"Trapped" in Sing Sing: Transgendered Prisoners Caught in the Gender Binarism

Authors

Darren Rosenblum, St. John's University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Publication Date

2000

Volume

6

First Page

499

Abstract

(Excerpt)

A transgendered woman, who has undergone extensive hormonal therapy and cosmetic surgery, is convicted and imprisoned. Because she still has a penis, albeit a nonfunctioning one, prison officials categorize her as a male, and place her in a men's prison. "You were born a boy, and you're going to stay a boy," the prison doctor says, rejecting continuation of her long-term estrogen treatment. Her body begins to regain the masculinity she had largely escaped. Bruised by the changes, her body no longer feels like her own, but one imposed on her by the criminal justice system. Her femininity stands out among the male prisoners who repeatedly rape and beat her. Trapped, not only in her body, but in a prison that refuses to recognize and respect her gender identity, she castrates herself with glass and used razors. The prison hospital's hands forced, it finishes the job. Then, to compensate for the lost masculinity, the doctor orders testosterone replacement treatments. After this fails to restore her masculinity, the prison doctors return her to the estrogen treatments that preceded her incarceration.

Shockingly, several transgendered women have experienced similar ordeals. This Article will examine this human rights tragedy and explore its vital relevance. Many transgendered prisoners have HIV, are people of color, are lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and/or are incarcerated for property crimes or prostitution related to their quest for transformation. Their condition demonstrates flaws both multiple and fundamental in the hierarchization of gender, sexual orientation, race, class, and deviance. Transgendered prisoners' position both behind bars and at society's bottom rung crystallize such problems into an array of intermingled and overwhelming legal dilemmas.

This Article first summarizes gender, transgendered identity, and legal issues facing transgendered people to contextualize the lives of transgendered prisoners. Parts II and III explore respectively the placement and treatment issues that complicate the incarceration of the transgendered. Corrections authorities, through indifference or incompetence, foster a shockingly inhumane daily existence for transgendered prisoners. In Part V, I examine the plight of transgendered prisoners through the metaphor of the miners' canary. Transgendered prisoners signal the grave dangers facing all of us in a wide array of social structures, elucidating the apparently intractable problems of gender. This Article simultaneously explores a human rights tragedy and proposes practical solutions while taking a critical perspective on the issues raised.

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Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjgl/vol6/iss2/4/