The film, Major!, provided a very human perspective on transgender women in prison. I was aware that a disproportionately large number of transgender people were sent to prisons (as we learned from other films like Screaming Queens), but I now understand significantly more about the terrible situations that the trans people had to work through once they were there. A quote from the film which I feel sums up the situation quite well is when Miss Major was asked how the transgender women were treated in prison. Her response was “Shady as F”***in’ sh*t,” to which one of the other women in the room responded, “So normal.” Trans women in prison are treated terribly, and this moment shows a very human perspective on the situation—namely, that it’s horribly unjust.
A concept I’m still wondering about relates to the cause of the disproportionate amount of trans people (especially of color) in prisons. Specifically, I’m curious about the degree of activeness in the decision to put trans women into solitary confinement. That is, are there explicit, spoken rules in certain prisons that dictate that trans women should be placed into solitary confinement for their “protection?”
As an extension to this question, to what degree is the greater number of trans people in prisons purely a result of trans people being kicked out of their families, forced into prostitution, and other situations, and how much is it a result of other causes? For example, how much of this disproportionality can we attribute to an internalized transphobia of prison workers?
–AG