Hara_Juku Tgirl
06-30-2007, 07:41 PM
Cruel and Unusual
Transgender Women in Men's Prisons in the US
Award-Winning Documentary Chosen for
WE (Women's Entertainment) Television Documentary Series
Airdate: July 2nd, 2007, 10pm
Groundbreaking! At times graceful, at times unflinching, Cruel and Unusual is haunting, urgent and intense. - M. J. Herrup, South by Southwest Film Festival
New York, NY June 25, 2007 The producers and directors of Cruel and Unusual are proud to announce the cable television premiere on WE (Women's Entertainment) Television. This award-winning documentary by seasoned filmmakers Janet Baus, Dan Hunt and Reid Williams confronts the realities male-to-female transgender prisoners in the United States face and questions whether their treatment violates their basic human rights afforded by the Constitution.
We are so thrilled that WE has recognized these transgender women, and is moved by their stories, so that our documentary will get to the wide audience we made it for, said executive producer Reid Williams.
FOR PURCHASE, PLEASE CONTACT OUTCAST FILMS
vdomico@outcast-films.com
FOR PRESS KIT PLEASE CONTACT
ejm@chillmedianorth.com
__________________________________________________ ___________
Attached herewith was a letter from my TG friend:
....The director of "Cruel & Unusual," Janet Baus, sent the below note announcing the airing of the film on WE-TV. MONDAY, JULY 2, 10pm...... i am briefly interviewed as an attorney/advocate for a "character" in the film who was incarcerated in Union County Jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey. My remarks are my own although i must disavow some of the more sensationalistic aspects of the film and any interpretation that the inmates featured are in any way representative of the entire (inmate or non-inmate)transgender community. My issue with the film is that it features, focuses and dramatizes the lowest possible, sadistically stereotypical aspects of a few obviously-disturbed transgender individuals as representative of the experience of transgender inmates in male prisons. I worry that, by extension, people who don't know the transgender community will somehow associate the 'characters' featured in this film with the transgender community-at-large.
The film interviews a person I would describe as a questioning-cross-dresser in appearance (and the character confirms the same in the film) who, while incarcerated in a Wyoming prison, used a razor to slice away his/her own penis, and the film zooms-in showing the flapping piece of skin between the former inmate's legs.
A Virginia inmate serving a life sentence for murder 'proudly' displays the hundreds of slash marks on her arms from her attempts to commit suicide because she hasn't been allowed to get sex reassignment surgery.
The problem, in my mind, is that these aberrant self-destructive behaviors are somehow presented as the noble response of martyrs for the transgender movement, and that these individuals are in some way activists or advocates or fighters for transgender rights. And worse, that their irrational, self-mutilation, continued criminal conduct and general states of mental and psychological degradation is a reasonable and rational response to the oppression transgender people experience. And that is a dangerous and frightening conclusion.
First of all it should be noted that incarceration and involvement with the criminal justice system is indeed a real and menacing presence in the lives of many, many - way too many - transgender people; particularly male-to-female transgender people, and especially (as in the rest of society) minority or non-Caucasian transgender people. Having recognized that fact, it is then important to state that of all those male-to-female transgender people the occurrence of individuals cutting off their genitals in prison is negligible, to the say the least. It is equally important to recognize that the erratic behavior of inmates acting under desperate circumstances in solitary confinement who have been convicted of committing heinous acts which deprived other individuals of their civil and human rights, can not be held up as model behavior or as exemplary moments in the struggle for transgender civil rights.
I was, frankly, quite shocked - and embarrassed - by the depictions, the same as if someone took a camera into a padded-cell and interviewed a human being who was naked and covered in their own feces or in some other form of mental distress. I'd say, get the person help instead of gawking at their nakedness and degradation.
It was also shocking to see in that our literature and pop-culture has been basically purged of this pre-historic idea that all transgender people want to mutilate themselves. "Cruel and Unusual" raises that spectre for discussion and speculation. It does nothing to promote the idea that transgender people are mentally sound.
