The Role Of Transgender People In Prisons

When discussing injustices, it is pivotal--for the sake of true progressive social change--to include all oppressed groups into the dialogue. Transgender People tend to be heavily misrepresented and demonized. Because of transphobia, there

There is not a plethora of research on the transgender inmate population. Brown and McDuffie (2009) report 750 transgender prisoners were in custody in 2007. The only reason this population is last on the list of importance is because of the limited population. Transgender inmate population pose one of the most challenging legal questions to the DOC. How far does the DOC have to go in providing medical, psychiatric, or surgical needs to those inmates who enter the correctional facility as transgender (Brown & McDuffie, 2009). There has been some successful litigation that has addressed these issues with inmates who have been diagnosed with gender identity disorders (GID). Brown and McDuffie (2009), suggest California has some of the most “comprehensive directive” that allows inmates to continue or initiate “cross-sex hormones for appropriately diagnosed inmates” (p.288). Ultimately, the transgender population pose a real threat to the correctional environment, such as, safety issues and predatory behavior by other inmates. One area of concern for transgender inmate population, because it is such a relatively new population, there are not a lot of facilities medically equipped to care for them properly (Brown & McDuffie, 2009), a lot like the elderly inmate population. This population is as equally at risk of being violated as any of the other special

“Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She” is a documentary that shows a brief explanation on human sexuality. It shows how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people fit in society in various places such as U.S, India, and Thailand. Most transgender people have been struggling to define differences. Most of all, it is not a choice they made to be a transgender, rather it comes naturally. Transgender people face severe discrimination in every day aspects of their life. Based on the documentary, I would like to focus on the discriminations that is happening on transgender people. I would like to see transgender people in at work place, at schools, and at the public.

Orange is the New Black, a comedy drama TV show that first aired on Netflix is 2013, follows Piper Chapman on her journey through an all women’s minimum security prison. The show is critically acclaimed due to the wide expanse of topics it covers. Not only is it taking on the topic of female prisoners in the United States prison systems and its accomplishments and flaws, it focuses on the female inmates and their backgrounds. The show touches various subjects such as sexual orientation, gender, race, and religion. There are inmates of all races and ethnicities and various different religions are portrayed, such as Catholicism, Buddhism, and Wicken. There are heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual inmates. There is one inmate that

The prison system is set up to house inmates based on their gender; male or female. But, society has evolved and the standard binary system does not apply to most people today, so where does this leave the transgender inmates? Trans inmates, regardless of whether they have been taking hormones before their sentence or not, are housed in the facility that matches their biological gender rather than their identified gender. Transgender inmates, especially trans women, face many obstacles including access health care, violent attacks, and sexual assault, however, if a trans inmate has received sex-reassignment surgery, they will be housed with their identified gender meaning that prisons are housing inmates based on genitals rather than

Majority of transgender people will face some sort of discrimination in their lifetime whether it is through being rejected by their families, denied housing or finding employment. “Employment discrimination forces many to become involved in the street economy and in survival crime. Widespread bias and ignorance among law enforcement and other officials mean that transgender people are disproportionately subjected to arrest and, in turn, imprisonment.” (al, 2011)

This paper is about the different issues transgender prisoners face in the United States. Transgender prisoners are often targeted and abused by both inmates and police officials due to being placed in the prisons of their biological sex. Transgenders are a misunderstood group of minorities in the United States. Transgenders do not receive the same health care as other prisoners and do not always receive their hormone therapy. Prisons over the U.S. are trying to find new ways to make better environments for transgender prisoners. Some prisons allow transgenders to buy female and or male products, but with no desecration from police officials it leads to further abuse within the prison and psychological damage to trans prisoner. Transgender

Imagine being a woman in a men’s prison. For many prisoners, this is the case because most state court correctional decide to sentence transsexual women in transition inmates based on sex assignment, not their identity. Within most dominant U.S. cultures transsexual women in transition are defined as those whose sense of gender is so absolutely opposed to their sex assignment at birth that they individuals desire to live exclusively as the opposite sex, undergo hormone treatments to align with the opposite sex, and sometimes undergo surgery to match their sexual organs with their gender identity (Stirnitzke 291). Often people are

Serving a prison sentence for certain crimes is a just punishment, but being denied a necessary medical treatment is torture. The amount of harassment and sexual assault a man experiences in a male prison can be quite high but, the amount of abuse a woman would receive in a male prison is far more tremendous. The prison system is set up to house inmates based on their gender; male or female. But, society has evolved and the standard binary system does not apply to most people today, so where does this leave the transgender inmates? Trans inmates, regardless of whether they have been taking hormones before their sentence or not, are housed in the facility that matches their biological gender rather than their identified gender. Transgender

Prisoners that are incarcerated go through many hardships during the course of their sentence. The mistreatment that inmates in prison encounter is unjustifiable in many cases. Amongst the inmates mistreated, transgender prisoners are challenged in many ways with abuse, misconduct, and discrimination. Transgender individuals are people who do not identify themselves with the gender that was assigned at birth. The high-risk profile of being a transgender inmate in prison strikes for deep concern and something needs to be done.

