Meet Happy Couple Deborah Trans and Robert Cis. Address: San Quentin

Reading the excellent huff Post peice in which Mara Keisling And Cecilia Chung Discuss How The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Affects LGBT People, I became curious. What is it really like for a trans person behind bars and having only spent a couple over nights in my misspent youth locked up way before transition, I decided to learn a little about the elephant in the trans room.

These two, sisters and brothers had the misfortune and missteps to end up where I might have, had not my higher power intervened  Robert and Deborah come on about half the way through but its well worth watching the whole thing.



This is number two of a four part series. Watch it then the other parts`. Its like eating potato chips. You can't eat just one, you have to go back again and again.

In no way do I wish to romanticize prison or suggest it is a viable alternative to our lives outside. From my experience being locked up I will tell you it was like my wings had been cut. I was repeatedly humiliated, not by other prisoners because I was segregated, but by the guards who found no end to the enjoyment sadistic bastards.

According to the Huff Post article most of the times LGBT prisoners are raped its the guards doing it. To anyone who has spent time in the Army this should come as no surprise when you think about it, in terms of the power structure.

And its brutal. Extremely brutal. Read more on the Huffington Post.

Facing Mirrors: The Paradox of Being Trans in Iran

Source The Guardian (link below):One of the many astonishing paradoxes about life in the Islamic republic is that transsexuality has been legal since a fatwa was issued in 1987 by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Indeed, Iran permits more sex-change operations than any other country, except Thailand, and has long subsidised such surgeries. But, though transsexuals may have the support of the government, they remains highly controversial figures among the public.



Des Buford, Director of Exhibition & Programming at Frameline, spoke with FACING MIRRORS director Negar Azarbayjani and producer Fereshteh Taerpour. (6/18/2012)



Directed By:Negar Azarbayjani
Produced by: Fereshteh Taerpour
Starring:Shayesteh Irani - Ghazal Shakeri - Homayoun Ershadi - Nima Shahrokh Shahi - Maryam Boubani - Saber Abar - Hengameh Ghazian

The religious ruling (allowing SRS) was issued thanks to the activities in the 1980s of Maryam Khatoon Molkara, a campaigner for the rights of transsexuals in Iran, who wrote to Khomeini asking him to determine their fate. Molkara had herself previously been a man, and worked for the state TV before the Islamic revolution in 1979. In the mid-70s, she started to write to Khomeini, who was in exile, asking for religious authorisation for a sex-change operation. In 1987, after a decade of campaigning, she went in person to the home of Khomeini, by then the country's supreme leader, and came back with a fatwa in hand that allowed transsexuals to choose their sex. More at The Guardian

A few years ago while Iran was still accessible via the Internet I became engrossed with the human struggle inside the country. Sadly after the Green Revolution began the goverment responded to closing the electronic border effectively isolating Iran from the world. This movie is a watershed for transgender people as it gives us a look behind this Islamic curtain.