Maintaining Dignity for a Transgendered Incacerated Woman

 
Co-Editor David Singleton discusses a case of transgendered prisoner seeeking to maintain her therapy and her identity as a woman:

Every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect – no matter what mistakes they have made.   But for people serving  time in prison, being treated inhumanely is the norm.  

 Consider the  case of Whitney Lee, a transgender woman currently incarcerated in Ohio’s prison system.  Born anatomically male, Whitney’s true identity is female.  For the past fifteen years, Whitney has lived her life as a woman.  Prior to her current incarceration, she had been undergoing estrogen hormone therapy since 1999 so that her body could look more feminine.  But soon after she entered the Ohio prison system in 2012, prison officials cut off her estrogen abruptly.  The discontinuation of hormone therapy wreaked havoc on Whitney, both physically and emotionally.  The breast tissue that Whitney began to develop withered.  Her facial hair returned.  And she became severely depressed.

 Whitney fought back.  Like many people in prisoner, she initially filed her case on her own.  But eventually she reached out to the Ohio Justice & Policy Center (“OJPC”) for help, and OJPC took the case.  Recently, federal district court Judge Algenon Marbley granted Whitney’s motion for a temporary restraining order requiring prison officials to resume Whitney’s hormone therapy. 

 Cases like Whitney’s remind us that  no one should be stripped of her or his  human dignity, and that we must push back hard when it happens.

 You may read more here.