This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Hey, here’s something we just aren’t talking about enough: The federal government desperately wants to transfer all incarcerated transgender women to men’s prisons, where they will endure unspeakable physical and psychological abuse.
Content warning: This article discusses the institutionally arranged sexual abuse of transgender women in the American carceral system.
The very first day he began his second term as president, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order (not a legally binding framework, as an aside, because the Executive branch is not the Judicial branch, despite what they may think!) declaring that it was the position of the United States government to acknowledge only two genders, male and female, that is based on anatomical sex observed at birth, and is immutable.
Cool.
This had widespread, entirely negative repercussions, both among federal agencies and in the private sector, but one particularly dangerous result of EO 14168 was the Bureau of Prisons opting to ignore the Prison Rape Elimination Act and ship trans women off to men’s prison as part of a process known as V-coding, in which trans women are placed in violent men’s cells to “pacify” them. This is institutionally sponsored and facilitated rape, and it is a sincere threat that every trans woman in America faces if they have run afoul of law enforcement and the “justice” system. Because of systemic racism in law enforcement (and, you know, everywhere), Black and brown trans women are the most likely targets of this state-sponsored rape.
A trans woman incarcerated in a federal prison filed suit to prevent this unconstitutional, illegal, and frankly fucking heinous practice on January 26. Within days, injunctive relief was approved to ensure that she continued to be housed in women’s general population and her necessary medication was not punitively withheld. Less than a week later, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth approved the same injunctive relief nationwide, ensuring it applied to all 16 trans women incarcerated in federal prisons at that time.
That injunctive relief has been extended several times as the cases work their way through courtrooms, and relief was approved for trans inmates in federal prisons to continue receiving gender-affirming care in the meantime. However, practicing great evil, a federal appellate court ruled in April that the Bureau of Prisons could not be blocked from transferring trans women to men’s prisons based on the general idea that it would be cruel and unconstitutional, and that each individual woman must argue her case for protection… so they did exactly that, and Judge Lamberth renewed the injunction until June 8.
While I highly recommend reading that article by The Advocate, I have to caution you that it briefly details some of those women’s experiences, which they were forced to explain if they wanted to receive protection against the Bureau of Prisons. It is a difficult bit of journalism, but if you are not at risk in the way these women are, you may want to enlighten yourself on just how bad the situation is for them.
Will that relief be extended beyond June? Who can say. I can tell you that these women do not deserve to live their lives a few weeks at a time, constantly terrified that they will be forced to endure nightmarish trauma for the edification of rapists and the federal government who hates them.
Bear in mind, too, that this is not new. Trans inmates have faced sexual abuse at the hands of other prisoners, often with the help of the system itself, for decades. At Assigned, we regularly publish the work of B Speaks, which provides a window into the daily lived experiences of trans inmates… and it is often unpleasant and upsetting.
We cannot look away from this. The American carceral system is a behemoth of racist violence, particularly anti-Black racism, and the prison industrial complex has been an unnecessary, for-profit scourge upon American citizens for generations. We must consider ourselves abolitionists, to protect our trans neighbors, our Black and brown neighbors, our migrant neighbors.
Remember this: Everybody deserves another chance, and nobody can be defined by their mistakes. Fuck Donald Trump, fuck the Bureau of Prisons, and fuck everybody who aids and abets these ghouls in their efforts to harm trans people for the alleged crime of existing.
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
