Cruel and Unusual
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"I want to be a full-fledged woman of the United States of America,
when all's said and done." These words, spoken with the soft-voiced
drawl of a Southern belle, sum up the dreams of all the women featured
in Janet Baus, Dan Hunt, and Reid Williams' conventional yet compelling
documentary, Cruel and Unusual. The speaker, Ashley, sits on a
stool in the Arkansas Department of Corrections, where she is imprisoned
for writing false checks. Her eyes dart flirtatiously between the camera
and her knees as she tells the story of "a good girl gone bad," as she
puts it.
Ashley is one of five transgender women—all formerly or currently
incarcerated in a men's prison—profiled in Cruel and Unusual.
Using the stories of these five individuals, as well as interviews with
experts, the film explores the plight of transgender women who are
exposed to gender violence because of their placement in men's prisons
despite their gender identification. The Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual IV defines gender identity disorder (or GID) as
"identification with the opposite sex and the experience of considerable
distress because of one's actual [biological] sex."
The women in the film were all born male yet have an overwhelming
sense that they should actually be female. Linda Thompson, a deep-voiced
bottle blonde with the eye makeup of Tammy Faye Bakker, recalls being
only 3 years old and praying, "Dear God, when I wake up, that thing will
not be there. I will look like Susie from across the street." She says
that she realized "right then that I was different from other little
boys."
Another woman featured in the film, Ophelia De'Lonte, reports, "I
knew that I was different from the age of 7 . . . I was born a little girl,
but in a little boy's body. When I was able to dress and be me, I felt
wonderful." The filmmakers cut to seemingly archival footage of a little
girl skipping rope while Ashley explains in a voice-over, "I liked
playing with dolls, all the things that little girls did." Anna Connelly
recalls that she was caught with her clothes off when she was 5, trading
clothes with a little girl. Her family assumed, "He's such a little
ladies' man, he's already getting the girls to take their clothes off."
As psychiatrist Dr. George Brown says, "GID is listed as a psychiatric
disorder. Now, having said that, does that mean people who have it are
crazy? Absolutely not." Brown notes that if transgender people "don't
have dysfunction, and they're working and they're getting along in life
and they're happy with who they are and they have good relationships, I
would say they don't have a disorder."
The film splices interviews with experts on gender identity issues
and the five transgender women with footage of children whirling around
a playground and other images of happy, normative childhood. While
allowing for debate about whether having a different gender identity
from one's biological sex is a "disorder," it makes the point that in
most of American culture there is no room for people who don't fit into
pre-defined gender categories. The consequences are often harsh for
those who strongly identify with a gender different from their
biological sex.
The consequences start long before the criminal justice system and
are behind the disproportionate rate of incarceration for transgender
people. The film reveals the shocking statistic that 30 percent of
transgender people have been incarcerated. As Dean Spade, an attorney
from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, affirms, "More trans people are
incarcerated than makes sense. And the question is, Why?"
In the vast majority of the United States, transgender people are not
entitled to any form of legal protection from employment or housing
discrimination. Linda worked on an oil rig in Wyoming from 1977 to 1983.
She says, "I could go on an oil rig and get a job no problem," and in
pictures from her former life she looks every bit the part of an oil rig
worker, in baggy jeans with a beer gut. But she says, "I couldn't stand
myself that way." When she came out as a woman in 1991, she lost her
job. "Every time I went to try to get a job for something I knew how to
do, I'd have to show ID and they'd say, 'Oh, Linda Patricia Thompson,
but you're a guy. We can't have that here.'" Her long blonde hair and
earrings swing as she strides through fields of snow, talking about her
attempts to get a job for which she was qualified. Eventually she was
arrested for stealing aluminum wire to sell for scrap.
For other transgender people, the road to incarceration is tangled up
with a host of other factors, principally poverty. Scanning the
broken-down row houses of Elizabeth, New Jersey, the camera finally
focuses on the slight, feminine face of Yolanda Valentin as she stands
behind barbed wire. Born Daniel Valentin, Yolanda says she has been
taking female hormones since she was 12 and engaging in prostitution
since she was 13. She has never known her father, and her mother is a
recovering drug addict. She dropped out of school in the sixth grade and
recounts her experience at that time: "I needed food. I needed shelter.
