Daily Femail: Right Wing Outraged at Trans Woman Getting Gender Care in Prison
Right wing media is freaking out over a trans woman getting access to gender affirming surgery in prison.
by Mira Lazine
Daily Femail is Assigned Media’s newest column, offering real opinions delivered with a satirical tone to address last week’s biggest news stories. Written by Mira Lazine, the column aims to humorously mock right-wing tabloids while also providing quality reporting every Tuesday.
Recently, a judge in Indiana ruled in favor of a trans woman’s right to access gender affirming surgery in prison. The ruling stated that the Indiana Department of Corrections violated the law and her rights in denying her said treatment.
Autumn Cordellioné fought for two years to be allowed to receive gender affirming surgery. Since her diagnosis with gender dysphoria in 2020, she self harmed and attempted suicide on several occasions owing in part to the prison’s alleged anti-trans discrimination. The ruling describes how she would avoid making prison staff aware of her injuries out of fear of being placed on suicide watch. The conditions of the suicide watch are described as truly heinous, involving essentially total isolation in a rubber room with a hole in the ground for a toilet, and no hygiene products whatsoever.
The prison, knowing her history and fears, denied her gender affirming surgery, referencing Indiana bill HEA 1569, which restricts public funding for such surgeries.And yet somehow, the Indiana DOC are supposed to be the good guys. At least, that’s what the intolerably wise and definitely not fervent with bloodlust crowd on the right thinks of this case.
While this story was covered in detail last week by most non-right wing news media, it took a few days for right-wing media to jump in. Shockingly, they have resorted to referencing Cordellioné’s criminal history as justification for incredulity at her receiving basic, medically necessary healthcare.
The Washington Stand, for instance, writes this in their lead, “A federal judge ruled that the Indiana Department of Corrections must pay for an incarcerated baby murderer to turn his penis into an imitation-vagina.” They write that Cordellione’s name is somehow “false,” and that she is appropriating the name from someone she knew. They also love to misgender and deadname her - good guy behavior, famously.
The article, of course, also contains false information regarding Cordellione’s insight on how long she knew she was trans - which she describes as knowing since she was a child. It additionally implicitly blames Cordellione for being the victim of sexual assault while in prison. And yet, the Daily Signal thought to republish this without more comment than saying that it is not “to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.”
Nevertheless, Cordellioné did commit the heinous crime of strangling her infant stepdaughter in 2002, leading her to be imprisoned for over 20 years. Daily Femail does not condone or endorse her actions and is not aware of a single person who would. This includes the American Civil Liberties Union, who took her case in August of last year, and Judge Richard Young, who ruled on this case.
But the narrative across right-wing media seems to imply the opposite, or at least suggests that giving her healthcare is equivalent to enabling her crimes. Conservative outlet The Western Journal, for instance, somehow managed to tie this story to Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris in saying, “if you kill the born, she’ll fight for your right for elective “gender-affirming” surgery on the taxpayer’s dime, should you be in prison.” The aforementioned Washington Stand article writes that Young’s ruling is a “streak of judicial activism when he substituted his own judgments about grammar, biology, and reality for those of the state of Indiana.”
To no one’s surprise, these outlets use this as an argument to undermine the medical necessity of gender affirming care. They will truly never be unique.
Less extreme writing that still furthers the same idea is seen from regional news outlets of dubious objective quality like Fox 19 or CBS Austin. These stories find it essential that readers understand Cordellioné’s crime before understanding the travesty that she was subjected to, seeming to imply that, because she did one horrific thing in her youth, she deserves whatever comes her way for the rest of her life. This purely carceral idea further suggests that someone’s access to basic human rights, such as medical necessities and access to proper personal hygiene, should be taken away under specific circumstances.
It is also worth keeping in mind that any action taken against one prisoner becomes precedent within the prison’s legal canon. While we might not feel much empathy towards those who did some of the worst crimes, the moment these policies are in place we then would see similar policies implemented for other prisoners. What of the people whose only crime is being addicted to drugs, or who were arrested for sex work, or who are entirely innocent and are falsely convicted? A policy targeting one prisoner becomes a policy targeting all.
Daily Femail finds that these carceral ideas are not uncommon throughout the conservative lexicon, or for that matter with the very premise of the American judicial system. But we also find that this idea is not one based in a logical understanding of human rights, rather one based in an immediate emotional reaction to hearing about a bad person doing bad things.
In other words, conservatives value their feelings over facts. We await to see when there will be a conservatives owned compilation featuring Ben Shapiro.
The point of human rights as a concept is not that they can be cherry picked for how and when they apply, but rather that they apply to everyone, universally, without fail. Human rights are given to everyone because they are human. If we take away these rights… well, history shows us, such as with any marginalized group in any point in history, that grievances with individuals or outright lies about entire groups are often used to argue that entire groups are fundamentally undeserving of any basic empathy or treatment. It should be no surprise as to what side conservatives are on in each of these issues. For specific examples, see Israel’s treatment of Gaza, or the USA’s historical treatment of people of color, or the Holocaust, or the Tigrayan genocide, or… how transgender people are treated internationally today.
Fyodor Dostoyevski famously said that “a society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.” If we want everyone in our society to be treated fairly and equitably with all of their basic needs as a human being, we need to start with those who have done heinous things. This even includes the staff at The Washington Stand.
Mira Lazine is a freelance journalist covering transgender issues, politics, and science. She can be found on Twitter, Mastodon, and BlueSky, @MiraLazine