When Kristin Schreier Lyseggen moved from her native Norway to Berkeley, she saw it as an opportunity to understand the lives of people struggling to survive on the fringes of society.
“All I knew was that I needed to find people who were not easily accepted in mainstream society,” she writes in the introduction of her book The Women of San Quentin: Soul Murder of Transgender Women in Male Prisons.
The Women of San Quentin chronicles interviews with nine formerly incarcerated transgender women. The interviewees recounted physical and psychological abuse while also showing humanity, humor and self-respect.
The interviews with these formerly incarcerated women ultimately leads Lyseggen to ask in The Women of San Quentin, “How can any sane, democratic society justify keeping transgender women in maximum security prisons for men?”
In order for transgender inmates in California prisons to receive necessary medical care and mental health treatment, nine of the state’s 34 prisons have been designated to house male-to-female transgender inmates and two to house female-to-male transgender inmates.
Prisoners with treatment situations are reviewed on a “case-by-case,” basis California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) spokesman Jeffrey Callison said in an email interview with Lavender Magazine.
CDCR spokeswoman Terry Thornton added, “If a transgender inmate wants female items, and she’s in a male institution, she’ll have access to those items.”
Describing herself in an interview with Lavender magazine as “white, privileged and straight,” Lyseggen contended that people like her need to “start getting involved and not treat these people as second-and third-class citizens.”
http://www.lavendermagazine.com/mylavender/thewomenofsanquentincomesamidhistoricchanges/
Lyseggen’s underlying point: people just want to live their lives.
Transgender women began arriving at San Quentin a couple of years ago. When they got here, I witnessed some of the same prejudices against them highlighted in The Women of San Quentin. On the Lower Yard and in personal conversations, I heard all kinds of negative comments about these women regarding their life choices. Ultimately, I agree with Lyseggen’s premise that people just want to live their lives, because I, too, am a second- and third-class citizen based on my status as a prisoner.
Reading about the childhood of Janetta Johnson, one of the transgender women profiled in Lyseggen’s book, forced me to understand how she did her time in a federal prison in Oregon.
She couldn’t get good-time credits if she went to the hole, so she stayed on the mainline and dealt with the BS.
“Abuse from childhood has followed her through life like a ghost,” Lyseggen writes in The Women of San Quentin.
Johnson is quoted as saying, “The emotional pains, scars, lumps, bumps and bruises outweighed anything that happened to me physically.”
The book ends with both a question and argument: “What do we owe a ‘criminal’? To which I would answer that all of us suffer when someone’s humanity is denied in the way experienced by so many of our people who end up in US prisons.” http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender
Juan’s Book Review