I tried to go to school. I tried every other way except for that . . . it
just turned out to be a way of life for me."
Lack of access to affordable treatment options helps explain the
disproportionate incarceration rate for transgender individuals,
particularly those from impoverished backgrounds. Ophelia De'Lonta looks
shyly at the camera as she explains that she was 17 when she robbed a
bank. "It wasn't planned. It was more spontaneous than anything. My idea
was to get some money, go to San Francisco, and get [gender reassignment
surgery]." She says that she knew that no one would get hurt, "'cause
there weren't no bullets in the gun." Ophelia was sentenced to 67 years
in prison.
Regardless of how they arrived there, prison for transgender women is
a nightmare. One reason male and female prisons are segregated by sex is
that considerable gender violence occurs in a prison environment.
Moreover, transgender women are sent to male prisons even though they
identify themselves—and are frequently identified by others—as women.
The film articulates these issues by simply listening to the stories of
five of these women. According to the Eighth Amendment to the
Constitution: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines
imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted." The documentary
argues that the conditions that transgender women in prison face—sexual
assault, solitary confinement, and being refused access to hormone
therapy—are inherently cruel, and often they face all three.
All the women featured in the film were sexually abused, assaulted,
or harassed by other prisoners and/or by guards. Even in a
minimum-security prison, a guard molested Anna Connelly; when she dared
to file a complaint, she was told she would never leave the prison
alive. Though there are most certainly incidents of violence against
women in women's prisons, it seems starkly obvious from the anecdotal
evidence the film offers that transgender women are at a very high risk
of violence from men when incarcerated in all-male prisons.
Cruel and Unusual mentions that many prisons place transgender
residents in "protective custody" to shield them from violence and rape.
However, that protective custody generally means solitary
confinement—isolation in a small cell for 23 hours a day—a punishment on
top of a punishment for no reason other than a prisoner's identification
with a different gender. Rather than putting transgender women in
women's prisons, the segregation happens within the men's prison; the
prison system is thus admitting that gender violence is expected, but
refuses to change the rules of incarceration. Yolanda was placed in
solitary confinement for one full year, and she categorizes it as a form
of torture akin to being locked in a padded cell in a mental hospital.
In the 1989 Davenport vs. DeRoberts case, a U.S. Federal Court ruled
that "isolating a human being from other human beings year after year,
or even month after month, can cause substantial psychological damage."
Apparently the ruling wasn't reason enough to stop this practice
nationwide. Anna also spent more than a year in solitary confinement,
and Ophelia began to self-mutilate by cutting her arms while in
isolation.
One of the most traumatic challenges these women face in prison is
being refused access to female hormones. Anna Connelly, despite having a
prescription, was denied hormones, which resulted in headaches,
vomiting, and a serious depression culminating in a suicide attempt.
Similarly, Linda consistently petitioned the Idaho Correctional Facility
to allow her hormone treatment, and was consistently refused by the
warden. According to her matter-of-fact recounting to the filmmakers,
she finally removed her own testicles with a razor blade; after her
hospital recovery, she was still denied hormone treatment. She then
castrated herself in her cell, with no medical antiseptic, anesthetic,
or even alcohol or drugs. Subsequent to that hospital recovery,
she was still, shockingly, denied hormone treatment. Finally, after
winning a lawsuit against the Idaho Correctional Facility, Linda earned
counseling and hormone therapy rights for herself, and set a legal
precedent for other transgender women in the Idaho prison system.
The documentary's message of hope resides in victorious court battles
like Linda's. Ophelia faced a similar situation in which the Department
of Corrections in Virginia said that transsexuals have no right to
estrogen, and she also attempted to castrate herself. She, too,
eventually won her case against the Virginia Department of Corrections
and was prescribed hormones for "gender identity disorder." Although
Anna was also not able to get hormones while in prison, the film shows
her release and her eventual reunion with her son, which is one of the
most moving moments in the documentary. Indeed, the five women
themselves, because of their humor, resilience, and empathy, more than
make up for the predictable interview-format of the documentary. Their
small victories remind us of the necessity of changing the structure of
the prison system itself so that transgender women are spared
victimization and gender violence in their assignment to men's prisons.
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