Transgender and prison?

[Yonadav]

 

I s'pose this is no different from gays having their way with non gays with either sex.

I feel that you sort of dangled this out there as bait. I decided to not be offended by it, because there is validity to it. One thing that has started to bother me in recent years is the way that trans issues frequently reveal that we have double standards concerning rape and molestation. I am appalled at the idea of putting a transwoman into a men's prison. But before her sex change, she would have been a ripe target for rape in a men's prison. Before her sex change, we basically wouldn't have cared about her being raped. After her sex change, it suddenly becomes super duper taboo to rape her.

Decades ago, police had a pretty free hand with their treatment of transsexuals. One of their 'tricks' to force transwomen to talk was to threaten to lock them up in a cell with men who would definitely try to rape them. Supposedly, the cops were required to get in there and break it up before actual rape happened. But I'll bet that they sometimes stood by and let it happen.

Transmen are also an issue in prisons. I have only known one who did prison time. He told me that he was not held with the general population for his own safety. Transmen very frequently get top surgery but not bottom surgery. And even when they do get bottom surgery, there is still a vaginal opening. So they have a big bullseye painted on their back if living in the general population of a men's prison.

Anyway, I no longer see it as just a trans issue. The trans issue has shined a lot of light on the fact that we need to start treating all rape equally. Getting raped is not supposed to be a part of a man's punishment in prison. It's pretty sick that we think prison rape is funny. We shouldn't need to be told that it's not funny. We should be able to derive that on our own. But we aren't so good at handling moral propositions unless they have been made 'popular'. And then the moral proposition becomes more meme than reason. And then the moral proposition is forgotten, and the meme takes on a life of its own that has nothing to do with the moral proposition, and it gets applied to all sorts of things that the moral proposition never would have been applied to. And people will get angry and confused if you try to reason with them on any other level than with memes.

My simple moral proposition is that everyone has a basic right to not be raped.