Gender identities in prison | When the king is naked, it must be said

In Canada, criminals serving a federal sentence can be incarcerated in the prison that corresponds to the gender identity of their choice. Regardless of their biological sex. Whether they had surgery or not.

This is not a problem in itself. On the contrary, it is a solution for transgender women incarcerated in men’s prisons, where they are at risk of intimidation, violence and sexual assault.

These vulnerable people do not belong in the ruthless male prison universe. Hence the importance of the directive of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), which stipulates that inmates may be placed “in an institution for men or for women, if that is their preference, regardless of gender (that is i.e. their anatomy).

But for the solution not to turn into a problem, it is precisely necessary to avoid slippages. Avoid, above all, that prisoners take advantage of this directive to try to soften their sentence.

Unfortunately, these slippages exist, revealed on Saturday the disturbing investigation of Tristan Péloquin.

My colleague told the story of Steven Mehlenbacher, a violent criminal who served 14 years in prison. After 10 years, Steven became Samantha. She was transferred to an Ontario women’s prison, where she terrorized her fellow inmates. On June 27, Samantha pleaded guilty to criminal harassment. By agreement with the Crown, a second charge — sexual assault, that one — was dropped.

I don’t know if Samantha actually considers herself transgender. And the prison authorities may not know it either. As Tristan Péloquin points out in his report, they do not have to assess the sincerity of the prisoners’ claims. The latter need only say they are transgender to be considered as such.

“The fact that manipulation is a possible ground for the male inmate to express his desire to live as a transgender cannot be totally ignored,” warned Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger, the inmate ombudsman, in its 2018-2019 report.

This risk of manipulation is undoubtedly very low. Still, it’s not entirely far-fetched to think that some offenders might find it beneficial to spend their years in jail in the relatively less austere world of a women’s prison.

These offenders could also benefit from changing their name, in order to benefit from a blank civil identity when they leave prison. The CSC does not oppose it. On the contrary, it makes it easier for them, instructing parole officers to “help offenders complete their application for a legal name change.”

We definitely rely a lot on the good faith of criminals in federal penitentiaries. It doesn’t stop at trans identity. Far from there.

For example, criminals only have to declare themselves Métis to benefit from the privileges reserved for native prisoners. No need to belong to a community or even to search their family tree to find a distant aboriginal ancestor. Just declare it, and that’s it.

For the detainee, this gives the right to better conditions, such as an individual cell. It can even be accompanied by a downgrading of the security classification, which means a possible early parole.

No wonder a slew of criminals have self-identified as Indigenous over the past few years…

And everyone acts like it’s normal.

In 2019, the Parole Board went so far as to consider the “Indigenous social background” of Hells Angel Ghislain Vallerand.

If he had descended into crime, you see, it may have been because of his “sense of injustice” in the face of the mistreatment that Canadian authorities had inflicted on his Aboriginal ancestors.

The Sherbrooke biker was not associated with any community. He had never lived on a reserve and had never experienced the impact of residential schools. In short, he was not native.

We believe in The Emperor’s New Clothes, this tale of Hans Christian Andersen where two crooks pretend to weave a fabric that only idiots can not see. Of course, all members of the court praise the beauty of the fabric. Nobody wants to be called stupid.

Today, no one wants to be accused of intolerance. Towards Natives. Towards the trans community. So everyone is silent. And sometimes smart people take advantage of it.

For the past ten days, the images of a teacher from an Ontario secondary school have set social networks on fire.

In these viral images, taken by students, the transgender teacher is decked out in oversized breast prostheses. An anatomical impossibility as absurd as it is obscene, crowned by enormous nipples visible through tight clothing.

Reflex of the school board: circulate, there is nothing to see. Everything is perfectly normal. We need to celebrate gender diversity. Show tolerance.

Obviously, the case was picked up by the ultra-conservative right. On Twitter, Donald Trump Jr. had fun comparing the teacher’s breasts to those of his sister (!!) Ivanka. On Fox News, the sinister Tucker Carlson didn’t hesitate to use this story to attack the entire trans community.

Sadly, inevitably, this bizarre case helps fuel hatred against trans people, who have asked for nothing but to be left to live in peace. This is precisely why we must denounce slippages. It does not serve the cause, to act as if nothing had happened. When the king is naked, it must be said.