ECONOMIST: Putting trans women in female prisons sets up a clash of rights
經濟學人：將跨性別女性關進女子監獄會引發權利衝突
The policy is likely to create more problems than it solves
這項政策可能會造成更多的問題，而不是解決問題
Karla bello, a care assistant in Florida, had been living as a woman for years when she missed a court hearing following a series of traffic violations, failed to pay bail and wound up in a male jail. There, the guards called her 「sir」 and confiscated her bra and 「gaff」 (a piece of fabric used to hide male genitalia), leaving her feeling humiliated. Worse, she says, she was denied access to the cross-sex hormones to which she had become habituated, inducing chest pains and intense anxiety. Putting transgender women in men’s prisons can be cruel. It is also, in an already dangerous environment, perilous: research suggests that transgender inmates are much more likely than other prisoners to be assaulted.
卡拉·貝洛(Karla bello)是佛羅裡達州的一名護理助理，多年來一直以女性身份生活，在一系列交通違規事件後，她錯過了一場法庭聽證會，未能支付保釋金，最終被關進男性監獄。在那裡，警衛稱她為「先生」，並沒收了她的胸罩和「魚鉤」(一種用於隱藏男性生殖器的織物)，讓她感到羞辱。她說，更糟糕的是，她被拒絕使用她已經習慣的交叉性激素，導致胸痛和強烈的焦慮。將變性女性關進男性監獄可能很殘忍。在一個已經危險的環境中，這也是危險的:研究表明，跨性別囚犯比其他囚犯更有可能受到攻擊。
A growing awareness of this, combined with activists』 call for transgender people to be recognised as members of the gender with which they identify, is leading to changes in the way trans prisoners are housed. In most cases, such inmates (the majority of whom are trans women) are incarcerated with members of their biological sex. But this month, California introduced a law allowing prisoners to request to be housed in accordance with their gender identity. Similar policies have been introduced elsewhere after transgender inmates sued for mistreatment.
越來越多的人意識到這一點，加上活動家們呼籲承認變性人是他們所認同的性別的成員，這導致了跨性別囚犯關押方式的改變。在大多數情況下，這些囚犯(其中大多數是跨性別婦女)與他們的同性成員一起被監禁。但本月，加州出臺了一項法律，允許囚犯根據他們的性別身份申請入住。在變性人因虐待被起訴後，其他地方也出臺了類似的政策。
Trans activists』 insistence that trans women be treated as women is also influencing federal lawmakers. On his first day in the White House, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing agencies to consider anti-discrimination measures in which he said that 「children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room or school sports.」 The Equality Act, which he has promised to make law, would redefine the 「sex」 of the amendments of the Civil Rights Act to include 「gender identity」 (that is, a person’s sense of their gender regardless of whether they have taken cross-sex hormones or undergone surgery). The logical outcome of that would seem to be admitting trans women to spaces once reserved for women, from sports teams to prisons.
跨性別活動家堅持認為跨性別女性應該被視為女性，這也影響了聯邦立法者。在入主白宮的第一天，喬·拜登總統發布了一項行政命令，指示各機構考慮反歧視措施，他在命令中說，「孩子們應該能夠學習，而不用擔心他們是否會被拒絕進入洗手間、更衣室或學校體育活動。」他承諾制定的《平等法案》將重新定義《民權法案》修正案中的「性別」，以包括「性別認同」(即一個人對自己性別的感覺，無論他們是否服用了跨性別激素或接受了手術)。這樣做的邏輯結果似乎是允許跨性別女性進入曾經為女性保留的空間，從運動隊到監獄。
America needs federal legislation to protect trans people from discrimination: in many states there may be nothing illegal about a landlord refusing to rent an apartment to a trans person, for example. But policies grounded in the flawed conflation of biological sex and gender identity will lead to more problems than they solve, because they create a clash between the rights of women and those of trans women.
美國需要聯邦立法來保護變性人免受歧視:例如，在許多州，房東拒絕向變性人出租公寓並不違法。但是基於生物學上的性和性別認同的錯誤結合的政策將導致更多的問題，因為它們在女性和跨性別女性的權利之間製造了衝突。
Prisons offer a particularly worrying example of this. There are two obvious problems with putting trans women in female prisons. The first concerns safety. Most trans women pose no threat to women. But denying the reality of biological sex ignores the fact that men are much the more violent of the two sexes. In America they commit 90% of murders and constitute 92% of the prison population. There is no evidence that trans women have lower levels of criminality than men.
監獄提供了一個特別令人擔憂的例子。將跨性別女性關進女子監獄有兩個明顯的問題。首先是安全問題。大多數跨性別女性對女性沒有威脅。但否認生物性的現實，忽略了男性比兩性暴力得多的事實。在美國，他們犯下了90%的謀殺罪，佔監獄人口的92%。沒有證據表明跨性別女性的犯罪率低於男性。
California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (cdcr) says the 130-plus prisoners who have so far requested they switch prisons (out of a trans population of around 1,000) are 「predominantly」 trans women. (This may also be because there are fewer trans men). Inmates』 requests to move are not granted automatically; they are assessed by a panel that is mindful that some male sex offenders will claim to be trans to gain access to victims.
