what are ways in which the inside/outside struggle against the PIC has been shaped by trans and queer liberationistmovements—especially by people of color?DR: These movements have initiated a decisive altering of the ways inwhich we “do” and “think” political work against the PIC, aiming towardabolition. These critical interventions, in my experience, are spurred bymajor discursive, theoretical, analytical, and conceptual disruptions andtransformations of formerly prevalent and heteronormative activist assumptions:For example, when we speak of “medical neglect,” “medicalabuse,” or “lack of access to care,” we can no longer assume a normative,prototypical, male or female body as the object of racist and gender-oppressivestate violence. Instead, we need to understand how it isoften precisely when the prison medical and psychiatric apparatuses are“working well” that they are mobilizing some of their most fundamentalviolence against people’s already fragile sense of bodily integrity andemotional well-being. In other words, what trans and queer liberationpolitics teaches us is that there is really no such thing as a “good” or “humane”imprisonment regime within our historical conditions—there areonly differing capacities and political/juridical tolerances of a range ofphysiological destructiveness against people held captive. So by focusingon the peculiar and acute ways that trans and queer people are actuallyimprisoned, we get a far deeper insight into the institutional logics of theprison in its deadly totality.BB: Well, you have to go back to Stonewall: Wasn’t that about queer andtrans people in a bar in the Village, in New York? And then you have Ku-332