[News/Books] [CA, USA] New book “Captive Genders” celebrated at Mills College
Stephanie Stevens
March 2, 2012 | 1:38 PM | By Rina Palta
New book “Captive Genders” celebrated at Mills College
FILED UNDER: Community
By Nicole Jones
What does it mean to be a transgendered person in prison? A collection
of writings on queer, transgender and prison politics shed light on
these two populations and their struggles.
Released last fall, the book Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the
Prison Industrial Complex brings together stories and poems from
current and former prisoners, activists, and academics looking at how
race, gender and sexuality are experienced when a person is
incarcerated.
“The history of trans and queer people in the United States is also a
history of incarceration and the struggles against incarceration,”
co-editor Eric A. Stanley said Thursday night during an event
celebrating the book at Mills College in Oakland.
The book includes stories about the gay youth group involved in the
1966Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco, an event that preceded
New York’s Stonewall riots and marked as the rise of transgender
activism in the US. Other stories feature prisoners demanding access
to HIV medication, the impact of juvenile court on queer youth and
critiques of hate crimes. Co-editor Nat Smith said the book comes at a
time when the prison and justice system should be at the forefront of
gay liberation.
“I really wanted to challenge all the tenets of what gay liberation
movements have looked like in the past,” Smith said, which used to
rely “heavily on using policing and the government to create hate
crime legislation to further punish other people.”
Julia C. Oparah, professor and chair of Ethnic Studies at Mills
College, contributed a piece on how feminists involved in prison
abolition work can sometimes undermine the experiences of
transgendered people. Many feminists, Oparah said, “assume that all
women prisoners are in women’s prison. Actually turns out not to be
the case.” Often times, Oparah explains, transwomen end up in men’s
prisons where they face sexual harassment and humiliation.
Thursday’s book celebration resonated at Mills College where a new
queer studies program kicked off earlier this year. “Mills is really
doing a lot of work around transgender politics,” Oparah said.
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