Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: Jailed For Being Trans.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Jailed For Being Trans.

If you look at my driver’s license and my passport, I have an “F” for my gender but my birth certificate has an “M.” So what is my legal gender? Say I’m going for a job and they asked for proof of citizenship and I show them my passport, it says I’m female. However, if they ask to see my birth certificate then that says I’m male. Or say I’m going for a marriage license in a state that does not have marriage equality and I am going to marry a man. I give them my driver license which says I’m female and they issue us a marriage license, well a trans-man did just that in Virginia and read what happened to him. Indiegogo.com writes that,

In the autumn of 2011, a man’s life was forever changed. A professional counselor with a love of surfing, he gave up everything he had in Florida to move and be with his new wife in Virginia. This woman then turned on him, not being able to bear the stigma of being partnered with a trans person. She completely and utterly abandoned him. The man was convicted of a felony. His crime? Being transgender -- he put an "M" on his marriage certificate…
…This was considered a FELONY. Despite having gone through the expensive and emotional process of medical and legal transition, he was still sentenced to five years in jail. His sentence was suspended to one year which he has spent wholly in solitary confinement.

This is a fear that I have every time I’m asked to give my gender; whatever I write down could be argued as being false. As I point out earlier, I have both genders listed on my legal documents.

I also feel that it is a violation of his human rights to be kept in solitary confinement for a year just because he wrote an “M” on his marriage license; solitary confinement is for harden criminals and is used for punishment. There have been a number federal courts cases that have ruled that solitary confinement for trans-inmates is cruel and unusual punishment. To confine transgender inmates in solitary confinement is the prison system way of taking the easy way out to protect a trans-inmates from assaults and rapes. In court order cases the trans-inmates were transferred to the general prison population and provided additional protection. In other countries and in some states a special wing of the prison is set-up for trans-prisoners.

What are your thoughts…

2 comments:

Stana8/26/12, 11:19 AM
Yes Virginia, there is transphobia.
ReplyDelete
Replies
katie eggeman8/26/12, 1:22 PM
This is a cruel miscarriage of justice. I guess we will continue to have this kind of injustice until laws and human hearts change.t
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers