| LadyGardenSnake |
09-21-2004 09:57 AM |
Should Transsexuals Go to Men's or Women's Prisons?
Taiwan police are unsure whether to place a transsexual convicted of murder in a men's or women's prison, a report said Tuesday. Cheng Hui-fang, 26, who underwent female-to-male surgery two months ago, was arrested on Tuesday after being convicted in absentia on murder charges and sentenced to an 11-year jail term. But Cheng, the first trans-gender suspect arrested in a nationwide crackdown on organised crime, still holds an ID card which says he is a woman, causing a dilemma for police, according to the United Evening News. The newspaper said police feared for Cheng's safety in a men's prison but thought he may be a danger to other inmates in a women's jail." ? News.com.au (Australia)
Although the women's lib movement broke down a lot of gender barriers, at least in America and Europe, bastions of sexual distinction remain. Public toilets are the most notable example of this. No one has separate toilets for men and women in the home, and yet in public the separation is maintained. Here in New York, in fact, new legislation even proposes doubling the number of women's bathrooms, so that there are two ladies' rooms for every one men's room. The theory is that this will shorten the inevitable traffic jams that pile up outside women's bathrooms. But maybe they should just integrate all the bathrooms instead? Wouldn't that really be the fair thing? It will force men to wait longer, as women adjust their hosiery and paint their faces, but it will shorten the lines for women. And that's fairness, isn't it?
Anyway, another bastion of gender distinction is the prison. Women go to one, men to another, and never do the twain meet. And yet, as this case demonstrates, it is going to become increasingly difficult for societies to separate the sexes when the distinctions between the sexes themselves are beginning to blur. Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites, cross-dressers, pre-ops, transsexuals, hermaphrodites ? should criminals from the gender-bending classes really be forced into prisons designed to isolate heterosexuals? Isn't that putting a square peg in a round hole?
Justice would demand either that you develop specific prisons for each subcategory of gender ? not just one for men and one for women, but one for each type of in-between too ? or that you just throw everybody together in an incarcerary free-for-all. After all, here on the outside we all live together in a great big jumble, and it more or less seems to work. Why not throw them all together on the inside too?
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