‘We Have Become an Endangered Species’
Six trans individuals share what it’s like being trans and incarcerated under Trump.
Illustration: Georgie McAusland
Click here to read on The Cut
In the nearly 2,000-word executive order codifying sex as a binary and biological attribute into law, issued by President Trump on his first day in office, the word “prisons” appears twice. The first mention prevents trans women from being housed in women’s facilities; the second states that the government will withhold funding for gender-affirming health care inside, including but not limited to hormone therapy and surgery.
Not that prisons have ever been a safe haven for the more than 5,000 trans individuals behind bars. Even before the executive order, many trans people could not access the health care they needed, endured countless acts of violence and discrimination, and did not find themselves in facilities that aligned with their gender. That said, in less than two months, that fractional mention of prisons in the administration’s policy has escalated invasive cell searches, emboldened transphobic rhetoric, encouraged officers to abandon (already precariously implemented) protections like separate showers and pat-downs, and deepened a culture of isolation, fear, and grief. In the words of organizer, author, and attorney Dean Spade, “Increase in ill will and lies about trans people just means that those in prison will be more vulnerable … because their lives are under greater control by the government and they have less opportunities and ways to make themselves safe.”
For trans people’s own survival, says A.D. Lewis, a California attorney and founder of the Trans Beyond Bars project at the Prison Law Office,“the [likely] choice set up is to either detransition or be subjected to violence.”
Confined to 15-minute phone calls at a time in most cases, I spent the last few months listening to six trans people share their testimonies of loss, frustration, strategy, and solidarity to build a better understanding of what’s happening inside prisons and jails. The realities of the United States’ criminal legal system are deeply painful and violent — these conversations include mentions of sexual violence, harassment, and suicide.
Reiyn Keohane, 31, is a jailhouse lawyer and advocate incarcerated at Wakulla Correctional Institution Annex in Crawfordville, Florida.
On September 30, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) announced they’d be denying us medical treatment that we had been prescribed for six years. I obviously think it was highly politically motivated. And Governor DeSantis did this in the wake of a hurricane — it really says something that your state just got hit by a hurricane, and you have people dead, and you’re making a law to take away people’s panties.
They took away our bras, underwear, makeup, all stuff that we paid for with our own money. People were forced to shave their heads. All of this while we were under threat of long-term solitary confinement and use of force. They gave us 30 days to comply. The day they brought us down to announce the policy change, there was an armed response squad, additional guards in the tower, the warden, the colonel. And there was this one guy, a representative from Centurion, who said that medical care and mental health care for gender dysphoria would be changed or removed, including hormone treatment. “We are aware that this may cause an increase in anxiety and distress, and if you experience those, you should talk to your counsel.” In other words, “We know that this is hurting you, and we’re doing it anyway.” So I sued in October as soon as we could get the information to the ACLU. [Editor’s note: The following month, the Florida Department of Corrections filed a motion to dismiss in response. The FDC made various technical arguments, including one that contends that Keohane should be barred from litigating the issue of gender-affirming-care access given that her prior case addressed the same issue and arguing that this was simply a disagreement of medical opinion.]
Around the end of December, the judge denied our preliminary injunction; we were trying to stop the enforcement of the new policy. (The lawsuit is still active; we’re going to trial.) Within a few hours of the denial, the warden of the institution came to personally tell me that they were taking all of my bras and panties. I have a pass for bras, so they gave them back, but they didn’t give me back my underwear. I haven’t gotten a pair of boxers since then. It’s not their intention to replace them. I have major discomfort all day. Now, I have to live with a constant layer of fear and anxiety that some officer is going to decide to enforce this policy against me.
The administration also specifically gave me a new job as a confinement orderly, which makes me more vulnerable because I have to interact with people who are already having disciplinary problems and are scheduled for close management. Others have had it worse.
A good friend of mine committed suicide recently. She experienced the same things — the harassment, the clothing, the hair — but also, they refused to renew her hormone treatment. Her name was Sage Smith. I met her the day that she first came here in October 2023. We hit it off pretty quickly. She was 21, and she’d actually heard about me and my other lawsuit; she sought me out to get my autograph. I wanted to be a role model for her. We used to play Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder together, cook and have meals together. We’d watch movies — Barbie and the Street Fighter movie, which is terrible, but she liked bad movies and hadn’t seen that one. She was going to college for biology; she wanted to be a scientist and gave a speech about axolotl as part of our public-speaking program. She had so much potential.
