Most of us go through life passing by countless people, young and old, people of different nationalities, men, women, and everyone in between. Nature provides us with a beautiful biological spectrum, which is seen in most everything. But society tries to tell us that a person's sex is strictly one of two things, male and female; however, that is not the case. Sex is also encompassed by natural variations and includes more than just male and female. This is not something new; it's just not taught to us.
Intersex and transgender people exist. We are humans, people, we are just like anyone else. I am an incarcerated woman in North Carolina where I share an extremely overcrowded prison dorm with 107 men.
It is very scary. My treatment has become biased and political over the past few years due to legal issues, litigation about how I'm housed (with men) and treated along with state-sponsored systemic hatred, violence, and oppression that attempt to erase intersex people due to how we're born. This isn't something new, we're just told this injustice doesn't happen now. I'm a woman, a female, and have XX chromosomes, which are typically expected or associated with other females. However, I was born intersex and because of that, I'm forced to be housed with men in a men's prison. The American Academy of Pediatrics incorporates all somatic sex development variations under the umbrella term Disorders of Sex Development (DSD), defined as "congenital conditions in which development of chromosomal, gonadal, or anatomic sex is atypical."
So what does the Medical Industrial Complex expect for a male or female? To start, I'm not what the Medical Industrial Complex expected and when each of us takes an honest look at ourselves, do you think that you're what they expected? Of course not. That is because each and every one of us is uniquely different from everyone else, even our siblings. That is the biological spectrum that nature gives us, and we are naturally able to experience it in everything around us, just like eye, hair, or skin colors.
Sadly, we are taught and, in a sense, brainwashed by the system not to see our sex or gender on a type of biological spectrum where no two are the same, but only one of two ways: "male" or "female." This has resulted in society building a binary sex system into everything. Our schools, hospitals, institutions, jails, and the medical and prison industrial complexes.
Churches try to teach us that God only made men and women, "males and females." But what about me? What about intersex and transgender people? Why was I born this way? They're questions I've asked and sought answers for for a very long time.
Well, about 2 percent of people are born with intersex traits that do not fit within the typical or "expected" male-female binary. That equates to two out of every 100 people! Millions of people in the world are born with a Disorder of Sex Development (DSD). It isn't a disorder like the Medical Industrial Complex claims, but rather a difference that makes us all the same.
Out of the many known intersex variations, my condition is known as progestin induced virilization, which is caused by excess exposure to androgens by a prenatal XX person while in the womb. Depending on the timing and degree of exposure, the genitals are virilized (masculinized) with effects ranging from an enlarged clitoris to development of a phallus and the fusing of the labia.
In other words, XX people affected in utero by virilizing hormones can be born into a continuum of sex phenotypes which ranges from a "girl" with a larger clitoris, to a "boy" with undescended or no gonads. Nonetheless, both have the same conditions, yet one is considered "male" and the other "female." Occasionally, a female neonate will be so genitally virilized that she is given a male identity at birth and raised as a boy.
Doctors, medical specialists, scientists, and biologists all recognize this and can explain it, but it isn't talked about or openly discussed in society. This proves in and of itself that sex has a continuum and isn't two things in neat boxes.
It is difficult to actually determine how many people are intersex due to a doctor's subjectivity upon delivery and their subjective decision that is influenced by their personal or religious beliefs. Many that go through life not knowing or understanding how or why they are the way they are.
For generations, physicians and parents essentially "chose" what sex their intersex child would be and performed surgeries early in their childhood.
I've been forced to conceal my true self and try to fit into a binary box which led to feelings of self-hatred, self-harm, drug abuse, and reckless behavior. I never had acceptance or a safe place to be who I am (a woman) or be able to talk about my sex or gender. I firmly believe that if that would have been different, if in school I could have been able to safely talk about and get affirmation for my gender, I probably would not have sought drugs to cope with the internal pain of feeling alone and alienated, and likely would not be in prison now. I was in the rural South, and I wasn't able to safely be who I truly am.
