POST Two, Issue Two

A Wild Elegance
Contents:
transsexual Prisoner placement
Crooked Guns Can't Shoot Straight

TRANSSEXUAL PRISONER PLACEMENT
Jessica Maria Brooks

It is a sad fact of life that occasionally even a TS woman will commit a crime and get sent to prison. More often than not, the TS woman is stealing, selling drugs, or perhaps even her body for the purpose of getting money to pay for hormones and other treatments; Whatever the reason, TS women do get sent to prison and once there, life can be hell.
Generally, federal and state prison systems will house TS prisoners based on their external genitalia. A TS woman who has had a sex change surgery might be placed in a women's prison. Not all states make such transfers. Any other TS prisoners however, regardless of their state of transition - hormonal - surgical or otherwise, will remain in a male facility if they still have male genitals.
Unfortunately, this system of classificatiori and placement can have horrific consequences for TS women entering into an all male prison environment against their will. They are placed at great risk of being raped, assaulted. This is often a result of putting themselves at risk however, by engaging in unsafe behaviors. While the author may live in a prison system that has a number of very dangerous prisons, this is not the reality in most states anymore.
There are some limited safety precautions available to prisoners in such circumstances, but none of them adequately protect the TS prisoner and all of them are punitive in effect.
Many prison systems have protective custody or other protective units for prisoners susceptible to victimization such as snitches and prisoners who would otherwise be at risk in a prisons general population. In the vast majority of prison systems, prison inmates who are housed in protective custody or segregation units are NOT preyed on by other inmates housed on such units because the inmates on these units do not have direct contact with one another.
Protective and segregation units also may exclude inmates housed on such units from privileges and activities available to other inmates in the general prison population.
There is a lot of drama and risk in the jailhouse relationship arena, but for those who feel they have no other alternative for safety and are willing to sacrifice their health by putting themselves at risk for AIDS or HEP C, it does offer some protection.
Really, when all is said and done, there is no adequate form of protection for TS prisoners, and you may be subject to discrimination, harassment , assault. ( Often dependent upon your attitude and the manner in which you relate to your peers.) I have come up with a possible solution however. One that promises to take a lot of time, effort and research, help from outside sources, etc., but one that has the potential to truly solve the problems of placement for TS prisoners as well as many other aspects of life for TS women in prison.
What if the prison system in your state had one prison that they earmarked for housing only a certain type of prisoner? Transsexuals, queens, the intersexed, effeminate inmates, inmates who were vulnerable and victim prone based on their appearance or behavior. Mostly it would be a place for housing transsexuals and gays.
In New York City several years ago, a school was opened for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual children. It was believed that this would allow such students to be free of stress in the classroom and allow for better study.
Teachers, counselors, other students, and parents of other , students regularly complained about having gender variant or gay children in close proximity with their children. Schools established arbitrary rules against cross-dressing, or homosexuals establishing groups within the school.
Punishments were generously handed down to those students who were just being themselves and hurting nobody.
One day, some students had a seemingly great idea and proposed that a school be created for students who were sexual or gender variant minorities where they could go to school and learn without unnecessary stress and anxiety, and teachers, counselors, and other school employee's now had an opportunity to relocate to a school where they too would be treated with respect, dignity and acceptance.
So what if a state prison system adopted a similar solution to the placement problems associated with TS, intersexed, homosexual, and gender variant prisoners? This is my idea and I hope to pursue it aggressively until it becomes a reality. I would propose that NY State clear out one of the maximum security prisons and repopulate it with minorities of the above type, both inmates and staff.
Once operational, this prison can have medical staff that are qualified to deal with the specific needs of inmates who are TS, gay, intersexed, etc. A program can be set up with mental health staff, with at least one professional who has training and experience in dealing with GID where the prisoner has never been diagnosed with GID and or never begun hormone therapy or any other form of treatment and can be evaluated, diagnosed, and possibly placed on hormone therapy.
The benefits of creating such a prison far outweigh the negatives.
While I am persistently fighting to obtain treatment for my GID, and to have the system change its policies regarding all inmates with GID, I have devoted myself to this new and additional cause, as I believe it is a very promising solution to the problems we face in our prisons currently. I hope that this inspires others to come forward with similar ideas, and maybe some of those individuals will also take up the fight themselves .
Hope is good , but action can be far more rewarding. (Editor note: this article was heavily edited due to space requirements and content. The Editor does not advocate prisons in which gay, queens, intersexed and transsexual inmates are placed at. Transsexuals should be placed in female prisons. Period. The solution cited in the body of this article only further marginalizes transsexuals.)


