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Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex

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Eric A. Stanley

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“Instead of appealing to a fear of consequences, community accountability appeals to higher values and aligns self-interest with the collective good. In CI's limited experience, liberatory goals were required to guide the process, since pragmatism could lead to the use of coercion or threatened or real violence as temporary measures for assuring the stability and safety needed to make further steps possible However, the pervasiveness of punishment as a model for accountability and the association of the term "accountability" with retribution contributed to difficulties in moving beyond this mode of engagement. Thus, a practice such as banning, which makes a modicum of safety possible while mobilizing for a more engaged process, can become an end rather than a means. (Mimi Kim)”

“If folks do the same thing over and over and over again, and refuse to take accountability for that, and don't want to learn, they can actually be banned from a particular space. We do have to figure out the other side of that. Which is, somebody does take accountability, and does what people asked them to do. When are they allowed to rejoin community in good standing? That is something we have yet to figure out how to do in consistent fashion. Because you're never gonna be able to say somebody "You can never come back to society," and expect those people to join accountability processes.”

“People should not be talking about social media and "real life" as though they're distinct. They are not. What is happening online is happening offline, and what is happening offline is happening online. What happens offline bleeds into the online world, and vice versa.”

“People mess up. We lie, exaggerate, betray, hurt, and abandon each other. When we hear that this has happened, it makes sense to feel anger, pain, confusion, and sadness. But to move immediately to punishment means that we stay on the surface of what has happened. To transform the conditions of the "wrongdoing", we have to ask ourselves and each other, "Why?" Even--especially--when we are scared of the answer. It's easy to decide a person or group is shady, evil, psychopathic. The hard truth (hard because there's no quick fix) is that long-term injustice creates most evil behavior. The percentage of psychopaths in the world is just not high enough to justify the ease with which we assign that condition to others. In my mediations, "why?" is often the game-changing, possibility-opening question. That's because the answers rehumanize those we feel are perpetuating against us. "Why?" often leads us to grief, abuse, trauma, mental illness, difference, socialization, childhood, scarcity, loneliness. Also, "Why?" makes it impossible to ignore that we might be capable of a similar transgression in similar circumstances. We don't want to see that.”

“Is this what we're here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherence to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there's no one left beside us? I've had tons of conversations with people who, in these moments of public flaying, avoid stepping up on the side of complexity or curiosity because in the back of our minds is the shared unspoken question: When will y'all come for me?”

“For many of us, our survivorhood and our neurodivergence are pretty damn intertwined. As disabled TJ workers, we know what it's like to inhabit secret bodymind stories that many turn away from, as "too much", and that knowledge helps us in our TJ work - people trust us with their survivor stories because they can tell we've seen some shit.”