The reason I’m still trying to fight this stuff is for people like her. It’s extremely hard to just get out of bed and even function, much less deal with these people.
The thing that I really can’t stand is their dishonesty in their responses, their lies and justifications. They don’t want a solution; they want to hurt me. That is their intent. [Editor’s note: In 2018, the judge in Keohane’s then-case against the FDC acknowledged that “despite Defendant’s knowledge of Ms. Keohane’s gender-dysphoria diagnosis, her continued requests for treatment, her self-harm, and her suicide attempts, Defendant initially denied, then delayed, treatment for two years — treatment which it now agrees is medically necessary.” The judge ruled in Keohane’s favor, ordering the FDC to provide her with hormone therapy and access to female clothing, undergarments, and grooming standards.] I get out fairly soon, and I’ve got 12 years of how to identify and combat authoritarianism under my belt. I don’t want to cause this problem, and it wouldn’t be a problem if I was in a women’s prison. I wouldn’t need anything different there. I don’t want anything different.
The irony is that being trans taught me when I was very young that adults can be wrong about stuff and don’t always know what they’re doing. So I’m going to make my own decisions. I’m not going to give up what I feel and what I believe. A lot of people are like, “How did you get the prison to give us the hair or the bras and panties?” Or, “How did you get your parents to be so supportive?” I didn’t get anybody to do anything. I didn’t give them another choice.
Zhi Kai Vanderford, 57, is an artist, activist, writer, and poet focusing on criminal legal reform. He is working to get his M.B.A. and is incarcerated at Minnesota Correctional Facility — Lino Lakes.
At the Minnesota Capitol, they tried to pass a bill to move all the trans women in Shakopee back to men’s prisons. My people, members of the Minnesota Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, were there until 6 p.m. The bill was tabled, but not defeated. I have to track what happens for the women because, while I am the only trans male here, most likely whatever happens would be unilaterally executed by the Department of Corrections (DOCS). It is very stressful — the uncertainty, the feeling of dread and inevitability, the lack of control.
I’m such an anomaly; I’ve been in longer than most men and women in the state of Minnesota. I feel like they’re gonna bury me here. It’s difficult at 57 to have a lot of trans male role models, people who are out of the closet — and now we’re all running back to it. I cannot believe that we are in 2025 and people still disown their trans children. Those are the people that seek me out, the trans males who’ve come out to their family and been shunned. Through correspondence, I’ve become a Pride Dad, Poppa, and Man-Ma to some trans youth. I’m not judgmental, and I share frank words of advice.
We fight for so long to be acknowledged in our gender and would pay anything to eventually feel like we are in the container we’re supposed to be in. On a conservative estimate, I would say I’ve been fighting for at least five years for a stand-to-urinate prosthetic. DOCS does not allow them; they gave me a prosthetic penis instead. It’s like silicone and it rolls around in my underwear. It’s pointless and actually scary because it could fall out of my misshapen, stretched-out underwear. I got the privilege of buying a $30 standard urinating funnel. There’s no way to look normal with this thing. But the associate warden here is lovely. I told her, “Look, I am not trying to be a thorn in the flesh, a pain in the ass, where I’m going to write a grievance for everything, but I really want this medical appliance where I can just wear it and use it like any other guy.” She said they’ll work on it.
Trump taking office has thrown us all into a state of trauma. People feel emboldened. In one span of three days, they searched my room two times. Some officers whisper and know that there’s a trans male here, so they want to go in my cell and see the prosthetic penis, the penile pump, the funnel. Whatever, knock yourself out! But the problem is that some of the [incarcerated] guys actually don’t know about my status. They come up with their own narratives. All it takes is one person to know my situation. Then, of course, they tell everybody else, “Well, that was the one that was born as a woman, and he’s got a prosthetic.” So it inadvertently makes me the point of conversation, outing me when I least expect it. I have passed as cis in many ways, and it’s worked to both my benefit and detriment. I started testosterone too late in life, so I don’t want a male roommate, where I have to sleep with one eye open. When I first got here, they tried to give me one.