In 2017, I was sent to a prison in the mountains of Western North Carolina. That place was pure hell. I shared a small dorm with about 40 men. It was all open bunk beds. The toilets and showers were in the open as well. I had to sleep, shower, change clothes, and live—or rather exist—with 40 men, with 800 more housed elsewhere in the prison. I faced near constant sexual and physical harassment and abuse by the staff and other incarcerated people. I was constantly misgendered, told that I was a man because "it's a men's prison."
I was always on guard, skittish, scared, and as each day passed, I saw no hope and just wanted my life to end so I didn't have to continue to endure the abuse, misgendering, and the other horrible ways I was treated. I begged for help, but it fell on deaf ears.
To my surprise, I received a letter from an attorney who had heard about me and wanted to help. Hope started to come back to me a little at a time and with that, courage to speak up about the abuse I was having to endure. Not long after, a writ of mandamus was filed to compel prison officials to move me from a men's prison to a women's prison. It was a slow process that took quite a while.
During the process, we managed to win some victories. First, I was transferred away from that place in February 2022 to another men's prison in the eastern part of the state where I at least had a private cell, but I was still surrounded by men. At first, staff seemed to be nicer and the administration made empty promises and uttered their bureaucratic zingers. All the while, they were just playing politics and trying to cover up what had happened to me prior to getting there. I was still misgendered, strip searched by men, and treated like a male prisoner.
Amid all of this oppression and chaos, I also needed reproductive and gender affirming surgery. The prison's medical team and administration knew I needed this care, but were determined not to approve it and continued to deny everything. They still deny it today. I thought it was something that would never happen for me, especially while I was in prison. But to my surprise, it did happen. It took one hell of a fight, community involvement, and several medical emergencies, but it finally happened.
On September 7, 2022, I finally had genital surgery.
When my gender-affirming surgery became publicized, the prison officials did what they do best: They lied and said it didn't actually happen. Brad Deen, a spokesman for NCDAC/ DPS, told the Raleigh News and Observer: The DAC "has not approved surgery for the express purpose of treating gender dysphoria," but pointed out that many surgeries can be performed to treat a variety of conditions, specifically surgeries which can be performed in treatment of transgender patients are also performed in treatment of non-transgender patients.
I had needed the surgery for a very long time but the stench of prison politics made it next to impossible. Even though multiple doctors told prison officials I needed it, they still made senseless barriers to go through. I really kicked the hornet's nest!
One of the biggest barriers within the NC prison system is a committee for transgender and intersex people called Transgender Accommodation Review Committee (TARC). The Division of Prisons has one at the division level and each facility has one at the facility level. The purpose is to provide accommodations for transgender and intersex persons in prison. The basic accommodations are the allowance of undergarments, some basic cosmetic items, and what they call "private showers," which aren't private at all nor safe. The facility makes these basic "routine" accommodations. The Division TARC is supposed to make "non-routine" accommodations, such as: 1. Hormone Replacement Therapy, 2. Gender-affirming surgical procedures, and 3. Gender-specific facility transfers.
Oh, and the approval of strip searches and pat searches by staff of the same gender or gender preference of the intersex or transgender person, but that is a whole story in itself.
In January 2023, I was transferred to Harnett C.I. in Lillington, NC. I hadn't asked to be transferred. In fact, I was terrified and requested protective custody both before I left and once I got there. Instead of placing me in protective housing on "PC," I was put in an open dorm with bunk beds in a building with over 100 people deemed by the courts to be sexually violent predators. It was called the SOAR program. Who the hell does something like that to a woman? My risk safety profile under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) indicates that I am at a high risk of being sexually victimized. That is well known to prison officials and listed on my record.
Common sense would tell anyone that what happened was not an accident. It was targeted retaliation by prison officials, not to inconvenience me or be petty, but was meant to do more. It was a malicious attempt to hurt me and put my life in jeopardy. I had just had surgery in September and it was in the news, as was the fact that I was a female in a male prison. People there immediately recognized me. The staff didn't care. I arrived at Harnett on a Thursday; the following Tuesday I was transferred back.
The assignment of sex at birth subjects individuals to intersecting social hierarchies—such as those that elevate men over women, gender conformists over non-gender conformists, and cisgender over transgender.