加州懲教改造部(加州刑事局)表示，到目前為止要求他們轉換監獄的130多名囚犯(在大約1000名跨性別人口中)主要是「跨性別」女性。(這也可能是因為跨性別男性較少)。囚犯的搬遷請求不會自動獲得批准；一個專門小組對他們進行了評估，該小組注意到一些男性性犯罪者會聲稱自己是變性人，以接近受害者。
But even if it were possible to weed out all sexual predators—some assaults, like flashing, rarely show up in criminal records —there would remain another, more widespread problem. Women’s right to separate spaces is not only about safety; it is also about privacy. 「Women have a right to disrobe out of the sight of men,」 says Ann Menasche, a lawyer with Feminists In Struggle which is lobbying to change the wording of the Equality Act. In prison that may be especially important. Most incarcerated women have suffered trauma: the American Civil Liberties Union says 92% of all women in California prisons have been 「battered and abused」.
但是，即使有可能清除所有的性侵犯者——一些攻擊，比如閃光，很少出現在犯罪記錄中——仍然會有另一個更普遍的問題。女性分隔空間的權利不僅關乎安全；這也關乎隱私。「女人有權在男人看不見的地方脫衣服，」爭取女權主義者組織的律師安·梅納舍說，該組織正在遊說改變《平等法案》的措辭。在監獄裡這可能特別重要。大多數被監禁的女性都遭受過創傷:美國公民自由聯盟稱，加州監獄中92%的女性都遭受過「毆打和虐待」。
No one has surveyed female inmates about their views on how trans prisoners should be housed; 「no one would dare, in the current climate,」 says Ms Menasche. But it seems probable that most would rather not share a cell or shower with someone with the defining sex characteristics of a man. Most transwomen have not undergone 「bottom surgery」: a survey by the National Centre of Transgender Equality found that 12% had undergone vaginoplasty or labiaplasty and 11% had a orchiectomy (the removal of one or more testicle).
沒有人調查過女囚犯對如何安置跨性別囚犯的看法；「在目前的氣候下，沒有人敢，」梅納舍女士說。但是大多數人似乎不願意和一個具有男性特徵的人共用一個房間或淋浴。大多數跨性別女性沒有接受過「底部手術」:國家跨性別平等中心的一項調查發現，12%的女性接受過陰道成形術或陰唇成形術，11%的女性接受過睪丸切除術(切除一個或多個睪丸)。
How to balance the welfare of trans women and women inmates? When posed this question, transgender activists, who increasingly express dislike of the term 「biological sex,」 deny that any such tension exists. 「Trans women are women,」 says Shawn Meerkamper, a lawyer with the Transgender Law Centre, which helped draw up California’s new law.
如何平衡跨性別女性和女囚的福利？當被問及這個問題時，越來越不喜歡「生物性」這個詞的跨性別活動家否認存在任何這種緊張關係。「跨性別女性就是女性，」肖恩·米爾卡普爾說，他是跨性別法律中心的律師，該中心幫助起草了加州的新法律。
The refusal to discuss any alternative to policies that ignore the meaning of 「sex」 precludes the exploration of better solutions. In Britain, the fear that allowing transwomen into women prisons endangers females prompted the establishment of a separate trans wing in a women’s prison in London. But this is unlikely to be copied in America: transgender-only spaces correspond with laws that protect transgender people as a separate category rather than those that count them as members of the sex with which they identify.
拒絕討論無視「性」含義的政策的任何替代方案，阻礙了探索更好的解決辦法。在英國，由於擔心允許跨性別女性進入女子監獄會危及女性，倫敦的女子監獄設立了一個單獨的跨性別部門。但這在美國不太可能被複製:只有變性人的空間符合法律，法律將變性人作為一個單獨的類別保護，而不是將他們視為他們所認同的性別成員。
Changes to the way trans prisoners are housed are likely to come slowly. Guidelines introduced in 2012 that require all federal and state prisons to ask trans inmates whether they would feel safest in a men’s or women’s prison appear to have had little effect on where they are placed. But as more trans women enter women’s prisons, the problems this will entail will spark court cases. That may prompt a rethink. In the meantime, this policy will be tested at the expense of an unusually vulnerable and voiceless group.
關押跨性別囚犯的方式可能會慢慢發生變化。2012年出臺的指導方針要求所有聯邦和州監獄詢問跨性別囚犯，他們在男子監獄還是女子監獄會感到最安全，這似乎對他們被安置在哪裡沒有什麼影響。但是隨著越來越多的跨性別女性進入女子監獄，由此帶來的問題將引發法庭訴訟。這可能會引發人們的反思。與此同時，這項政策將受到考驗，代價是一個異常脆弱和沒有發言權的群體。
本文章英文原文來自經濟學人，本人僅提供給大家一個觀察國外文章的平臺，文章內容不代表公眾號立場
英文文章及圖片來源：
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/01/30/putting-trans-women-in-female-prisons-sets-up-a-clash-of-rights
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