The doctor, who just retired, said, “I don’t understand why you’re confused about your gender.” To be honest with you, I don’t have time and energy to file grievances, explain, educate, and fight bias all the time. So I just said, “It’s not for you to understand.” I didn’t ask to be the pioneer or the prime example, but I am the first and only female-born person in the State of Minnesota system to be transferred to a men’s prison. And this is a “trans refuge state.” I have not been accommodated with surgery, so I am still a woman from the waist down. I was approved for surgery over two years ago but never had a consult. Just DOCS appeasing the trans legislative rhetoric of providing health care. And thanks to Trump — if people in the military, in the free world, have lost health care, what chances do I have?
For my whole life, I fought and clawed to get to this point. I’m scared to death that I won’t ever get a surgical consult, or they’ll transfer me back to the female prison. When I was at the women’s prison, I cut my hair and got written up for changing my appearance. I’m not changing my appearance, I’m maintaining my appearance as a guy! And then I go to the board and they say I have too many rule violations. I have write-ups for disorderly conduct, combative to staff. My write-ups are now extending my incarceration. I finally got the court to list my gender as male with my current name; that was back in 2017. I’m trying to get my birth certificate changed and sealed so I don’t get sent back to a women’s facility. It’s only because of Trump that I have to scramble.
Sara Kielly, 34, is a journalist, jailhouse lawyer, and aspiring politician incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester, New York.
This fall will mark my fourth year in a women’s prison. I was transferred to Bedford two days after my 31st birthday. Before that, I served 9.5 years in men’s maximum security as a visible woman and survivor of gender-based violence.
I’m grateful that I’m incarcerated in New York with an attorney general like Letitia James who has no qualms standing up to President Trump, but things are still not a cakewalk. While gender-affirming surgeries and treatments and housing transgender individuals in prisons that match our gender identity rather than body composition are going to allegedly continue, what used to be microaggression and covert transphobic harassment has become in-your-face hatred and discrimination by both correctional officers (COs) and other incarcerated individuals.
Just days after Trump signed his executive order, an officer stopped me, while laughing, telling me I “better get my shit together” because “trannies are going back.” When I responded by explaining that Trump has no control over state prisons, their response was, “Well, when he yanks their federal funding, they won’t have a choice.” [Editor’s note: In court filings, Kielly has alleged that prison officials have engaged in harmful behaviors toward her, “directly and indirectly bullying, torturing, and showing utter disdain for Petitioner’s life, safety, and health.” What follows is more detailed descriptions of those allegations from Kielly.] COs have regularly and maliciously spread rumors about dates where allegedly we as transwomen are going to be rounded up and shipped back to the men’s facilities. They’ve threatened me that if I step out of line, or don’t do exactly what they say, they’ll send me back or write me up. They’re deliberately using incorrect pronouns, misgendering, and dead-naming myself and other trans women. I’ve also had staff tell me that my gender-reassignment approval procedures, including my hormone-replacement therapy, are being stopped. Thankfully, their threats have not come to fruition. Albany had to go on the record in federal court — in response to a federal habeas case I filed in the U.S. district court — and state that they wouldn’t. [Editor’s note: Court records cite Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, which prohibits the transfer of an incarcerated person while a review of a decision in a habeas corpus proceeding is pending, to confirm that Kielly “must not be transferred from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.”] Still, it creates a clear and present fear for those of us who suffer from severe gender dysphoria and are at risk of self-harm when our traumas are triggered. Other incarcerated individuals have also tried to provoke me, deliberately saying that they’re going to make sure I’m “sent back to where I belong.”
I find it funny that staff and incarcerated individuals — just a handful, not a majority — think that they can manipulate the situation and present a state of animosity for their own twisted entertainment. They underestimate my intelligence, self-control, and ability to walk away, and it reminds me who I am and what I stand for. This has been a crucible moment that has reasserted my values, ethics, and advocacy role. Plus, the majority of staff and peers who see me handle these attacks in a diplomatic and mature manner have gained deeper respect for me.