In a lot of places around the world more and more people are coming out as “Transgender.” The term transgender means that the person’s gender identity does not correspond with the gender they were assigned as having at birth. From personally having a transgender boyfriend I have since realized that these people experience a lot of discrimination in and from society. Many people simply just do not understand what the term transgender means and they see it as someone just “wants to be a man” or “wants to be a woman.” While there may be people who present it this way, it is more so that the individual just “feels” different, and “feels” as if they are “in the wrong body.” Some people experience this feeling at a young age as my boyfriend did in his elementary age. We live in a world who put these people down for being who they truly are, and no human being wants or needs that.

Transgendered people in America have made many great strides since the 1990s. They have encountered violence, lack of health care, and the loss of homes, jobs, family and friends. There have been many phases of the struggle of being transgendered in America over the years. The current phase we must be in now is equal rights. There are many variations of discrimination against the transgendered community. In our society we simply do not like what we do not understand. It is easier to discriminate than to try and understand. We are all created different and we should appreciate our differences. The change must come by addressing the views of the public. There is much justification in the unequal rights of transgendered peoples. The Human

Coming out as a transgender, identifying with a gender expression that differs from the assigned sex, has proven to be quite difficult through the ages. While the acceptance of transgender people has grown significantly higher throughout the years, people’s stance on them are still quite divided, and the uphill battle for transgender rights has proven this. Just giving transgenders the right to simply go to the bathroom they identify with has shown to be controversial according to the TIME cover Battle of the Bathroom. The TIME magazine makes sure to note the problem defiantly “far more than public facilities” (Scherer par. 9). Transgender rights are a problem that Jamison Green, president for World Professional Association for Transgender Health, thoroughly addresses in a report written by Alan Greenblatt for CQ Researcher. Jamison Green’s specific purpose in that report is to justify why transgender people deserve basic human rights like everybody else, as shown in society, through his use of facts, qualifiers, figurative language, counterarguments, and appeals to logic and values.

In 1994, the US Supreme Court addressed prison rape for the first time when they ruled that Dee Farmer, a transgender female inmate, was a victim of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Though prison officials knew Dee Farmer was a trans woman, they housed her in a male facility, where she was repeatedly beaten and raped, and subsequently contracted HIV. Farmer argued that prison officials knew that she was vulnerable and at risk for assault but failed to do anything to address the issue. The US Supreme Court ruled that the prison officials violated the Eighth Amendment by “commit[ing] an act or omission accompanied by ‘deliberate indifference’ to a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate” (Maruri, 2011, p. 819). Since 1994, several cases related have pushed the issue of transgender inmates in the national conversation. Most recently, Chelsea Manning, who was charged with releasing confidential US military documents came out as transgender over the course of her trial. This helped to focus attention on the experience of transgender inmates in prison . Through the lens of the prison industrial complex, I will explore the experiences of transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming inmates (TIGNC), a population subjected to gross human rights violations as wards of the State. Although the term “transgender” is most commonly used to someone who does not identify with their sex assigned at birth, those who identify as intersex or who do not

The social issue that I chose which affects society today is transgender inequality. These issues are more recently gaining attention and becoming a prevalent topic of inequality within our country. A transgender person is someone whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. As more and more transgender people share their stories in the media, the social problems that arise from these stories are discrimination within their everyday lives. They suffer from scrutiny and judgment from their peers, and thus many hide their gender identity from family and society. This social injustice can be as simple as a glance or staring, or offensive comments and questions to violent hate crimes. Transgender people are prone to violence and harassment, and often not feeling safe in any aspect of society. They are fired from jobs, denied medical insurance, and being murdered left and right solely for being transgender. “A staggering 41% of respondents reported attempting suicide compared to 1.6% of the general population, with rates rising for those who lost a job due to bias (55%), were harassed/bullied in school (51%), had low household income, or were the victim of physical assault (61%) or sexual assault (64%)” (National Center for Transgender Equality). The structure of this paper will consist of adding all the research that was gathered over the semester, news articles and peer