The idea that transgender people are so distraught and irrational that they want to cut their genitals off is a 'fear and smear tactic' I haven't seen or heard used against transgender people since the 1960's. In this case, "Cruel and Unusual" uses this concept of 'transgender self-mutilation' as some kind of personal-revolutionary act against the mean old wicked oppressive prison system. Cutting off one's genitals or attempts at suicide should never be presented as a solution - not even as a rational response - to being denied hormones and sex change surgery in jail.
There is only one real, 100%-guaranteed, solution to the oppression of transgender male-to-female inmates by the state and federal correctional systems. And it is NOT to show how desperate some inmates are to cut off their own genitals. The only way for male-to-female transgender people to avoid oppression by male prisons is for them to STAY OUT OF PRISON. That should be the message of "Cruel and Unusual" but that's not the message I came away with. Emphasizing these very difficult and troublesome cases makes it look like all male-to-female transgender people are subject to this sort of treatment in prisons for men. This is not the case either. There are many untold stories of male-to-female transgender people who survived prison sentences without incident, while making educational and vocational improvement to their lives, and certainly without resorting to self-mutilation or suicide attempts. A film about male-to-female transgender people should deliver a message of hope, because for those of us who actually know large numbers of male-to-female people who have survived the prison system without hurting themselves or others.
The lack of this message to me is an indication that there is a general societal expectation that the majority of transgender male-to-female people WILL go to prison and they WILL face the situations dramatized and highlighted in "Cruel and Unusual." The film feeds that ideology and supports the racist mentality that transgender people, African-Americans, Hispanics and other "outsiders" are all criminals at heart; prone to committing crimes and are naturally-suited to incarceration. I wouldn't want anyone to come away with that impression, and I wouldn't want my remarks in the on-screen interview to be construed in support of that impression.
I don't believe that the plight of incarcerated male-to-female transgender people should be seen as representative of the conditions that most transgender people face in their daily lives. As an African-American male-to-female transsexual woman who was a cast-away child at age 19 years old I was caught-up in the criminal justice system. I was incarcerated for 28 days - a minor stretch of time, I know - in the 13th floor "Queen's Tank" on the top of the old Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles (is it still there?) for prostitution in 1973, and there were a lot of transgender women incarcerated there, but only the mentally-unstable resorted to acts of self-mutilation - and it was not done because of their transgender status but because of their mental health status. Incarceration for male-to-female transgender people need not be a hopeless situation which ends in self-mutilation, and I am particularly sensitive to any representations implying that is an expected and commonplace result.
Our young people need to be shown images of transpeople who have survived transgender oppression with dignity and honor (I suppose 'style' and 'grace,' as well as 'dignity' and 'honor' would be too much to ask for) - not by breaking the law, harming others and self-mutilating themselves when we cannot get our way. Male-to-female transgender people who are committed to undergoing sex-reassignment surgery should take "Cruel and Unusual" as a cautionary tale to stay out of and away from the criminal justice system. If they do not, their sex-change dreams cannot be achieved. The argument that male-to-female transgender prison inmates should receive sex reassignment surgery because it is a medical necessity is a hard one to make considering all the other medical necessities of other non-transgender inmates that are not fully or adequately addressed by a generally uncaring correctional system - not to mention the 45 million working, law-abiding American citizens with no health insurance whatsoever. I cannot, in good faith, advocate that transgender inmates receive a better standard of health care in prison than all the other men and women subjected to the inadequacies of prison health care systems across the nation. And advocating for this kind of preferential treatment for transgender people does not improve relations between transgender inmates and correction officials, other non-transgender inmates and their families or the general public which already believes their tax dollars are being spent frivolously.
