Are transgendered human? Is intersex a crime? And where is feminism?

Is feminism about the rights of all women, or just the “right” women? Does human rights apply to all; and when it doesn’t, what does that say about how we view the excluded group? Those two questions have been bothering me since September when I started to do research for a blog on the transgender day of remembrance; the day in November when people are asked to remember the dozens of transgendered people killed annually for…breathing. And as I researched I came across stories and statistics that shocked me. Studies from the US’s most T-friendly city San Francisco saying even there, a transgendered person’s likelihood of getting a full time job was minimal, and the chance of ever making enough to purchase a house or condo almost non-existent. I will stop now before I go on and on about what I found (Which I will blog later) but what floored me was when, with consistent regularity, charities set up to help the people who NO ONE ELSE would help, were refusing to help, in particular, transgendered females. What does it mean, I asked myself, when for 10 years, a shelter to stop those people considered expendable by society from freezing to death, refuse to let transgendered females enter? What does it mean when organizations dedicated to helping ANYONE refuse to help transgendered? Or when a creed or society which is set up to help ANY woman, excludes transgendered women?

Yesterday, visiting a feminist site my partner had previously forbidden (cause I get too “worked up”), another question crystallized in my head which is why, so often, when feminist talk about “the damage the sex industry does to women” they are talking solely about “us” – you know; middle class consumer women who are trying to break free of the shackles of being viewed as a sex object but NOT including the actual women who are in the sex industry, the ones who ARE sex objects. Indeed, the arguments about the damage and cost of porn, the sex industry and sexual objectification in things like pole dancing I have heard debated countless times without ever acknowledging that what is referred to as “the industry” is really tens to hundreds of thousands (in the US) of WOMEN. Added to that was the further question of why it is that while sites like Suicide Girls or Goth Girls or other sex/striptease oriented sites WANT us to see the women as fully rounded individuals, with hopes, dreams, feelings about their job, good days, bad days – essentially “people” (however much of this information might be misrepresentation) in most to all of my conversations with feminists (and President Bush), these women are not presented as women or as full individuals with names and histories and realities and children and treasured memories and the like. Instead the humanity is squeezed out into names like “Prostitution” and “The Sex Trade” and large clumpy dehumanizing terms like that. So I ask “Why?” about that too (another blog to come back to).

But now I want to talk about the crime of being an intersex woman. You may not be aware it was a crime. I knew it was something most people don’t talk about but I wasn’t aware it was a crime either until the State of Wyoming told me so. In case you are wondering why I care; I believe that by learning and caring about the struggles and concerns of ALL women, I will be enriched (discouraged at times, but enriched). What happened is that Miki Ann Dimarco was born intersex and had hormone and some genital corrective surgery growing up. Though that was limited because she had been abandoned by her parents and raised in a variety of foster homes. In 1998, she was picked up and found guilty of passing bad checks worth $742.85. Two years later during probation she failed a drug test and was sentenced to what should have been 14 months in very minimum security prison. That was, until, during a strip search prison officials found a tiny penis; then upon testing found she had XY chromosomes. Up until now, everyone in the justice system considered Miki Ann to be female (since she had lived that way since puberty), but now there was visual evidence of her intersex condition. Later prison officials would say that she had been determined to be “male” without either contesting her childhood medical treatment as an intersex female or contesting the THREE ex-husbands she had. The problem was, where to house her? Not in the men’s prison, they decided. Not with the minimum security women’s prison they decided, though she was judged a non-risk and non-violent offender. In panic they placed her in total solitary containment which meant placing her in Pod 3 where four confinement cells existed for the most extreme, uncontrollable and violent offenders. The cells were small holding only a cot and toilet. Cement Floors and cinderblock walls. No chair. No shelf. No personality amenities. Even watches, clocks or a deck of playing cards was prohibited. She could only emerge from her cell when no other prisoners were present. No contact meant she ate in her cell, she could not use the gym, she could not attend AA, not visit the law or general library, not attend religious services, not have regular visitors, and not qualify for work release programs or even talk to other inmates.

And there she stayed for the next 438 days, her full term, despite appealing for a move in housing every 90 days.

Upon her release she sued the prison for $75,000 and court costs based on the 8th amendment regarding cruel and unusual punishment and under the 14th amendment of being discriminated against in regards of liberty and equality. It was decided at the first court that while the prison had overreacted, and were cruel and unusual they weren’t excessively cruel and unusual. She was awarded $1,000 plus costs. The state appealed.

Jan. 24th 2007, the 10th circuit court of appeals decided that the 14th amendment which protects “suspect classes” from discrimination which includes race and women does not include “intersex.” If she had been treated worse than other prisoners because she was female, that would have broken the 14th amendment, but because she was treated differently, including NOT being treated like a female because she was intersex, that was legal. He also overturned the award stating that since the penal system hadn’t faced someone like her before, essentially, whatever they did was good enough. Yes, the judge determined, she was treated badly, but not constitutionally badly enough. He overturned the $1,000 and ordered Miki Ann Dimarco to repay court costs. Since filing the original case, Miki Ann Dimarco has died. The state of Wyoming will be seizing and seeing damages from her estate.

You see, my problem is that LGBTI people are part of the chunks of the people who ARE being excluded from basic rights or the ability to be seen or giving a voice. So when a report comes out saying that LGBT teens are 42% of homeless teens in the US and that many as young as 11 are turning to prostitution or drugs to survive then I have a question. When Robert Pickton can abduct and murder between 23 and 60 women from one area of one town (Vancouver) for YEARS before the public is notified and intensive efforts and made simply because he is targeting aboriginal women and prostitutes, I have a question? My question is, if THESE people are not included, if THESE homeless girls and women and transgender women are not included, if aboriginal and women in the sex trade and if intersex female prisoners are not included and if vulnerable women are not embraced and spoken up for then WHAT THE FUCK GOOD IS FEMINISM? Or do we delude ourselves in thinking it is NOT the most vulnerable and the women with the least amount of choices who end up in situations in which other people fighting for their human rights and feminism might come in handy? Dunno. Guess, I’ll keep thinking on that one.