Regardless of anatomy

Leila Miller at the LA Times tells us:

Kelly Blackwell longs to escape her life as a transgender woman in a California men’s prison, where she struggles every day to avoid being seen in her bra and panties and says she once faced discipline after fighting back when an inmate in her cell asked for oral sex.

If Blackwell doesn’t want to be seen in his bra and “panties” why does he wear them? Skip the bra and wear underpants with no frills; problem solved.

After more than 30 years, and two decades since Blackwell began hormone therapy, her chance to leave arrived last fall when groundbreaking legislation gave transgender, intersex and nonbinary inmates the right, regardless of anatomy, to choose whether to be housed in a male or female prison.

Oh I see, so now it’s the women in women’s prisons who get to be afraid of the inmates in their cells.

The demand has been high, with 261 requests for transfers since SB 132 took effect Jan. 1, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Yeah no shit. Safer for the men, and lots of rape opportunities. (Do we really think there are that many men who really do identify as women in the California prison system? No we do not.)

“I won’t be around predatory men and I won’t be around staff that frown upon trans women,” Blackwell, 53, said in a phone call from Mule Creek State Prison, east of Sacramento.

But the women I’m around will be around a predatory man! Or at least they won’t be sure they’re not! But that’s cool, this is all about me! I get what I want!

But more than two hours away, at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, there’s fear. Inmates say guards have warned them that “men are coming” and to expect sexual violence.

Oh no, I’m sure it will be all sisterhood all the way.

The Times spoke to more than a dozen inmates in women’s and men’s prisons to understand how the new law is playing out. Although advocates and inmates say the transfers have been received well, several claim that misinformation spread by prison staffers is stirring up transphobia and that more must be done to educate inmates.

I’m sure the new trans cellmates will do all the educating that’s needed.

Jen Orthwein, an attorney who represents transgender inmates and worked on the bill, said that not all inmates want or have access to hormone therapy or gender-affirming surgery, and that “any expression of femininity in a men’s prison places people in danger.”

Therefore they must be transferred to a women’s prison, because women exist to shield men from male violence. It’s nobody’s job to shield women from male violence.

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