I wanna talk about strip searches.
So, apparently there is a bill which just passed here in the State of Washington, I dunno what the bill says I haven't bothered to read it, but it had to do with gender and searches in prison.
This has been a point of contention for quite some time, and Disability Rights Washington has been pushing on this issue.
There is a document DOC has us (transgender individuals) sign, in this document it declares the gender of the officers one would prefer to have performing necessary strip searches.
I have marked male. I did this because my expectation is that none of these male officers is gonna give a shit about performing strip searches on me, whereas, I have heard time and again about female officers being supremely annoyed at being required to strip search transwomen. So, it is in my file that I prefer to be searched by men.
In reality, I don't care about the gender of the person searching me, because it's a stranger looking at me naked, it's going to be unpleasant regardless, it's necessary, get on with it, whatever.
DOC has been so pelted with complaints over searches, that many officers have (for years) have assumed that I prefer to be searched by women. So, when I go out on medical trips, they assign a female to the transport team specifically to be there for that purpose. In this situation I typically just let the woman search me rather than make the whole thing more awkward by starting a conversation about it, because like I said, whatever.
On other occasions, such as events in the visitation area, or coming in from Correctional Industries, when male officers realize there is a transwoman needing to be searched, they begin scrambling to find a female officer to do the search, and I have to interrupt them to tell them, "you can search me, I signed a paper saying that it's OK for men to search me, just do the search, it's fine."
I have been strip searched hundreds of times by dozens of officers of various genders, and never once have I felt that the officer searching me was being anything other than professional. I'm not discounting the possibility that transwomen have been mistreated by male officers in strip search situations, but my point is that the vast majority of officers are very professional about strip searches.
So, I really wish transwomen and allies would quit acting like cross gender strip searchs are inherently offensive or violative.
If an officer of any gender is acting inappropriately I encourage my sisters to speak out about THAT SPECIFIC OFFICER, but stop projecting that problem onto all the male officers in DOC, as if simply by being male and searching you they have caused you some injury.
The fact is, there are bigger more important battles to fight. Anyone focused on the relevance of gender in strip searches needs to examine their priorities, because there are transwomen STILL being denied access to medically necessary gender affirming care.
(Jaina and I don't always agree on things like this. Jaina has her priorities: she's being denied gender affirming surgery at this time. But I responded in this case:
totally get your point of view about strip searches: if I was being forced to undergo that indignity, it wouldn't matter to me the gender of the person doing it either. But, I also recognize that people on the outside get to decide who sees them naked all the time. Like, you can decide the gender of your docotor (especially gynecologists). Again, I've never personally cared, but I think that a person's right to autonomy includes them having a right to decide who sees them naked.
Personally, I think strip searches are an uneccessariy violation of prisoner's rights. There are many examples of people violating prisoner's sexually during strip searches. It's just another way of opening prisoners up to abuse. But if we can't stop them entirely, I think people should at the very least have the right to chose the gender of the person searching them. I don't think that detracts from the fight for other rights. I don't think we have to pick and chose what rights we fight for. I think it's important to fight on several fronts to keep making progress in gaining the rights of trans people and prisoners. That's just my two cents.)