Culture

I’m a Trans Woman Locked in a Men’s Prison. I’m Fighting to Be Free


 

In an op-ed, Ashley Diamond describes the unconstitutional treatment to which she’s reportedly been subjected within the Georgia Department of Corrections. Diamond, who has filed a lawsuit alleging that she’s been sexually assaulted and abused in a men’s prison, says she will keep fighting for her freedom and the liberation of all incarcerated trans people. The GDC declined to comment on this op-ed when contacted, citing ongoing litigation.

They put me in the first cell, near the entrance to the block. It’s not a good spot for a trans woman in a men’s prison. With everyone constantly walking past, able to stare in at me through the little window in my door, I feel like I’m always on display. It’s the usual tiny cell; a bed, steel toilet, sink, and a little metal locker that holds all my worldly possessions. There’s a stained window high up that gets so cold the walls sweat. I have a picture of Whitney Houston taped up next to my bed. She brings me comfort, but I definitely don’t feel safe.

I’ve been sexually assaulted and abused 16 times in the last year and a half, including by guards. They put a woman in a men’s prison. What did they think would happen? As far as I can tell none of the people who assaulted me have been punished. Officers call me “he-she-it” and “freak.” The people whose job it is to protect me treat me as though I’m disposable. The way Georgia treats me and other trans prisoners is a systemic abuse of power, authority, and moral decency.

Standing up for my community is hard — our society devalues and discards Black trans women — and the people who have power over my life punish me for speaking out. But with all the threats and injustices facing trans people, and especially trans people of color right now, we have no choice but to fight.

This isn’t how I pictured my life turning out. I was born in 1978 to a large Southern Baptist family in Rome, Georgia. I knew I was different at a very young age. Even though I didn’t know what it meant to be trans, I identified with the main female character in the cartoon Jem and the Holograms. She had two identities: record company owner Jerrica Benton and her alter-ego, the singer Jem, whose image she could project over her face and body from special tech in her earrings. That was the first time I saw someone able to change the way they present themselves to the world and take on a new identity, and I knew I wanted to be able to do that, too.

When my father died in 2000, I took on the role of head of our household, supporting my mother and my three siblings. But as a trans woman, it was hard to get hired and hard to hold onto a job once my employers found out. One time, I was hired to work in the makeup section of a major retail chain. I had to bring in my ID, and toward the end of the day a manager came and told me I had lied on my application when I said I was female so I was hired under false pretenses. They gave me $23.17 out of the register and told me not to come back.

The rejections were so demoralizing. At one point, the only job I could get was dressing up in a hot dog costume. I remember sweating inside that hot dog and thinking there had to be more to life than this.

After years of being denied opportunities, I was arrested and charged with burglary for pawning a used electric saw my boyfriend had stolen that was worth less than $200 new. I was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a judge who treated me with open hostility and told me I didn’t belong in our town.

In 2012, I entered the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections. Between 2012 and 2015, I was placed in a series of men’s prisons where I was raped, abused, and denied the hormones and gender affirming care I needed. Prison staff told me they couldn’t protect me or move me to a facility that could keep me safe. Even though I’d been taking hormones since I was a teenager, they wouldn’t give them to me. Officials also rejected my requests for accommodations to be able to express my female gender on the grounds that I was “clearly a man, not a woman.”



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