by Katherine M Acosta
In a town hall meeting Wednesday, California State Senator Scott Wiener blithely dismissed concerns from multiple women’s groups, including Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC) USA, about the transfer of men purporting to be women to female prisons. Wiener claimed that the bill he sponsored, SB132, enacted by the California Senate last year, effective January 2021, is a “positive step forward.”
Wiener attributed opposition to men in women’s prisons as “right-wing backlash” based on “inaccurate information and fake news,” and to “TERFS… people who believe that trans women are not actually women.”
Wiener’s defense of his bill studiously ignores the testimony of women prisoners in California, documented by Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), describing their fears. One wrote, “You are sacrificing our safety just to keep a few men quiet.”
Women’s fears are well-founded. Long before SB 132 passed, women prisoners were already filing lawsuits alleging harassment and rape by men claiming to be women housed with them.
In 2017, four women prisoners in Federal Medical Center Carswell (FMC) in Fort Worth, Texas filed multiple complaints about male prisoners claiming female “identity”. One such complaint stated:
The Plaintiffs have been forced to share intimate facilities with men who allege they are women. These men openly express their sexual desire for the women inmates, at times, in the showers, and bathrooms, while women are naked or partially clothed.
The men expose themselves, intentionally, for their own sexual gratification, causing the Plaintiffs to suffer disgust, embarrassment, humiliation, stress, degradation, fear, and loss of dignity. (2017. Hanna, Bill. “Transgender Bathroom Battle Smolders in Fort Worth Federal Prison.” Star-Telegram.)
Representing themselves, the women filed a successful motion for FMC Carswell to be included in a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the Obama administration guidance allowing students in public schools to use restrooms based on their “gender identity.” Amy Whelan, speaking for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, called the women’s complaints “unwarranted” and based on “prejudices and biases.”
In 2019, Janiah Monroe (aka Andre Patterson) was moved into Logan Correctional Center, the largest women’s prison in Illinois. A female inmate alleged that she was raped by Monroe, reported the incident, and was pressured by prison officials to deny that it had happened. She says she was then punished for filing a false claim under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). The woman subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against prison officials at Logan.
Court documents indicate that more than one Logan inmate has reported sexual assault by Monroe. Nevertheless, Monroe’s lawyer dismissed the original plaintiff’s rape allegation as “transphobia” and asserted that Monroe had “made a lot of friends” at Logan.
WHRC USA wrote to California Governor Gavin Newsom last August, describing the Logan case, and urging him to veto SB 132. We noted that:
Research shows that better than 85% of men who identify as women retain their male genitalia and the 2015 US Transgender Survey indicates that a majority retain their sexual interest in women.
Further, a 2009 California inmate study found that transgender inmates in men’s prisons were more frequently classified as sex offenders than were other men. Specifically, 20.5% transgender inmates in men’s prisons were registered sex offenders compared with 14.6% of the general male prison population. (Where the Margins Meet: A Demographic Assessment of Transgender Inmates in Men’s Prisons. Sexton et al. 2009. University of California-Irvine.)
WHRC USA has made clear to both Governor Newsom, and in our letter to the Bureau of Prisons, that housing men in women’s prisons potentially violates the US constitution and international conventions. Prisoners’ rights under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, are violated when prison officials know of, and disregard, an excessive risk to inmate health or safety. In this case, women are living under the constant, reasonable fear of rape, unwanted pregnancy, and permanent physical damage; reinforced by actual, occasional enactments of those fears.
United Nations Minimum Standard Rules for the treatment of prisoners calls for sex-segregated housing and sanitary conveniences, as does the Geneva Convention .When will these men stop what is, in effect, the torture of women prisoners? How long will we allow them to let it continue? Let Senator Wiener and Governor Newsom, (who could be recalled this September), know what you think about SB 132.
*Please note that the Women’s Human Rights Campaign USA (WHRC-USA) is now officially known as Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI-USA)
