The bookstore Women and Children First recently hosted a reading and discussion of Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex.
An anthology, the book is written from a prison-abolition perspective, the ideology that the current system of law enforcement and incarceration is ineffective and disproportionally affects LGBT people, people of color and people in poverty and should be done away with.
"Captive Genders" is the result of years of organizing against the prison industrial complex with groups like Critical Resistance.
The book editors put out a call for submissions, and over seven years collected pieces from prison-abolition activists and people who are or were formerly incarcerated.
"All the organizing we've been doing for years is coming to fruition through this book," said Eric Stanley, co-editor of "Captive Genders."
Nearly half of transgender people feel uncomfortable seeking police assistance, and 60 percent of transgender womenparticularly transgender women of colorreported harassment from police, according to a study completed by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Incarcerated transgender people are often housed in facilities that reflect their legal sex which may not match their gender identity, and they are more likely to be raped, brutalized and harassed. Otherwise, they are placed in solitary confinement where they are usually isolated in a cell 23 hours per day.
"The problem isn't that we need better spaces in prisons. The problem is we don't need prisons," said Yasmin Nair, local activist and contributor to "Captive Genders." [Note: Nair is also a reporter for Windy City Times.]
Nair's essay, "How to Make Prison's Disappear: Queer Immigration, the Shackles of Love and the Invisibility of the Prison Industrial Complex," compares the experiences of two LGBT immigrants in the justice system based on their economic classes.
"We think of them as separate, but immigration in this country is inextricably tied to the prison industrial complex," said Nair.
Nair also spoke on the social narrative of good, hard-working immigrants who should stay in the United States and are being unjustly incarcerated for being undocumented, separating themselves from the bad, criminal immigrants who should be incarcerated and deported.
Both speakers highlighted the problems of the prison system and the unique role it plays in society, calling for the abolition of the system because reform won't solve the problems it creates.
"We cannot have a prison industrial complex. It cannot exist. It is damaged beyond repair," said Nair.