CARNAL NATION

A transgender woman, known only as "Prisoner A," is locked in a battle with the British penal system to be transferred to a woman's prison. Prisoner A's request to be moved to a women's prison has already been denied once by a court, despite the fact that her gender has been legally recognized and her birth certificate updated. She is serving a life sentence for manslaughter and attempted rape. 

Prisoner A's lawyer, Phillipa Kaufman, told the High Court that "keeping her in a men's prison was a violation of the right to respect for her private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights." Prisoner A has undergone laser hair removal and hormone treatment, but has not been allowed by prison authorities to fully transition through gender reassignment surgery. Staying in the men's prison, Prisoner A seems to be caught in a Catch-22 as far as surgical reassignment is concerned: on the one hand, the doctors have refused to perform the surgery until she's lived as a woman for "a significant amount of time." On the other, the authorities in the men's prison have forbidden Prisoner A from wearing skirts or dresses, and will allow her to wear only "subtle makeup." According to Kaufman, "If she remains in the male estate, she is looking at the bleakest future in terms of what matters to her." In a women's prison, Kaufman claims that Prisoner A would have "hope that she will be able to live in role and persuade her doctors that she should have gender reassignment surgery."

The prison authorities argue that Prisoner A's circumstances wouldn't noticeably improve if she were moved to a women's prison. Prisoner A, they claim, would still need to be kept separate from the general population, much as she is now.