The carceral production of transgender poverty: How racialized gender policing deprives transgender women of housing and safety

Abstract

Based on interviews and ethnography, this article analyzes how racialized gender policing in public space and service organizations deprives transgender women of survival resources. Although transgender women are disproportionately the targets of enforcement, most studies of the criminalization of homelessness, drug use, sex work and migration exclude their experiences. Studies that do include transgender women often focus narrowly on anti-prostitution laws and enforcement, overlooking other laws and policies that contribute to criminalization and poverty. This article analyzes the confluence between policing of transgender women’s identities and survival strategies in public space and in agencies meant to serve poor people (including shelters, drug treatment facilities and transitional living programs). Laws regulating access to public space combine with rules regulating gender in service organizations to both criminalize and create transgender poverty. More broadly, the carceral production of transgender poverty demonstrates that criminalization is not only a consequence but also a cause of both poverty and inequality.

Trans architecture and the prison as archive: “don’t be a queen and you won’t be arrested”

“…The larger research program that this analysis is part of, specifically and explicitly explores from a perspective of intersectionality, the oppression-to-incarceration cycle of Black American and First Nations Australian trans women (Clark et al, 2022). This paper further aligns with Yarbrough’s (2021) findings that trans “poverty results from racialized gender policing… [in] jails and prisons” (2021: 15). To expand this body of scholarship, the authors encourage further research to explore, from the lenses of race and intersectionality, how the cisnormative prison archive may inscribe spaces resulting in the production of both affect and the manipulation of inscribed spaces.…”

“…More specifically, this analysis has elucidated how the cisnormative prison archive and the archons upholding it, and its architectural constructs, effect and affect trans women's embodiment, experiences, and enactment of their (trans)gender while incarcerated in men's settings in both nations. In the words of Yarbrough (2021: 2), incarcerated trans women “become vulnerable at the intersection of laws, enforcement practices, and bureaucratic regulations that… mean that… [trans] women break the rules by virtue of their gender identities.” Because the prison archive fails to accommodate anything outside its strict cisnormative rules (Derrida and Prenowitz, 1995), this paper has showcased the multitude of ways in which the incarceration setting works as an archive of cisnormative memories (public, cultural, and legal), and the punishing implications these memories have on trans women incarcerated in men's settings through “clocking”; genital driven policies; shared/isolated physical spaces; non-affirming language; colonized approaches to gender/gender expression; hyper-sexualization/sexual violence; and lack of recognition of health needs, and failure to implement suitable health practices and qualified professionals .…”

Supporting Gender Self-Determination for People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

“…Unfortunately, some people with I/DD have even experienced threats and physical violence from family members and service providers when they showed a desire to express their gender in ways that were not seen as “normal” (Bedard et al, 2010; Dinwoodie et al, 2020). Researchers who have examined the experiences of gender-diverse people with I/DD have yet to consider the ways in which gendered expectations are racialized (Yarbrough, 2021), nor have they documented the intersectional experiences of gender-diverse people of color with I/DD.…”

Trauma and Abuse Among Incarcerated Girls in the United States and Costa Rica

“…Furthermore, we recognize that using a gender-responsive programming may unintentionally overlook the heightened victimization and isolation for nonbinary and gender-expansive youth in confinement. Given the very low percentage of these youth (less than 1%), (Yarbrough, 2021), our recommendations apply to cisgender youth and we recommend further research that would focus solely on the needs of nonbinary and gender-expansive youth.…”