CROOKED GUNS CANT SHOOT STRAIGHT: PART ONE
Michelle Lynne Kosilek

For a long time now transsexual prisoners have been challenging their conditions of confinement regarding medical care for GID. The first successful challenge was in the summer of 1991 when Lindsay Phillips got an injunction from a federal court in Michigan to be placed back on estrogen, based on the fact that she had been on estrogen prior to being arrested.'
This was the last meaningful court ruling for many years, as a number of prison systems later, developed policies to match the courts ruling, but no more than what the court ruled. As a result, the few states that did allow hormones only did so for ladies who were on prescribed hormones prior to incarceration. Kosilek vs. Moloney J changed that, resulting in a ruling that required an individual evaluation by a specialist in gender identity disorder, and outlawing the blanket policies that treated everyone the same, effectively denying treatment to most.
When the federal Courts began to subject GID treatment claims by prisoners to closer scrutiny, the search began for experts in the treatment and etiology of gender identity disorder, who were willing to testify that prisoners could be safely denied adequate treatment for GID, with no risks to the prisoners health.
The use of contradictory expert testimony in criminal and civil trials is a time honored practice in this country, often quite helpful to juries deciding issues that affect thousands or even millions of lives, as in cases involving product liability litigation. In most cases, this is a balanced legal battle, where differing opinions on scientific facts are easily settled by solid science. This surety does not exist where GID treatment is concerned, especially when a powerful state funded agency has taken an adversarial approach position against GID treatment for prisoners for political or personal reasons. This is compounded when many people who purport to be experts in and treat GID also bring to the table their own antiquated views as to what constitutes appropriate care for a prisoner with GID.
In recent years, a small cadre of experts with GID experience has been responsible for treatment denial for numerous prisoners in this country seeking congruity between mind and body. Their decisions regarding prisoner treatment for GID are not based on not on the HBIGDA1 standards of care, but rather, on political opposition, security concerns ( which is really often nothing more than a veil for hate and bigotry) fiscal frugality, and any other claim their masters in the DOC of any state insist is relevant, often with tragic results.
Some of these so called experts ( even one traitorous trans woman ) who are willing to take payment from anyone willing to pay them, to say anything the particular dept of corrections wants them to say and testify to are profiled below. These are litigation whores in the truest sense of the word. Like a prostitute who walks the street, they will sell you whatever you wish, say whatever you like. They allow anyone to subvert what few principles they may have, for a price.
Robert Dickey MD, Who is head of the gender clinic at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, affiliated with the university of Toronto, Canada. He is also head of the Lawward mental health program for correctional services Canada. In his private practice, Dr. Dickey requires trans women to take estrogen for a minimum of two years of living as a female before he will consider them for sex reassignment surgery. Twice as long as the HBIGDA standards of care require. This may be due to the fact that Canada has socialized health care, and tries to minimize surgeries that it considers expensive.
As an expert witness, Dr. Dickey has testified both for and against GID treatment for prisoners, depending on who was paying him for his testimony. His colleague, Maxine Peterson, herself a trans woman, has also testified against prisoners with a hostile anti-GID treatment for prisoners philosophy. ( Dr. Dickey, Why are you such a Dickey!?)
Chester W. Schmidt Jr. MD, of Bayview Medical Center, a Johns Hopkins affiliated clinic, claims to be a GID specialist, yet, in more than 30 years of periphial affiliation with transgendered patients, he has never recommended sex reassignment surgery for a single patient. This makes him a valuable witness for any prison system wishing to deny SRS to a prisoner. His colleague at Johns Hopkins, Cynthia Osborne, personally believes that no prisoner should even be allowed hormone therapy and .will diagnose a prisoner without even meeting the prisoner, if enough cash is offered to Ms. Osborne, despite legal and ethical prohibitions against this practice.
The Johns Hopkins School of Medicines Dept of Psychiatry was headed until very recently by Dr. Paul McHugh MD, who is so opposed to sex reassignment surgery that he petitioned the Vatican to condemn such surgery as a sin! Dr. McHugh has gone on the record referring to trans women as mere Caricatures of women.
An honorable mention goes to Walter Meyer III MD, a former president of the HBIGDA who is willing to lend the stature of that organization to a personal claim by him, motivated by personal bias, that prisoners should never be allowed SRS because once its allowed, trans-women will commit crimes so they can be sent to prison and get free SRS. Using his same convoluted reasoning, prison systems could save billions every year by denying medical treatment for HIV-AIDS, Cirrhosis, Hep C, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer and any other medical condition that might be expensive to treat. In the Law, there is a term for such intellectual sloppiness, its referred to as Reductio Ad Absurdum. This is Latin for: Reduced to Absurdity. And that is what happens with Dr. Meyers argument upon only brief examination. The fact is, no trans woman would EVER commit crimes to purposely be sent to prison so that she could get SRS, knowing how trans women are treated by prison officials and prison guards, everywhere in this country. That would be far too high price to pay for any surgery.
Those who are politically opposed to treatment for GID do anything, will do anything, even seek an expert from outside the country when they can find nobody in the United States unethical enough to support their hate driven mandate of refusing to provide treatment for GID to prisoners with GID.
Although only a small handful of these anti-treatment whores exist, it only takes one to achieve a victory in federal court for a prison system who's abusive treatment of trans women results in auto-castrations, genital mutilations and suicide for the trans woman who's hope has been snatched away by a paid liar.
If you are a prisoner who is suing for GID treatment, make sure you are aware from the onset, and that your attorney is too if you have one, that DOC's will generally go sniffing around Johns Hopkins for an expert in GID who has an anti-treatment for prisoners philosophy. ( Editor's note: If you are an inmate and you do not have an attorney representing you, you will likely lose your case up against such an expert and create bad case law as well, which has a negative effect on us all. Don't try to litigate your own case because you think you can tell your story better than a lawyer, lawyers have resources available to them that prisoners just do not have, and those resources are absolutely necessary even to win a winable case.)
1. Phillips vs. Michigan 731 Fsupp ( 1990 WD of Mich) ; 2.
Kosilek vs. Maloney 221 Fsupp 2d 156;
3. Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association.

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