But what about intersex people?
Societal institutions of all types—schools, hospitals, jails, etc.—discriminate and exclude intersex, transgender, and non-conforming people based on what is essentially that person's private medical and birth/genital records. Yet our birth and medical records are supposedly private. The administrative assignment of identities and social roles are likewise based on those records, but those roles and identities are undermined by the existence of intersex and transgender people. That is because those roles are also based on principles of anatomy and the institution's systemic pattern of subordination is threatened when we become the author of our life and choose who we are instead of letting the system or societal institutions choose who we are.
The Division TARC mentions that they consider how far along a person is on their "gender journey," as Dr. Jan Pieper (DTARC / DAC Director of Behavioral Health) states, when determining and making decisions about each person. It is also called Social Transitioning.
Let's see… My journey is living as the sex I identify as and respectfully am: female. Years of taking female hormones, non-reversible gender affirming genital surgery, and my birth certificate stating my sex is female.
Those are big things.
For a transgender person, that constitutes fully transitioning from one sex to another.
For me, as an intersex woman, it means that the choice I made to finally be true to who I am, to accept myself and love myself, had been well worth it, regardless of whether others accepted me for who I am. It meant being free.
In November 2023, the Writ of Mandamus that was filed in 2021 was finally heard in court and after a trial, the NCDAC was ordered to transfer me from a men's prison to a women's prison. It felt like a dream had come true. I cried. I felt joy that I've never felt before. I looked into a courtroom filled with friends, supporters, and people that are family to me. We all had fought so hard, and we won!
I knew in my heart that finally, the hurt was going away, and I was soon going to be somewhere more safe. I wasn't going to have to worry about a man hunting me again, or about being raped or abused. I knew that the intrusive and degrading strip searches by male staff would stop, as would a male officer doing a pat search of me just because he could—just so he could grab my breasts or feel my ass. It meant that being constantly misgendered, referred to as a man because I was in a "male" prison would end, as would having to hear all the degrading sexual comments and sexual harassment.
It meant being able to be around other women, feeling accepted, being able to focus on healing from past trauma, then getting out and staying out.
But the prison officials flat out refused to transfer me to a women's facility after the court ordered them to do so. They asked for an emergency stay from the North Carolina Court of Appeals and it was granted. Later, the Court of Appeals overturned the trial court's order, reasoning that, because intersex people are neither male nor female, the prison system can house them wherever it wants to. In its wake, DAC also refused to treat me as a woman and instead heightened their attempts to make me invisible and erase and discredit any and everything female about me, as if what they've done already wasn't enough.
The sexual and physical abuse and harassment had worsened and staff were constantly told by administration to do nothing about it and to ignore it. They were told not to refer to me or acknowledge that I'm a woman or female, to stop using female pronouns for the few staff that did when addressing or referring to me. They were reminded by administration, reminded that I'm at a men's prison so male pronouns are appropriate gender pronouns. Warden Talena Lee said, "Everyone here at Nash is a man."
The prison industrial complex has always tried to hide the daily lives and treatment of those they hold captive from society, only telling the public political lies to instill fear in the eye of the public. They tell the public that the prisons keep them safe from us, but that is far from reality. The only thing the prisons do is show the public what they want the public to see and make the prisons look good. It's just propaganda. Prisons make the state and their shareholders money while draining the public and breaking up families. Prison officials sell nothing but snake oil. Who keeps us safe from the prison officials?
The barriers of stigma and marginalization that intersex and trans people face cause our lives to be nearly invisible already. That is exacerbated by mass incarceration and fundamental far-right propaganda. Policymakers and prison officials can change rules and laws which, in turn, can change our communities and culture in a positive and inclusive way that would lower the number of people in prisons, yet they refuse to do so.
Especially in the South.
Instead, they find it easier and more beneficial to their agenda to try to erase us. Nonetheless, I hold fast to the hope to be able to make a positive change, to bring awareness, and to make it safer for other trans, intersex, and non-binary people. To make it out of this hell. The visibility that makes us the most vulnerable is that which also is the source for our greatest strength.