Draft

Introduction

To understand the circumstances exclusive to the transgender prisoner, it is significant to consider numerous aspects of human behavior. By utilizing the developmental, systems, and confrontation perspectives, it is clear-cut that the mistreatment of transgender inmates, especially male-to-female transsexuals housed in male facilities, often reflects society's marginalization of and discrimination towards transgender in general.

Conflict Perspective: Prison and the Transgender Inmate Placement Issues

Law Enforcement

Placement & Apperance Policies

Harassment & Abuse

Access To Medical Care

Conclusion

Introduction

To understand the circumstances exclusive to the transgender prisoner, it is significant to consider numerous aspects of human behavior. By utilizing the developmental, systems, and confrontation perspectives, it is clear-cut that the mistreatment of transgender inmates, especially male-to-female transsexuals housed in male facilities, often reflects society's marginalization of and discrimination towards transgender in general. In prisons, the transgender inmate regularly faces isolation, harassment and abuse.(Richard, 5)

It is tough to find a universally acknowledged significance for the period transgender, as the subject (and the period itself) is convoluted, at one time sexual, psychological, political, and cultural. This sunshade period was coined to be inclusive of several groups encompassing transvestites, cross-dressers, intersexes, and transsexuals. The period transvestite usually describes a man who is sexually aroused by wearing feminine apparel, while a cross-dresser is someone, man or woman, who occasionally dresses as the opposite sex. An inter sex one-by-one (formerly renowned as a hermaphrodite) is a one-by-one born with ambiguous genitalia of changing degrees. A transsexual is one who is painful with his or her genetically very resolute sex and desires to reside as the opposite gender (Johns, 1998). According to the pioneering sexologist, Dr. Harry Benjamin, there are several types of transsexual. The non-surgical kind, though they may seem that they reside inside the body of the opposite gender, restrict their expression of non-conforming gender to mannerism, demeanor and dress. They may also enhance or diminish aspects of their physical look with padding or binding.(Richard, 5) Some non-surgical kind transsexuals may also choose to enhance their cross-sex transformation with the use of hormones. Still others, the factual transsexual - moderate or high intensity kind, choose to physically change their anatomy through implants and/or sexual reassignment surgery. (Gooren , 68)

The rate of transsexuals in the general community is not easy to ascertain. The fourth version of the Statistical and Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, 1994) estimates that the number of persons seeking SRS every year in the United States to be roughly 1:10,000. This number has been admonished as too conservative, as the facts and numbers used to assess it are decades old. More unquestionable, argues Lynn Conway, professor of computer science at the University of Michigan and a transgender activist, is an estimate closer to 1:2500. She surmises that “the intrinsic occurrence of male-to-female transsexualism must be on the alignment of ~1:1500 and may be even bigger than that”. While there is no consensus amidst those who are employed to understand the genesis of transgenderism, there have been significant discoveries that support its association with mind structure, specifically inside the bed nucleus ...