The film also implies that it is the "cruel and unusual" action of the corrections officials in not recognizing the transgender-ness of these inmates, and thereby denying them adequate sex and gender reassignment medical treatment, which are the direct causation of the self-mutilation and other self-destructive behaviors exhibited by the characters in the film. Quite to the contrary, the real problems of my New Jersey client interviewed in the film stemmed from the fact that she attempted to escape while in custody, and by doing so she caused a Union County Sheriff's Deputy to break his leg in pursuit of her - not just from the fact that she was a very pretty male-to-female transgender youth with breasts. Her transgender-ness only made her more identifiable to the Sheriff's Deputies who ran the Union County Jail and who had very bad feelings towards her for causing their colleague to break his leg. Besides her escape attempt, she was originally arrested for causing felonious injury to her lesbian (yes, female) lover in a fight in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Dysfunctional living is just plain dysfunctional living. Mischaracterizing the truth can not make the dysfunctional into the heroic. Jean Valjean stole bread to save his life. None of these inmates claim to have committed their crimes to stave off starvation.
None of the inmates featured in the film were contending that they had been wrongfully accused, falsely charged or illegally incarcerated. Unfortunately, people who are convicted of felonious crimes against undeserving victims are subjected to some loss of their civil and human rights. If you do NOT want to be oppressed by the criminal justice system you should do all you can do to not come into conflict with it. And of course I realize that the criminal justice system is discriminatory and transgender people, like all other minorities (non-Caucasian racial minorities and sexual minorities), are arrested and incarcerated more often and serve longer sentences than straight white men and women. And that realization is all the more reason why transgender and other minority group members have to be even that much more extraordinarily careful to avoid the criminal justice system. Let "Cruel and Unusual" be a warning that if you are transgender and you go to prison you will not be treated fairly and you will be denied your right to continue your gender transformation. Unfortunately that is the reality. You cannot fight that unfairness by calling it injustice; and you can't fight for social change by becoming incarcerated. Instead of advocating for incarcerated male-to-female transgender inmates to be able to have sex reassignment surgery paid for by the prison, I would rather spend my energy advocating to help male-to-female transgender people stay free of the criminal justice system.
The real solution to "Cruel and Unusual" treatment of transpeople in men's jails is access to jobs for transgender people. Enforcement of anti-discrimination laws on behalf of ALL minorities, including transgender people will give transpeople a an equal opportunity to remain law-abiding citizens. And, the de-criminalization of prostitution, as that is the main reason that most male-to-female transwomen inmates come into contact with the criminal justice system will prevent . Poverty, lack of employment and educational opportunities, alienation and disenfranchisement are much more 'cruel and unusual' ways society has of oppressing transgender people. You don't have to go into the bowels of prisons and interview the most lost and lowly, desperate, mentally-deranged and socially-maladjusted transgender people one can possibly hope to find in order to address the injustices transgender people face. To do so seems to negate the struggles of those transgender people who manage to survive without murdering or assaulting any one, breaking the law or becoming incarcerated.
On the other hand, the fact that our society and culture is even curious enough about transpeople to give this film an airing is a form of perverted progress....and, after all, progress is progress. ... as halting and off-track as that may sometimes be.
Actually, I think the Jerry Springer Show does a lot more for making male-to-female transpeople look "normal" than the film "Cruel and Unusual." Even unattractive brawling transgender lovers and their ex-es become more palatable and understandable to mainstream America than self-mutilating drag queen prison inmates. I think "Cruel and Unusual" will do more to frighten people that are not acquainted with transgender people, than it will do to make them think highly of transgender people. As with all minorities in the nascent phases of their movements for recognition and civil rights, super-negative images of its community members does not help mainstream society embrace and understand the entire group as being members of society deserving of their respect and equanimity. The 'characters' featured in "Cruel and Unusual" will not make anyone respect transgender people, but they may make people have pity on us. As for myself, that's not the kind of empathy and compassion I am interested in being the recipient of. I prefer respect to pity.
You watch it, and decide for yourself.
