No One Asked the Opinion of Women Prisoners

Correctional Service Canada has adopted new policies for transgender inmates. (Shutterstock)

"Canada's prison system has overhauled its policies around transgender inmates and will now place offenders in a men's or women's institution based on their gender identity. Under a new Correctional Service Canada (CSC) policy, transgender inmates can be placed in an institution of their preference, 'regardless of their anatomy [sex] or gender on their identification documents, unless there are overriding health or safety concerns which cannot be resolved. The policy changes, which kicked in Dec. 27, 2017, will ensure federal offenders who identify as transgender are afforded the same protections, dignity and treatment as others, according to CSC."

• Communication products will reflect gender-inclusive language.
• Steps will be taken to ensure privacy and confidentiality of information related to an offender's gender identity ensuring it will only be shared with those directly involved with the offender's care, and only when relevant.
• CSC will use an offender's preferred name and pronoun in all oral interaction and written documentation.
• Individualized protocols will be developed for offenders who seek to be accommodated on the basis of gender identity or expression, including spiritual ceremonies, showers and toilets, frisk and strip searches, urinalysis, decontamination showers and monitoring under camera surveillance.
• Offenders may purchase authorized items from CSC catalogues for either men or women if there are no safety, health or security concerns according to the security level of their institution. Preferred clothing and personal effects will be accommodated 'to the greatest extent possible'.   CBC
  

Men who identify as women have been given special privileges that are meant to be justified as upholding their human rights; they say they are women and must be respected for that conviction as transgendered women. Criminals among the transgendered are considered to be just as needful of respect for their decisions as any other individual. Prisons -- men's prisons -- are places of violence. The incarceration of criminals, many of them imprisoned because of acts of violence, play out their psychopathy in the prison setting; there are fewer restraints and ample victims.

 

Among them, it takes no great stretch of the imagination to conjecture, the transgendered. Male prisoners are not likely to 'respect' the new gender orientation of other men sharing prison space with them. Predators are what they are, and prison life is fraught with danger. On the surface, it must have seemed like common sense to install transgendered women in women's prisons. Presumably, the women who occupy prison space in women's prisons were not consulted with respect to their opinion. And many of them are now discovering just how complicated life has become for them.

 

Transgendered women have the right to request transfer to women's prisons. Who would not, since women tend not to be violent on the whole, like men. So if the conditions in women's prisons are viewed as 'pleasant' in comparison to men's why not request a transfer? And many do. There is no requirement for these transgendered women to undergo sex reassignment surgery, nor to take hormonal drugs to diminish their testosterone.

 

Natal males are permitted entry to Canadian women's prisons. Among them have been a serial pedophile, a serial sex offender, a contract killer, a child killer and a murderer. Not quite the kind of company any incarcerated and thus vulnerably-placed woman might choose for herself. At an annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, a group ostensibly and historically involved in advocating for and assisting in improved prison conditions for women, the "Lived Experience" committee heard testimony from a former prisoner.

The woman, identified as "Kathy" spoke of the trauma she was submitted to, episodes of sexual harassment while in prison, exposed to a male-bodied pedophile whose charge history listed hundreds of girl victims. Kathy had her own personal history of sexual abuse in her formative years, like an estimated 80 percent of female prisoners. She had complained of the stalking and abuse she suffered from, to the Correctional Services of Canada who dismissed her complaints and threatened to isolate her while naming her a bigot.

In the room to hear her story were over 60 women, mostly directors of CAEFS, staffers and regional volunteers. They heard Kathy's story and sat in silence, unmoved. She left the chamber in tears. At her departure comments arose: "I'm sorry for what happened to her, but you don't need a vagina to be a woman"; "I am concerned about the transphobia in this room", among them. Uniformly, all those present agreed on the need to fully support transwomen. As the meeting adjourned, CAEFS adopted a blanket resolution of trans inclusion.

 

Supporting the transfer of any trans-identifying males from men's prisons to women's prisons, chief among them. And though a few staffers and volunteers suggested an amendment meant to exclude trans-identifying males with a known history of sexual assault, they were ignored and a solid majority passed the resolution. One of the women who had attempted to persuade the majority to include that reasonable amendment was later the recipient of icy treatment from people she was quite familiar with on a collegial basis.

"We think back to the situation for women in the 1930s when a tunnel was built between PAW [Prison for Women] and Kingston Penitentiary so that women could be carried underground to be sexually abused by male prisoners. What has changed? The tunnel is now ideological, and all it takes is a transfer", a resistance movement of some CAEFS staff and volunteers set out in a letter to the CAEFS executive director and board members.

When the executive of CAEFS responded to the letter they reaffirmed their commitment to trans inclusion, denying any reports or knowledge of any incidents of "harassment and violence" against women in prison from male-bodied transferred prisoners. An activist  resistance under the leadership of former prisoner Heather Mason published an article in womenarehuman.com, citing a May 2019 meeting with former Deputy Commissioner for Women discussing the male-transfer issue.

She had "reported that of all transfer requests from men's prisons, 50 percent were derived from sex offenders whose crimes of sexual abuse were committed as men, accounting for 20 percent of the male prison population overall." (About two percent of women prisoners have sexual crime backgrounds.) As difficult entanglements in law, justice and human rights go, gender expression rights see protection through the auspices of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

For women, on the other hand, sex-based rights to dignity and security fall under the Charter of Rights and Freedom, guaranteeing women's protection. Guaranteeing "inclusion" for natal males guarantees that women prisoners live in fear, increased risk and abuse, paying for trans inclusion through their own diminished protections from male predators posing as transwomen. Courtesy of the woke consciousness of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

While at a town hall meeting in Kingston, Ontario, PM Justin Trudeau is asked about the treatment of transgender people in the prison system.   CBC