One plaintiff says the California Department of Corrections referred to her alleged rapist as “a transgender woman with a penis.”
The Women’s Liberation Front has filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections, its secretary, and two prison wardens for allowing “biological men” to be transferred to all-female facilities if they claim that they are transgender.
According to The Santa Barbara News-Press, the lawsuit follows the Women Liberation Front’s summer-time appeal to California Gov. Gavin Newsom to reserve the state’s policy of accommodating transgender women in all-female correctional institutes.
Biological men requesting transfers, notes the News-Press, are eligible for relocation if they have had a sex change surgery, are taking hormones, or have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
However, the lawsuit suggests that any man may be housed with women if they simply state, “I have a transgender (or nonbinary) (or intersex) identity.”
At least 23 biological males have already been transferred to women’s facilities since the law became effective. Some of those men, claims the WoLF, “have committed heinous violent and sexual crimes against women and children.”
WoLF, in its complaint, claims that several women were sexually assaulted after being housed with biological males.
“Some incarcerated women sharing a cell with a man, along with other women, now make sleep schedules among the women so that a woman is on watch to try to prevent rape by the male cellmate,” the lawsuit says.
Krystal Gonzalez, named as a plaintiff, claims that she was sexually assaulted by a biological male who was transferred to the Central California Women’s Facility under the transgender-accommodation statute.
When Gonzalez filed a complaint, WoLF says the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation responded by referring to her alleged attacker as a “transgender woman with a penis.”
“Krystal does not believe that women have penises and the psychological distress caused by her assault is exacerbated by the prison’s refusal to acknowledge the sex of her perpetrator,” the lawsuit states.
Conservative media outlet The Daily Signal, meanwhile, observes that one transgender woman—a twice-convicted child-killer—was allowed to transfer to the same facility housing the mother of his children, whom he had murdered.
By permitting the housing of transgender women with biological women, WoLF says that female prisoners’ First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights have been violated.
“Women and girls deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, and compassion,” WoLF Executive Director Dr. Mahri Irvine said in a press release. “[The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] has unequivocally violated the basic human rights of incarcerated women by subjecting them to traumatizing, terrifying conditions. WoLF stands alongside these women. We will continue to fight for them until their safety and dignity are restored.”
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