The Untold Injustice, by Yael Greene

For this blog post, I will be answering the second set of questions: What’s queer about the U.S. prison system? How and why are LGBTQIA+ people disproportionally victimized in prisons? Why must queer activism and advocacy attend to this population, despite the politics of the normal that has captured much of the movement? 

How is the US prison system queer? For one thing, when the inmates cause a crime that is described as deviant from the norms, they all stray from the “normal.” To society, homosexuality and gender identity that is not connected to their biological sex are described as something outside of the norm. To add on, “The vast majority of prisoners are placed in male or female institutions based on genitalia.” (107). They do not take any consideration on their gender identity, but rather the biological sex. There will be more about this problem when it comes to the victimization of LGBTQIA+ inmates. 

Because of how the genders are separated as well, there is less rigidity about heterosexuality. In Queer (In)justice, here is how it is described:

 “As sex-segregated facilities, they are conceived as locations where homosexuality runs rampant when options for ‘normal’ sexuality are unavailable.” (95). According to Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock, “Defying efforts to suppress sexuality altogether, it serves the dual purpose of simultaneously queering prisons and punishing queerness and gender deviance.” (103). 

Sexual assault is, unfortunately, another component of making the prison system queer. The book says that “Not only is forcible sex currency in prisons, but the prison system itself is predicated upon it. As a result, sexual violence is an entrenched and intractable feature of prison life.” (103). Sexual assault as well contributes to why people in the LGBTQIA+ community are victimized.

People who identify as queer are assumed to want sex all the time. People assume that the LGBTQIA+ community “ like it.” Obviously, that is not true. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2003, “18.5% of homosexual inmates reporting they were sexually assaulted, compared to 2.7% of heterosexual prisoners.” (99). That is a drastic difference when we compare the heterosexual inmates’ sexual assault experience to people in the LGBTQIA+ community who have faced it. Clearly, with that statistic and more from the book, LGBTQIA+ inmates are targeted way more than heterosexuals, specifically straight white men. To add on, people like Carl Shepard, a gay inmate from Mississippi, can attest that he clearly did not “like it.” Carl was raped by his cellmate and tried to report the incident. This is what resulted: 

“‘The major said that I was gay, the sex must have been consensual. He said I got what I deserved.’” (102). 

Another way inmates from the LGBTQIA+ are victimized is the ban on sexual relationships. In Queer (In)justice, it says that “...any intimacy or sexual expression is branded as ‘queer’ by prison officials, and must be stamped out.” (95). Of course, the rule has been broken and ignored when it comes to sexual assault. While there are loving and consensual sexual relationships, inmates and officers alike brand it as abnormal. 

Not only does the prison system take away the privacy of intimate and sexual relationships, but they also take away some basic rights. This especially happens to transgender folks and people with HIV/AIDS. For inmates who identify as transgender, “First, the criminal legal system as a whole refuses to recognize transgender prisoners’ chosen names and gender identities.” (110). The transgender prisoners also do not receive clothing that matches their identity. Transgender men are forced to wear feminine clothes, and transgender women are denied bras and wear masculine clothes. It can be very humiliating for those prisoners do not express themselves with the clothes they feel comfortable in. And when health care is denied to them, it can be very dangerous for those folks, as before prison they may have taken hormones or had surgeries that they would have needed to be cared for.

The healthcare issue also affects anyone, queer and homosexual, with sexually transmitted diseases. Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock say that “The turbulent mix of fear, rage, and hysteria characterizing the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis has been magnified inside the controlled and retributive world of penal institutions. As a result, what [Regina] Kunzel calls ‘identifying practices’ mark all HIV-positive prisoners-both queer and heterosexual-as criminally different, dangerous, and diseased.” (113). In short summary, they are archetyped as sexual criminals and because the healthcare is denied to them, it is a death sentence. 

So why should we care that this is happening? Yes, there are people in prison who have done horrible things and should remain imprisoned. However, they are humans too. Nobody deserves to experience injustice just because of the color of their skin and their sexuality/gender identity. Their voices are stripped away once they enter prison, and it is up to us to advocate for them.