Guilty by Birth

a new policy to exclude trans women from female prisons

With the current unhinged overreaction to Scottish self-id laws currently taking place, the deputy prime minister (and high ranking nazi in a Quentin Tarantino film lookalike) Dominic Raab has just proposed a policy to exclude trans women from female prisons. 

The argument states that any transgender female inmate with a penis must be considered a possible threat, and placed in a men’s prison - regardless of the actual crime they’ve been convicted of. You’re a trans woman and you’ve been caught joyriding? That’s cool as all hell, but it's a men's prison for you. Good luck in there, girl. 

Non-transgender women commit sex crimes - more often than you’d think, in fact. Despite this fact, somehow the prison system in the UK has managed to work out a way to deal with them. If a cis woman commits a rape, or any sort of sexual offence, unsurprisingly her punishment isn’t to be placed into a men’s prison to be ‘raped back’. Any society that allowed for such a thing would rightfully be deemed as barbaric, and guilty of cruel and unusual punishment. So, how is it appropriate for a hypothetical trans woman, accused of any crime whatsoever, to be placed in an environment where they too will meet this fate? 

Again, I feel the need to stress - trans women being placed in men’s prisons isn’t even a condition of sex-based crimes. In Raab’s twisted vision, you could have been imprisoned for protesting, and still face time in a men’s unit based solely on your genitalia. 

‘Your honour, my client maintains that her dick made her burn down the gender identity clinic. As such, she cannot be held as fully responsible’. 

This is why self-id is so important, and such proposals from Raab are an impassionate, deranged breaking of the social contract. When you reduce someone’s identity down to their biology alone, you are a big fat lying liar. You are ignoring a person’s day to day struggles. Their social encounters. Their relationships, their occupation, their dependants. You’re ignoring how society perceives and treats them every single day of their lives. By focusing on a person’s private parts for identification, you’re wilfully choosing to pervert reality and instead obsess over a ‘schrodinger's cat’ world-view. Is the penis in the knickers or is it not? Is it both? Is it neither? Forget the person behind the dick. (incidentally, the title of my upcoming memoir). 

There is a deeply disturbing irony in all of this. First of all, the rejection of self-id laws - and an insistence of psychiatric evaluation and medical box-ticking means that for a majority of trans women, the process of even getting to a point where ‘gender reassignment surgery’ is a possibility - is insanely rare. Doctors, and a seemingly endless process of soul crushing bureaucracy, still have a tight hold over trans people’s lives and bodies. We must pass ‘real life tests’ which, for example, insist on the use of women’s spaces pre-surgery, in order to qualify for surgery eventually/maybe/hopefully. This is an absurdity. If society deems me fit to, and insists on me using a ladies toilet to ‘prove’ I am what I am, then how can I then be sent to a men’s prison during or even after this ‘test’ is ‘passed’? 

By ‘passing’ this ‘real life test’ what exactly have I qualified for? Womanhood? The right to be humoured? An electric washer and dryer set, with stainless steel cutlery included? 

In the United Kingdom, trans-identity is a ‘gift’ which can be taken away on a whim if you’re a ‘naughty girl’. Whether that be access to surgery, hormones, government approved documentation or the ability to access comfortable, safe spaces - if deemed appropriate, all that can be stripped away from you by a thoughtless, demented government. My identity, as it stands, is conditional and at the pleasure of actual psychopaths. Trans people in the UK are not free, we are second class citizens. At this point, I can’t see it any other way. 

A society which deems is appropriate to send a trans woman to a men’s prison is one that supports and actively encourages rape - just, somehow, it’s ok if it happens to a trans woman - because to many, we aren’t people. 

Any rape happening behind bars, be it in a men’s prison or a women’s prison - committed by a man, woman or non-binary individual is, itself, a failure to safeguard and an act of criminal negligence by our government and their systems. Maybe look at improving conditions for everyone before singling out a vulnerable minority as the cause? 

The constant barrage of indignities put upon trans women in this country is sometimes enough to make you want to go out and commit a crime yourself. Nothing too serious - maybe smash a shop window, or steal a road sign or download Avatar 2 illegally or something. But when a person is unfairly monstered, maligned, mistreated and bullied by a society for decades - that person can only ever feel like they aren’t a part of that society. 

If you unfairly villain someone for long enough, they will live up to that moniker and become the criminal you so seemingly want them to be.