Protesting!

My hat goes off to all the trans people out there who put themselves on the front lines of demonstrations and risk arrest. Because if arrested they could be subject to abuse and violence.

Two transgender women arrested at rights rally call treatment at Miami jail ‘dehumanizing’

Miami Herald via Yahoo News

By Haley Lerner

August 14, 2020


After being arrested for protesting in support of the rights of Black trans and gender-noncomforming people, two transgender women say they found themselves facing the same type of discrimination they were rallying against.

Gabriela Amaya Cruz and Jae Bucci were two of more than 30 demonstrators who were taken into custody at a July 19 protest in downtown Miami, where all participants were charged with obstructing the roadway. Both women say Miami-Dade corrections officers threatened to jail them with men and repeatedly interrogated them about their private body parts.

“My genitals were just a topic of conversation throughout most of the night,” Cruz said, “It’s disgusting that genitals at the end of the day are the only validation in their eyes of what it means to be female.”

Their experience at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center underlined the conflict between how members of the LGBTQ community define themselves and how the criminal justice system classifies transgender people based solely on their sexual parts. Neither woman has had gender-confirmation surgery. Both identify as women and Bucci has undergone years of hormone therapy and is considered female by the federal and state government.

They put more into protesting than other protesters on the line because they know what they face if arrested.

Metro UK reported that they…

She said she was also told she would have to sit with male inmates, despite fears for her personal safety. She was told it would be ‘unsafe’ to house her in the female section of the facility, and ultimately opted to be put in solitary confinement over fears for her safety.

[…]

‘They need to create a standard on how to handle or treat trans people. They cannot just put us in solitary, that is not okay.’ Cruz said she was also upset at being made to wear unisex clothing on leaving the jail, despite being handed her own clothes as she left. She said: ‘I felt completely dehumanized and very embarrassed with how I entered the jail versus how I left the jail.

Solitary confinement is a punishment. It shouldn’t be used because the prisons have no idea what to do with trans people so an easy out for them is to throw us into solitary confinement.

Someone that I know chained them self to the Supreme Court building and when they arrested and being booked they found a little something extra and whisked her over to the men’s prison. Now here is a trans woman whom the police didn’t suspect to be trans and they put her in a men’s prison!

Here in Connecticut we are “supposed to be” placed in a prison of our gender identity. Section 8 of Public Act No. 18-4 AN ACT CONCERNING THE FAIR TREATMENT OF INCARCERATED PERSONS says…

Sec. 8. (NEW) (Effective July 1, 2018) Any inmate of a correctional institution, as described in section 18-78 of the general statutes, who has a gender identity that differs from the inmate's assigned sex at birth and has a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, as set forth in the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", shall: (1) Be addressed by correctional staff in a manner that is consistent with the inmate's gender identity, (2) have access to commissary items, clothing, personal property, programming and educational materials that are consistent with the inmate's gender identity, and (3) have the right to be searched by a correctional staff member of the same gender identity, unless the inmate requests otherwise or under exigent circumstances. An inmate who has a birth certificate, passport or driver's license that reflects his or her gender identity or who can meet established standards for obtaining such a document to confirm the inmate's gender identity shall presumptively be placed in a correctional institution with inmates of the gender consistent with the inmate's gender identity. Such presumptive placement may be overcome by a demonstration by the Commissioner of Correction, or the commissioner's designee, that the placement would present significant safety, management or security problems. In making determinations pursuant to this section, the inmate's views with respect to his or her safety shall be given serious consideration by the Commissioner of Correction, or the commissioner's designee.

That is the law, how the Department of Corrections follows it remains to be seen.