Best,
Dana
__________________________________________________ ____________
~Kisses.
HTG
Transgender Women in Men's Prisons in the US
Award-Winning Documentary Chosen for
WE (Women's Entertainment) Television Documentary Series
Airdate: July 2nd, 2007, 10pm
Groundbreaking! At times graceful, at times unflinching, Cruel and Unusual is haunting, urgent and intense. - M. J. Herrup, South by Southwest Film Festival
New York, NY June 25, 2007 The producers and directors of Cruel and Unusual are proud to announce the cable television premiere on WE (Women's Entertainment) Television. This award-winning documentary by seasoned filmmakers Janet Baus, Dan Hunt and Reid Williams confronts the realities male-to-female transgender prisoners in the United States face and questions whether their treatment violates their basic human rights afforded by the Constitution.
We are so thrilled that WE has recognized these transgender women, and is moved by their stories, so that our documentary will get to the wide audience we made it for, said executive producer Reid Williams.
FOR PURCHASE, PLEASE CONTACT OUTCAST FILMS
vdomico@outcast-films.com
FOR PRESS KIT PLEASE CONTACT
ejm@chillmedianorth.com
__________________________________________________ ___________
Attached herewith was a letter from my TG friend:
....The director of "Cruel & Unusual," Janet Baus, sent the below note announcing the airing of the film on WE-TV. MONDAY, JULY 2, 10pm...... i am briefly interviewed as an attorney/advocate for a "character" in the film who was incarcerated in Union County Jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey. My remarks are my own although i must disavow some of the more sensationalistic aspects of the film and any interpretation that the inmates featured are in any way representative of the entire (inmate or non-inmate)transgender community. My issue with the film is that it features, focuses and dramatizes the lowest possible, sadistically stereotypical aspects of a few obviously-disturbed transgender individuals as representative of the experience of transgender inmates in male prisons. I worry that, by extension, people who don't know the transgender community will somehow associate the 'characters' featured in this film with the transgender community-at-large.
The film interviews a person I would describe as a questioning-cross-dresser in appearance (and the character confirms the same in the film) who, while incarcerated in a Wyoming prison, used a razor to slice away his/her own penis, and the film zooms-in showing the flapping piece of skin between the former inmate's legs.
A Virginia inmate serving a life sentence for murder 'proudly' displays the hundreds of slash marks on her arms from her attempts to commit suicide because she hasn't been allowed to get sex reassignment surgery.
The problem, in my mind, is that these aberrant self-destructive behaviors are somehow presented as the noble response of martyrs for the transgender movement, and that these individuals are in some way activists or advocates or fighters for transgender rights. And worse, that their irrational, self-mutilation, continued criminal conduct and general states of mental and psychological degradation is a reasonable and rational response to the oppression transgender people experience. And that is a dangerous and frightening conclusion.
First of all it should be noted that incarceration and involvement with the criminal justice system is indeed a real and menacing presence in the lives of many, many - way too many - transgender people; particularly male-to-female transgender people, and especially (as in the rest of society) minority or non-Caucasian transgender people. Having recognized that fact, it is then important to state that of all those male-to-female transgender people the occurrence of individuals cutting off their genitals in prison is negligible, to the say the least. It is equally important to recognize that the erratic behavior of inmates acting under desperate circumstances in solitary confinement who have been convicted of committing heinous acts which deprived other individuals of their civil and human rights, can not be held up as model behavior or as exemplary moments in the struggle for transgender civil rights.
I was, frankly, quite shocked - and embarrassed - by the depictions, the same as if someone took a camera into a padded-cell and interviewed a human being who was naked and covered in their own feces or in some other form of mental distress. I'd say, get the person help instead of gawking at their nakedness and degradation.
It was also shocking to see in that our literature and pop-culture has been basically purged of this pre-historic idea that all transgender people want to mutilate themselves. "Cruel and Unusual" raises that spectre for discussion and speculation. It does nothing to promote the idea that transgender people are mentally sound.
