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† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

Captive Genders: Embodying Resistance and Envisioning Safety
by Jed Walsh*

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex has burning cop cars on the cover and incendiary content on every one of its 365 pages to match. Edited by Nat Smith and Eric Stanley, the immensely wide-ranging anthology begins with an introduction by Stanley titled “Fugitive Flesh: Gender Self-Determination, Queer Abolition, and Trans Resistance” and ends with tools and resources for prison abolitionists to use in their organizing. In the acknowledgments, Stanley and Smith say that “writing must always be produced within the context of action. Similarly, action devoid of analysis often makes for shaky ground upon which to build.” This is one of the central tenets of the book, and each contribution to the anthology is very clearly produced from lived experience. Captive Genders urges those who read it to take action as part of movements for queer and trans prison abolition now!

CENTERING PRISON ABOLITION IN QUEER AND TRANS MOVEMENTS

One of the most invaluable things to me about Captive Genders is the clarity with which the contributors reject the mainstream LGBT agenda and the entirety of the gay rights movement’s attendant violence and exclusion. In my coming of age years, I’ve watched gay marriage legalized in my home state and increasingly across the country, and I have experienced gay marriage take hold of popular imagination as “the” single LGBT issue. How did it get to be this way? When I was 17 and first getting politicized around opposing the Iraq war, I know that my dreams of social justice were bigger, more colorful, and far more wide-reaching than a single cause like gay marriage. Now as a queer and transgender person and someone working to end prisons, it’s heart-breaking to me to see how far away from my deepest values the gay rights movement has traveled. Luckily, there are increasingly visible examples of queer/trans activists and organizations that are working to oppose all forms of oppression, to reject the prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex, and to create livable, healthy communities for all.

The very first piece in Captive Genders succinctly lays out the fundamental differences between mainstream LGBT politics and radical queer/trans justice struggles. In “Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer Movement With Everything We’ve Got,” Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee, and Dean Spade present a chart outlining the current LGBT political landscape that I think is absolutely essential in understanding the limitations of mainstream gay politics (see the chart here: h). The chart has three sections: “big problems” faced by queer/trans people, “official solutions” to those problems from a gay rights standpoint; and “transformative approaches” being used by radical queer/trans organizations.

This chart is mind-blowing and highly instructive, repeatedly showing that while wealthy and/or white and/or cisgender gays are offering gay marriage, military inclusion, and hate crimes legislation as solutions to problems like lack of access to healthcare, discrimination, violence, and family separation, radical grassroots activists and organizations have been developing a set of demands that is far more visionary and broad. These include demands for the elimination of defense budgets and an end to war; an end to ICE raids, deportations, and police collaboration; demands for the end of poverty; for permanent housing for all people without homes; and for a world without prisons! This is what I wanted and was excited by when I was 17. Throughout its pages, Captive Genders provides us with a politics of hope and compassion and a world worth working and staying alive for.

GENDER DEFIANCE AGAINST THE PIC

Captive Genders alsodocuments the bravery of queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people who exist inside the prison-industrial complex, even as they face tremendous, harm, punishment, and violence for their genders and sexualities. Three short narrative pieces in the anthology, by Kristopher Shelley “Krystal,” Clifton Goring/Candi Raine Sweet, and Paula Rae Witherspoon, relate experiences of surviving incarceration as trans* and intersex people. The realities of imprisonment described by the three contributors are stark: harsh punishments, harassment, humiliation, lack of access to healthcare and hormones, assaults and beatings, sexual violence and rape by staff and other prisoners, solitary confinement, and more are all typical. Against these unimaginable circumstances, all three authors write, survive, and continue to defy a world and prison system set up to destroy them. In “Rounding Up the Homosexuals: The Impact of Juvenile Court on Trans/Gender Non-conforming Youth,” Wesley Ware includes ways the youth resist cissexism and transphobia while incarcerated: “Trans-feminine youth have gone to lockdown instead of cutting their hair and used their bed sheets to design curtains for their cells once they got there. They have smuggled in Kool-Aid to dye their hair, secretly shaved their legs, colored their fingernails with markers, and used crayons for eye shadow.” I feel inspired by the resilience and creativity of these young people, but I also feel enraged that they are locked up. What will it take to end the incarceration of queer youth, and indeed the incarceration of all youth?

