You can’t imprison pride
Concordia’s Prisoner Correspondence Project helps prisoners cope with coming out
by Christopher Olson
GRAPHIC Christopher Olson
The lack of visibility for LGBT people in modern society, as well as the lack of visibility for prisoner's rights, means that those in prison suffer from a double-invisibility.
Being a trans man or woman, the body you were born into can sometimes feel like a prison. But those who find themselves lost in the prison system face a far worse reality than most, where one's orientation is not only decided by prisons which segregate prisoners based on genitalia-not gender-identity-and where protection from violence is often indistinguishable from punishment.
The Prisoner Correspondence Project, a working member of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group of Concordia, aims to offer LGBTQ prisoners solidarity, as well as the comfort of expressing their feelings with conscientious listeners on the outside. One of the things that distinguishes PCP from similar groups, says Josh, one of the group's collective members, is the breadth of its scope.
“There are three aspects to what we do,” says Josh, who currently has two pen-pals, which he converses with on a range of topics from celebrity gossip to the difficulties of navigating the prison system. “We hook up prisoners on the inside with pen-pals on the outside; we provide a resource library for harm reduction; and then there's a popular education component.”
In addition to information on safer tattooing, the PCP's resource library includes information on “safer drug use, safer sex, hormone use, etc. As well as some basic informational resources on sexual and gender minorities”
To date, PCP has developed between 120 and 150 members-including both prisoners across the United States and Canada, and participants on the outside.
The Project started in the spring of 2007, and kicked off with a summer screening of Cruel and Unusual, about the lives of transgendered women forced to serve out prison sentences in all-male prisons. The film follows five in-transition male-to-females who began estrogen treatment before their period of incarceration, and whose bodies have stopped producing hormones. Denying a trans prisoner continued estrogen treatment, the film argues, is like denying a woman hormones after a hysterectomy, due to the often embarrassing and life-changing consequences of discontinuing their medication.
The overrepresentation of transpeople in prison can't simply be attributed to “a larger structural issue,” and so-called “tough on crime” policies, suggests Josh, “though those clearly don't serve to help the matter. Rather, its bound up in larger issues of systems of poverty, [and] diminishing employment security.”
The lack of visibility for LGBT people in modern society, as well as the lack of visibility for prisoner's rights, means that those in prison suffer from a double-invisibility.
“One of the core principles of the project is harm reduction, or minimizing the structural risk of prisons,” says Josh. “We don't advocate on either side of whether prisoners should come out in prison or not, understanding that decision to be one of risk management.”
Earlier this year, the Correspondence Project sent out a questionnaire to prisoners asking how the concept of LGBT pride plays in their lives, which were then assembled into a public panel entitled “Imprison Pride,” and later added to the collective's resource library at the QPIRG offices.
“The difference between prison Gay Pride, and the outside Gay Pride, is almost like fire and ice,'” writes Willie McMillian, from a prison in California. “There are thousands of gay-lesbian-trans-queer folk in the penal system, so how is it that such a major minority group [...] not given more attention by the gay society?”
“We have no unity in here,”
wrote Jonathan Earl, from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. “They single you out. Even going as far as putting you in a single cell because of being you.”
Prisoners who have been threatened with physical violence are often placed in protective custody. “But to the other prisoners, this would simply be called solitary confinement,” says Josh.
“Prison support is not something people immediately understand, like other advocacy groups,” says Josh, who laments the “popular vilification of prisoners.” This lack of interest on behalf of the population means abuses in the prison system go unchallenged, and greater issues of transparency go overlooked.
“[Prison] bureaucracies function in isolation, where things are kept away,” he explains, “and prison structures in general are largely rendered invisible.”
“We can never conclusively say that the mail is not monitored [once it enters the penal system],” says Josh. “Some prisoners have written back saying that their mail has been opened, or that things have been removed.”
One of the items removed was a sexual education zine, produced by the Head and Hands organization, which contained illustrations considered too explicit by most prisons. The alternative was simply to blot out the illustrations. “[It was] a fairly simple problem and not really a stumbling-block,” says Josh, but one that illustrates the unpredictability of prisons, and what they will-and won't-allow. Other sexual education resources for prisoners fell short on their intended goals, referring to proper condom use when access to condoms is spotty and irregular in prisons, and the suggestion that an individual visit a gay bar as a means of coming out is utterly useless.
While a showing of solidarity with LGBT prisoners is a progressive leap forward, “meaningful prison reform will necessarily only come out of prisoner organizing,” says Josh.
To join the Prisoner Correspondence Project, consult: queertrans.prisonersolidarity@gmail.com. The Prisoner Correspondence Project's resource library can be found at QPIRG Concordia 1500 Maisonneuve W. suite 204 (only open M-Th, 1p.m.-6p.m.)
The Link Volume 31 Issue 01