We are pushing back and standing our ground. I regularly work to educate my peers on how the law limits the reach of Trump’s executive order into state prisons when they (often) ask in our housing unit corridor, the rec room, the yard, the mess hall, even when I’m sleeping or using the bathroom. Staff have even asked me while I’m walking on the walkway or at work in the law library. I take the time to distinguish the rumors from what is actually happening, what is legal versus unlawful, what the president can and cannot do with executive orders. I’m also assisting my trans peers in my role as a jailhouse lawyer, seeking and demanding their rights to equal treatment and adequate and meaningful medical care, and to hold those who harass or violate them responsible.
For a month, the COs here were on strike. There was an almost Twilight Zone feel to being a trans woman in New York’s only maximum-security prison for women with the National Guard presently deployed within our facilities. One would not expect army soldiers to be more affirming and accepting of us than New York State COs, but that is exactly what I witnessed. But the strike also made it harder for me to know if the cessation of my hormones is actually happening and why. At first, I couldn’t get to my doctor, it was harder to file a grievance, and I couldn’t go to the clinic to demand my meds.
Everyone is in need of legal assistance. In “normal” times, we typically get five to ten letters every other day, but since all this started — first the executive order and now the strikes — we’ve been getting 70 to 80 daily. I love the work in the end, but it’s exhausting. My job is one of the only essential positions still operating, but I had to give my two-week notice because I’ve burned out. It’s hard enough to be a lawyer, paralegal, and investigator all in one while also being the secretary, but to also now be a crisis advocate, trauma therapist, and mental-health counselor is leaving me on empty.
Angie Gordon, 40, is a scholar in trans-carceral studies, researcher, and lead editor at the Vanguard Incarcerated Press incarcerated at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in Northern California.
The Vanguard.
There’s a profound relationship between transphobic violence, anti-trans rhetoric, and laws designed to erase or remove trans folks from society. The stage is set to lose a lot of community members in the coming years. When people are turned out and rejected by their family, when they’re denied care, when they are bullied, excluded, and mistreated, this lays the groundwork for ongoing social problems and forces people to the fringes; and when people are on the fringes, the likelihood of them coming to prison or getting wrapped up just goes up, right? It’s not that Trump is necessarily going to make transgender people go to prison or “cause” trans people to break the law, it’s that the administration is creating an environment where people have less resources. Queer and trans folks are overrepresented in incarceration because we are more likely to not fit into our society’s distribution and care model, because not everyone thrives in the ideal, white, heterosexual, nuclear-family model. So our task is to care for those among us and fortify our communities.
Here at the prison, I do a lot of organizing for the LGBTQ+ incarcerated community. There’s a dedicated group of us who are committed to building unapologetically queer/trans spaces. In all fairness, we would be doing this irrespective of who was in office. Circumstances are dire already, and Trump doesn’t change that. This is a quality-of-life issue for us. It’s also an issue of survivability. The trans/queer community has tragically low survival rates both during and after incarceration when compared to cisgender people. So, for us, when we go and talk to people through our community advocacy, when we discuss why visibility is important, why altered clothes are important, why pronouns are important — it’s because they save lives and help make life in prison more livable. Our community members need somewhere they are welcome, where they feel free to be themselves, where they can find support and friendship, and where opportunities and resources are available to them without a catch or an exploitative angle.
With these community needs in mind, we started meeting every Tuesday night, really wherever we could. I swear, some of our first meetings were in borrowed closet space (no pun intended). But we just wanted there to be a place where care and compassion and tolerance could take the lead. Most often, we meet in the chapel at 6 p.m. It’s a safe place that draws in the most at-risk portion of our community — the unseen, the questioning, the emerging, the most vulnerable. It’s also a place for couples, those who might live in different buildings or have nowhere to hang out together. They can sit and hold hands.
Functionally, we are an LGBTQI+ Event Planning Participatory Co-Op, which really just means that we are collaboratively organizing communally significant cultural events, like Trans Visibility Day or Trans Day of Remembrance. We have an adamant, care-based, non-hierarchical group structure, and we let those values lead. Our vision is two-tier: We want people to have fun, and we also want an avenue for people to develop skills for leadership, communication, and teamwork. Strong and dynamic leadership is part of our community’s survival strategy. I think we’re on the right track because I see it all working itself out.