TROUBLING “SAFETY” AND “INNOCENCE”

One of the hardest pieces for me to read from Captive Genders, and one that has therefore stuck with me longest, is Erica Meiners’ essay, “Awful Acts and the Trouble with Normal.” In both its willingness to trouble conventional ideas in uncomfortable ways and in its expansive sense of what can be considered a “trans” issue or a “gender” issue, this essay captures the dimensions that make Captive Genders such an important and provocative book. Meiners details the history of sex offender registries and traces the ways that queer people have been implicated in the category of “sex offenders” for decades through anti-sodomy laws. Instead of trying to neatly delineate “good” queer people who are innocent from “bad” sex offenders who are guilty, Meiners instead questions the construction of the child predator and the effectiveness of sex offender registries. What does it mean that Bureau of Justice statistics indicate that 70% of sexual assaults against children happen in residences, usually the child’s, but that we still consider strangers the leading threat to children? What would it look like to work to prevent sexual violence against children in ways that are realistic, non-criminalizing, and non-punitive? Meiners’ essay also considers how we can recognize the humanity of those who do sexually assault children and support them in being accountable, although no easy answers are given.

EVERYDAY MOMENTS

I want to end with some small examples from my own life of trans resistance to the PIC and of queer and trans people collectively imagining safety for our relationships and communities. In June, I attended my first Trans Pride. The keynote speaker was CeCe McDonald, a black trans woman from Minneapolis who was attacked while walking to the grocery store and later imprisoned for defending herself against her attackers. In her speech at Trans Pride CeCe told her story, reminded the crowd of the pervasive violence against trans women of color, and managed to make everyone laugh many times.  She encouraged those gathered to remember “there are a lot of our people still behind bars,” and later said in reference to the prison-industrial complex, “Fuck that shit! That shit has got to go!” to roars of laughter and applause. Unlike Gay Pride events I’ve been to where the only visible political issue is marriage rights, Trans Pride was a space where prison abolition was explicitly demanded.

In July, I participated in a two-week class on Community, Support, and Accountability through the NW Network of Bi, Trans, Lesbian, and Gay Survivors of Abuse. The first week focused on supporting survivors of abusive relationships, and the second week focused on supporting people who have been abusive in being accountable for the harm they have caused. I was out of town for the first session but found the second week of class really exciting, challenging, and helpful. We broke into small groups to work through a very detailed role-play about two hypothetical people in an abusive relationship and to discuss how we would respond to the situation if we were a friend of the survivor; a friend of the perpetrator; or a community member who knew both parties in the relationship. Three of the working assumptions of the exercise felt really amazing to me to share with the people gathered in that room: 1) that survivors need to be supported; 2) that perpetrators are human and exist within our communities; and 3) that the prison system will never eliminate interpersonal and sexual violence. Moving forward, I hope that the difficult, messy, and life-affirming work being done by queer and trans people for prison abolition recorded in Captive Genders continues to grow in new directions. I want to invite everyone, trans and non-trans alike, into this movement. I know it will take all of our creativity, gentleness, fierceness, knowledge, and empathy to abolish prisons for good and to create a world of trans* liberation and transformative justice instead.

ENDING PRISONS NOW

Here are some of my recommendations for further engagement with queer/trans prison abolition work.

WATCH:

“No One is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Prison Abolition” with Reina Gossett and Dean Spade

Two queer and trans prison abolitionists discuss the complexities of bringing prison abolition politics to bear on the ways that we address harm and safety in our daily lives.

TAKE ACTION:

Write to incarcerated queer and trans people through Black and Pink. There are over 5,000 people waiting for a pen pal! Anyone can be a pen pal.

DONATE:

All of these organizations are doing incredible work to advance justice and well-being for queer and trans people, including incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.

• Free CeCe documentary
• NW Network
• Sylvia Rivera Law Project
• Transgender Gender-variant Intersex Justice Project

* Jed Walsh is a poet and organizer raised in Des Moines, IA, and currently living in Seattle, WA. Jed is proud to be involved with EverydayAbolition.com and the Alternatives to Violence Project. You can find Jed on Twitter talking books, gender, and strategies for collective liberation. @jedwalsh0

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