Brandon Showalter – September 28, 2020
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two new transgender bills, including one that allows biological males who identify as female to be placed in women’s prisons, and another that establishes a fund using state revenue for gender-transition drugs and surgeries.
Newsom signed a law Saturday that requires the Golden state to let inmates who identify as transgender, nonbinary, or intersex be housed on the basis of “gender identity” instead of biological sex.
The phrase “gender identity” has been used in public policy to describe a transgender-identifying person’s internal feelings about their sex but is not informed by chromosomes.
The California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation is not prohibited from denying an inmate’s request to be placed in an opposite-sex facility solely because of anatomy, sexual orientation or “a factor present” among the other inmates at the facility.
Critics say female inmates are an already vulnerable population and the presence of males in their spaces, regardless of how they identify, is a violation of their privacy and safety.
“Allowing men to identify into being incarcerated with women, and this is unlikely to be used by women to get into men’s prisons, constitutes a depraved indifference to the safety and dignity of women held in custody by the State of California,” said Natasha Chart, board chair of the Women’s Liberation Front, in an email to The Christian Post Monday.
“This would count as a violation of women’s rights under the Geneva Conventions for prisoners of war, and is likely being used to divert attention from the state’s failure to prevent torture and other interpersonal violence in men’s prisons.”