Trans issues are highly polarizing, and even more so when it involves the clear difference between sexes. Far-left activists have pushed the idea that anyone can identify as any gender they choose for so long that many people have forgotten that there is a clear biological difference that can be seen between the sexes, and this biological difference can be exploited.
A New California Law
A new law being implemented in California allows biological men, if they identify as non-binary or transgender, to be housed in California women’s prisons. This change has been made clear by condoms that are now being provided to inmates, according to an activist and former inmate.
Amie Ichikawa, a women’s rights advocate and former inmate of the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF), spoke about California laws that she said are being exploited by biological men pretending to be transgender. This is resulting in what she describes as “cruel and unusual punishment” for California’s biological women.
Signed into Law in 2021
The law, SB 132, was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2021. It is known as the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, and allows male inmates, including convicted sex offenders, to declare themselves women and be housed with other women in an all-women’s facility.
Ever since the law went into effect, Ichikawa has been flooded with letters, emails, and phone calls from incarcerated women, who all report that they are being harmed by the law. Ichikawa believes it to be a human rights violation, which has pushed much of her activism regarding the matter.
Unclear Data
The number of biological men who are declaring themselves women in order to infiltrate these facilities is unclear, according to Ichikawa, because the state of California refuses to publish the data. Additionally, the state allows men to acquire a new state identification number in order to reduce stigma.
Some of the first transfers into women’s prisons made after the implementation of SB 132 were murderers, kidnappers, rapists, and sexual abusers, according to documents reviewed by Fox News Digital. This confirms what Ichikawa has said, that there are convicted sexual criminals who are being allowed to change their identification and slip into women’s prisons, where the inmates are then vulnerable to their predatory behavior.
Running a Non-Profit
Now out of prison, Ichikawa runs a non-profit. Woman II Woman allows her to maintain daily contact with incarcerated women, who have told her that they’re scared and essentially sitting ducks for rape and sexual assault from these new inmates.
She was also recently featured in a documentary series called Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Male Takeover of Female Prisons. The documentary exposes the fallout of policies that open women’s prisons to male offenders, as told by female inmates along with insiders and whistleblowers from the correctional world.
Removing Women’s Rights in California
In her interview, Ichikawa said that women are feeling “like they’re being erased and that they do not matter at all.” This is removing any illusion of women’s rights, as they exist within prisons.
This statement is particularly damning in light data that came from the California budget office. Between 2016 and 2023, the state of California spent more than $3 million of taxpayer money on male-to-female related transgender care.
Medical Care For Transgender Inmates
Ichikawa is firmly against this sort of care, especially when it means that biological women aren’t getting the care they need while they’re an official ward of the state.
“Actually seeing these people come in and have tip-top medical care…they’re getting cosmetic surgeries and women are not getting their teeth capped or breast reductions when they’re triple F’s,” she said.
The Erasure of Womanhood
She finished, “You can come in as a trans-identified person and get full body laser hair removal. There are all kinds of things on the menu that are available. Under the Transgender Health Care Guide, there really are no limits.”
Andrea Mew, co-producer of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment series, said that SB 132 contributes to the erasure of womanhood. It further complicates what should, basically, be a simple matter of what biological sex is.
A Problem that Will Spread
Mew went on to warn people that this sort of issue is only going to exacerbate, should it be allowed to proliferate beyond the state of California.
“What happens in California often becomes the model for the rest of the nation, so spreading awareness about these things before they become commonplace in every other state is crucial,” she said. “Additionally, of course, [we need to be] making sure definitions are very defined, making sure we understand what a woman is, keeping that language tight and defined state by state by state.”
Distributing Condoms to Inmates
An additional problem, according to Ichikawa, comes from the fact that prisons are now starting to distribute condoms to inmates, according to the provisions of a law that passed in 2013, AB 999. The law requires all prisons to furnish condoms under California Penal Code 6500.
“They’ve only started issuing them or installing condom dispensers very recently…but they’ve been in men’s prisons since 2013, because they have penises, so it makes a little more sense,” she said. “But, there’s no denying the fact that this is obviously because of the implementation of SB 132 that these are needed [in women’s prisons].”
A Deeply Disturbing Pattern
This pattern is especially disturbing, given that sex is illegal in all prisons. That includes sex between inmates as well as sex between guards. Consent cannot be freely given between inmates who are committed, because prisoners are seen as state property.
Because of this, regardless of whether verbal consent is given between the parties, any act of sex that takes place in a prison is considered rape. However, Ichikawa says that there is both rape and consensual sex happening in the Calfornia prisons as a result of SB 132.
The State Releasing a Statement
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) released a statement that it is “committed to providing a safe, humane, respectful and rehabilitative environment for all incarcerated people, including the transgender, non-binary and intersex community, and is working on implementing SB 132, the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act.”
The statement continued, “All requests for housing based on gender identity are reviewed by a multidisciplinary classification committee chaired by a Warden and made up of custody, medical and mental health care staff, and a PREA Compliance Manager. This committee will review all case factors and the individual’s history to make a recommendation for approval or disapproval of the request.”
An Ongoing Issue
Unfortunately, this is an issue that doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. According to Mew, a lot of people and many organizations in the United States don’t want to discuss an issue like women’s prisons, because it deals with people who have committed crimes. Stigma against the currently and formerly incarcerated is a real issue, which can make many look the other way when it comes to issues like those happening in California.
“Just because you have committed a crime, you are still deserving of your womanhood. And especially when you take into consideration that these policies, like SB 132, they’re meant to make a certain segment of the population more comfortable. But, why make one segment of the population more comfortable when you are directly making the other segment of the population extremely uncomfortable?”
A Human Rights Issue
Ichikawa finished, “This is a huge human rights issue and from the very beginning, I’ve just seen it as something that shouldn’t be polarized politically. Everybody should be equally concerned about this, and it doesn’t seem like they are…If this isn’t challenged, exactly what’s happening to women inside our state prisons is going to happen to us out here.”
Activists regarding this issue are committed to making a difference for women in California state prisons who don’t have a voice for themselves. Complaints aren’t being heard and the government clearly is looking to pander to a small segment of the population, so the burden of advocacy falls on those who understand exactly the difference between biological men and women, and those who seek to support women.