The idea that transgender people are so distraught and irrational that they want to cut their genitals off is a 'fear and smear tactic' I haven't seen or heard used against transgender people since the 1960's. In this case, "Cruel and Unusual" uses this concept of 'transgender self-mutilation' as some kind of personal-revolutionary act against the mean old wicked oppressive prison system. Cutting off one's genitals or attempts at suicide should never be presented as a solution - not even as a rational response - to being denied hormones and sex change surgery in jail.
There is only one real, 100%-guaranteed, solution to the oppression of transgender male-to-female inmates by the state and federal correctional systems. And it is NOT to show how desperate some inmates are to cut off their own genitals. The only way for male-to-female transgender people to avoid oppression by male prisons is for them to STAY OUT OF PRISON. That should be the message of "Cruel and Unusual" but that's not the message I came away with. Emphasizing these very difficult and troublesome cases makes it look like all male-to-female transgender people are subject to this sort of treatment in prisons for men. This is not the case either. There are many untold stories of male-to-female transgender people who survived prison sentences without incident, while making educational and vocational improvement to their lives, and certainly without resorting to self-mutilation or suicide attempts. A film about male-to-female transgender people should deliver a message of hope, because for those of us who actually know large numbers of male-to-female people who have survived the prison system without hurting themselves or others.
The lack of this message to me is an indication that there is a general societal expectation that the majority of transgender male-to-female people WILL go to prison and they WILL face the situations dramatized and highlighted in "Cruel and Unusual." The film feeds that ideology and supports the racist mentality that transgender people, African-Americans, Hispanics and other "outsiders" are all criminals at heart; prone to committing crimes and are naturally-suited to incarceration. I wouldn't want anyone to come away with that impression, and I wouldn't want my remarks in the on-screen interview to be construed in support of that impression.
I don't believe that the plight of incarcerated male-to-female transgender people should be seen as representative of the conditions that most transgender people face in their daily lives. As an African-American male-to-female transsexual woman who was a cast-away child at age 19 years old I was caught-up in the criminal justice system. I was incarcerated for 28 days - a minor stretch of time, I know - in the 13th floor "Queen's Tank" on the top of the old Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles (is it still there?) for prostitution in 1973, and there were a lot of transgender women incarcerated there, but only the mentally-unstable resorted to acts of self-mutilation - and it was not done because of their transgender status but because of their mental health status. Incarceration for male-to-female transgender people need not be a hopeless situation which ends in self-mutilation, and I am particularly sensitive to any representations implying that is an expected and commonplace result.
Our young people need to be shown images of transpeople who have survived transgender oppression with dignity and honor (I suppose 'style' and 'grace,' as well as 'dignity' and 'honor' would be too much to ask for) - not by breaking the law, harming others and self-mutilating themselves when we cannot get our way. Male-to-female transgender people who are committed to undergoing sex-reassignment surgery should take "Cruel and Unusual" as a cautionary tale to stay out of and away from the criminal justice system. If they do not, their sex-change dreams cannot be achieved. The argument that male-to-female transgender prison inmates should receive sex reassignment surgery because it is a medical necessity is a hard one to make considering all the other medical necessities of other non-transgender inmates that are not fully or adequately addressed by a generally uncaring correctional system - not to mention the 45 million working, law-abiding American citizens with no health insurance whatsoever. I cannot, in good faith, advocate that transgender inmates receive a better standard of health care in prison than all the other men and women subjected to the inadequacies of prison health care systems across the nation. And advocating for this kind of preferential treatment for transgender people does not improve relations between transgender inmates and correction officials, other non-transgender inmates and their families or the general public which already believes their tax dollars are being spent frivolously.
