I recently caught up with an old penpal who lives in West Virginia and recently was released from a low-security prison there. He told me that his closest friend in the prison was a trans woman, and that he often had to stick up for her when other inmates sexually harassed her.
Being that Orange is the New Black is my favourite series of all time, I was quite shocked to hear that not all states separate inmates by gender identity and some rather do it by assigned sex at birth.
This made me think about why prisoners are separated by gender at all in the first place and that’s why I wanna open up the topic for discussion.
I believe that it is because of the patriarchy setting up feminine-identifying people up as the second-class citizens, and therefore to prevent more violence behind bars, lawmakers decided to separate males and females.