Recently, The Center for American Progress put out a policy paper that talks about restrictions on transgender participation in sports. This has been a hot topic recently, as WNBA player Sophie Cunningham has been dominating the headlines with her stance that men should not be permitted to play in the women’s category. This paper, however, does not resolve the debate of whether or not biological sex should be the decision-making factor in participation in women’s sports. What it is admitting is that sex should be given fair review in at least one setting. But if sex matters in athletics, shouldn’t it matter in other intimate spaces as well?
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There is a demographic that has no voice and is forcibly subjected to sex-based protections. The demographic in question? The women in our nation’s prisons. These vulnerable women who have already survived abuses of every kind are now living with, showering with, and serving their sentences with male prisoners — no questions asked. One of the most common misconceptions about this is the proximity male inmates have to female inmates. There is no separation. There is no specialized housing unit for trans-identifying men. They are coming directly from men’s level 4 yards — meaning some of the highest security possible, some even from men’s death row — filtering directly into women’s general population. That means men coming from a security level that simply does not exist in any women’s prison, being housed with female prisoners who are levels 1-4. Historically, women, in most states, are not separated by security levels because there has never really been a need to do so.
Women’s rights should not depend on their location, their status, or the trending mood of popular think tanks.
According to the , there are currently 49 biological men housed in the state’s two women’s prisons, with 224 requests pending review. The convictions of the 49 biological men who have successfully transferred range from carjacking to rape by force or fear, and even include the murder of another inmate while in custody. These are the same people that the female inmates were told would not qualify for transfer. They were told the review process would be stringent and that there would be no risk of sexual predators or individuals with histories of violence against women slipping through the cracks.
That was proven wrong early on in the forced integration. After witnessing the brutal beating of a woman by her “boyfriend,” inmates watched in horror as the investigative services unit came to a facility yard with cadaver dogs looking for possible fetal remains from a miscarriage related to the domestic violence they’d seen earlier. The department said the findings were unsubstantiated, but the mere fact that such an investigation ever had to be carried out is a prime example of how unsafe this environment has become. The same individual involved in the beating was transferred back to a men’s prison after the against them. The case is pending.
Another huge misunderstanding is about the requirements that are set for men requesting transfers to women’s facilities. The individuals who are cleared to transfer from men’s to women’s prisons are not required to be on hormone replacement therapy — nor have an interest in sex-reassignment surgery, present as female, or have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Prisons cannot discriminate against a request to transfer from men’s to women’s prison for any reason related to one’s criminal history, genitalia, or sexual preference.
In other words, women’s prisons are housing violent, opportunistic, predatory men, many of whom are registered sex offenders, in the biggest victim pool ever. This may sound unbelievable, but this is the daily reality for the forgotten women who are serving their debts to society in prisons that operate on our tax dollars.
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What makes things even more complex is the heavy political presence of the organizations that have regular access to the incarcerated population. Groups that once advocated boldly for female inmates now participate in gaslighting them until they are too afraid to speak or even write about the dangerous conditions they are forced to live in. Women have been told their pardons and commutation of sentences have been overlooked by the governor of California because of their so-called “transphobia.”
A coalition of organizations, many of whom have “woman” in the names of their groups, publicly and vehemently opposed a bill I testified in favor of in California. The bill would have prohibited the transfer of any trans-identifying males convicted of violent sex crimes and required separate housing, to better serve the needs of the transfers and to respect the privacy and dignity of women. The bill was killed in the first committee hearing. This has created a culture of complacency where incarcerated women shut their mouths and put their heads down. Sadly, because of the internal pressure to not make matters worse for them, there are very few ladies who are brave enough and fed up enough to take the risk of advocating for themselves. They know that when they do speak up, they are potentially risking their freedom, as they have watched others who have stood up lose everything.
One of the most underrated societal principles is consistency. Consistent rationale must exist across the board when it comes to women’s sports and spaces. It is dangerous and sits on the precipice of recklessness to isolate every issue, treating each one as an individual matter to be addressed. The truth is that if the Center for American Progress is accepting the reality that sports are separated by sex for legitimate reasons, those same reasons exist outside of sports and inside of any place that is specifically for women and girls. Women’s rights should not depend on their location, their status, or the trending mood of popular think tanks. Policymakers, influencers, and the remaining critical thinkers should stick to fundamental truths, while remembering that there is only one truth, and that anything existing outside of that truth is a lie.
Sex-based protections exist because of privacy, safety, dignity, and fairness. Those basic human rights need to be applied in every aspect of life. Women’s sex-based rights should not depend on the setting. If sex matters enough to preserve fairness in sports, those considerations should be applied wherever women’s privacy, dignity, and safety are at stake — including prisons.
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