Trans women in federal custody are dealing with the threat of being moved to men’s prisons. That would be absolutely devastating and dangerous. This is so important and I’m grateful to The Intercept for covering it.
This clearly highlights the issue of politicians legislating things they do not understand. I have heard so many people on the right say that “transgender” means “men pretending to be women” and vice versa.
It’s frustrating and sad that so many Americans hate vulnerable groups of people because of the lies they’re hearing from their politicians or a lack of exposure to anyone different from them.
The saying “People hate what they don’t understand” has never been truer than in this moment.
Last Friday afternoon, Kara Sternquist, a trans woman in custody at a federal women’s prison in Fort Worth, Texas, was taken from her unit. A guard told Sternquist that she had an unexpected psychiatric appointment in the chapel.
“She was lied to,” said Deviant Ollam, a friend who speaks with her regularly by phone. “Once she was away from everyone else, they took her.”
According to Ollam, Sternquist told him that she is one of almost a dozen trans women who have been taken from the general population at FMC Carswell and moved into an administrative segregation unit that is typically used for inmates on suicide watch. (The Intercept has been unable to reach Sternquist directly, and an official at FMC Carswell declined to answer questions when reached by phone on Monday.)
The women were told they would be moved to a men’s prison, Ollam said, under President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, which directs the Bureau of Prisons to ensure “that males are not detained in women’s prisons” and that inmates don’t receive gender-affirming health care using federal funds. On Monday, Trump issued another bigoted order barring trans people from military service, which was quickly challenged in federal court.
Trans women who are forced to live in men’s prison facilities face disproportionate risk of sexual assault and violence, as the Bureau of Prisons’ manual on trans inmates, issued in 2022, acknowledges.
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