The film also implies that it is the "cruel and unusual" action of the corrections officials in not recognizing the transgender-ness of these inmates, and thereby denying them adequate sex and gender reassignment medical treatment, which are the direct causation of the self-mutilation and other self-destructive behaviors exhibited by the characters in the film. Quite to the contrary, the real problems of my New Jersey client interviewed in the film stemmed from the fact that she attempted to escape while in custody, and by doing so she caused a Union County Sheriff's Deputy to break his leg in pursuit of her - not just from the fact that she was a very pretty male-to-female transgender youth with breasts. Her transgender-ness only made her more identifiable to the Sheriff's Deputies who ran the Union County Jail and who had very bad feelings towards her for causing their colleague to break his leg. Besides her escape attempt, she was originally arrested for causing felonious injury to her lesbian (yes, female) lover in a fight in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Dysfunctional living is just plain dysfunctional living. Mischaracterizing the truth can not make the dysfunctional into the heroic. Jean Valjean stole bread to save his life. None of these inmates claim to have committed their crimes to stave off starvation.
None of the inmates featured in the film were contending that they had been wrongfully accused, falsely charged or illegally incarcerated. Unfortunately, people who are convicted of felonious crimes against undeserving victims are subjected to some loss of their civil and human rights. If you do NOT want to be oppressed by the criminal justice system you should do all you can do to not come into conflict with it. And of course I realize that the criminal justice system is discriminatory and transgender people, like all other minorities (non-Caucasian racial minorities and sexual minorities), are arrested and incarcerated more often and serve longer sentences than straight white men and women. And that realization is all the more reason why transgender and other minority group members have to be even that much more extraordinarily careful to avoid the criminal justice system. Let "Cruel and Unusual" be a warning that if you are transgender and you go to prison you will not be treated fairly and you will be denied your right to continue your gender transformation. Unfortunately that is the reality. You cannot fight that unfairness by calling it injustice; and you can't fight for social change by becoming incarcerated. Instead of advocating for incarcerated male-to-female transgender inmates to be able to have sex reassignment surgery paid for by the prison, I would rather spend my energy advocating to help male-to-female transgender people stay free of the criminal justice system.
The real solution to "Cruel and Unusual" treatment of transpeople in men's jails is access to jobs for transgender people. Enforcement of anti-discrimination laws on behalf of ALL minorities, including transgender people will give transpeople a an equal opportunity to remain law-abiding citizens. And, the de-criminalization of prostitution, as that is the main reason that most male-to-female transwomen inmates come into contact with the criminal justice system will prevent . Poverty, lack of employment and educational opportunities, alienation and disenfranchisement are much more 'cruel and unusual' ways society has of oppressing transgender people. You don't have to go into the bowels of prisons and interview the most lost and lowly, desperate, mentally-deranged and socially-maladjusted transgender people one can possibly hope to find in order to address the injustices transgender people face. To do so seems to negate the struggles of those transgender people who manage to survive without murdering or assaulting any one, breaking the law or becoming incarcerated.
On the other hand, the fact that our society and culture is even curious enough about transpeople to give this film an airing is a form of perverted progress....and, after all, progress is progress. ... as halting and off-track as that may sometimes be.
Actually, I think the Jerry Springer Show does a lot more for making male-to-female transpeople look "normal" than the film "Cruel and Unusual." Even unattractive brawling transgender lovers and their ex-es become more palatable and understandable to mainstream America than self-mutilating drag queen prison inmates. I think "Cruel and Unusual" will do more to frighten people that are not acquainted with transgender people, than it will do to make them think highly of transgender people. As with all minorities in the nascent phases of their movements for recognition and civil rights, super-negative images of its community members does not help mainstream society embrace and understand the entire group as being members of society deserving of their respect and equanimity. The 'characters' featured in "Cruel and Unusual" will not make anyone respect transgender people, but they may make people have pity on us. As for myself, that's not the kind of empathy and compassion I am interested in being the recipient of. I prefer respect to pity.
You watch it, and decide for yourself.
Best,
Dana
__________________________________________________ ____________
~Kisses.
HTG