The Hundred Years' War: The Etiology and Status of Assaults on Transgender Women in Men's Prisons

A war on transgender women has been waged for hundreds if not thousands of years and is manifest in their treatment in their families, communities, and social institutions. There has been little acceptance of the gender diversity they represent in the rigid and hypermasculine prisons and jails in the United States. As a consequence, transgender women have been targets of abuse by staff and inmates in male prisons. It is only now, as research has surfaced documenting their victimization, that legal imperatives are turning the tenor of the war to a ceasefire. In this article I review the nature of the inflexible corrections system around issues of gender. Much of the rest of the article is then focused on why the protection of transgender women in jails and prisons is important to address and how it might be done, and is being done, in some facilities.