Pride this year is going to be our big debut, and I’m excited because we have six or seven different people taking on leadership roles. We plan on having a Kikki Ball/Dance, a carnival/talent show, a Pride walk, a movie night, various booths of unchecked gayety. For each person that might run a booth, that effort prepares them to be in charge of a larger event. It’s all empowerment through participation.
Before that, for Trans Visibility Day, we’re focusing on transgender joy and the joy deficit. So we’re doing interviews and collecting narratives from people about their experiences with joy, and then we’ll show them at a dinner that seats incarcerated trans folks with administrators and higher-level custody staff. It’s to give a better understanding of our experience, but also inform quality-of-life-enhancing programs and strategies. There are times in prison where it brings you to your knees, and you have to figure out a way to get back up and continue marching forward. We’re trying to create a model for people to do that in here more effectively and more easily.
Prisons are designed to inflict harm on every level. You can’t get people to stop being harmful unless they see what care looks like, unless it’s shown to them. Getting the opportunity to do that through these leadership roles and taking on mentors, taking on young people, is transformational. Doing this makes it easier to face the bigger picture.
Grace Pinson, 39, is a jailhouse lawyer, author, and activist incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution Butner in Butner, North Carolina.
I have experienced extraordinary changes to my treatment since Trump was inaugurated — and just when I’d won the right to affirming care in federal court. For one, they revoked my pat-or-strip search accommodation. When I most recently arrived at Butner’s holdover facility in Atlanta, I was subjected to a brutal strip search by multiple cisgender male officers. There were female staff present, but none of them would entertain my request that they search me or that I be put through the X-ray device they use to scan people for hidden contraband. They’ve also revoked bras and panties, cosmetic makeup and facial-hair-removal tools, denied gender-affirming medical treatment by medical providers, and made changes to BOP policies regarding our treatment. I do hope to make it to trial again — well, I don’t want to make it to trial again, I have to. (I am free to commence a lawsuit for anything that happened after January 17, 2025, the date Merrick Garland approved my settlement from September.) I fear what the future looks like for all incarcerated trans people if I don’t … because we have become an endangered species. If Republicans have their way in this country, being trans will be a crime eventually.
There are maybe seven people who identify as trans here at Butner. We often sit and eat our meals together in the dining hall at a table that seats only four. We stick together and only really interact with men who are nonchalant about our presence. The warden doesn’t want us all in the same unit because we are seen categorically as “troublemakers.” We see one another in the dining hall, recreation, or at medical in the pill line. Val is my best friend. People jokingly call me Lil Val because we look so much alike. We laugh together and cry together. She’s not a lawyer, so she basically just follows my lead in legal and media matters. The girls think of the court system as an arena where all the participants are sorceresses who know and practice magic. The law is so removed from their area of expertise, it’s gibberish to them. And I speak gibberish, so it makes them happy to have me. I have crafted a standard blueprint that any of them can use to file a lawsuit in any federal court in the country. I’ve also drafted a motion for a preliminary injunction following the same model.
Us girls all share contact info for lawyers and news reporters, each doing our thing to try to spread the story. Naïve as it may seem, I hope that at some point members of Congress or the courts will read about our suffering in the news and do something to curb Trump’s worst impulses when it comes to our community. Everyone fears being sent to solitary or segregated confinement as a result of speaking out, not just against what the president is doing, but also for commenting about how the federal personnel much lower down in the food chain are carrying out the president’s orders. I do not speak because I am living in a safe, comfortable environment where the First Amendment enjoys widespread support and broad protections. I am in a place where it goes to die, where the most fundamental right I have is also the most dangerous activity I can engage in. It’s even worse for me because my mom works at Tinker Air Force base as a civilian employee, and according to her, she believes she’s been targeted by DOGE because her supervisors know that her daughter is locked up in federal prison and that she is a forceful advocate. My mom has been forced in the past to undergo additional security clearance checks and background checks because her daughter is locked up. So my mom is also someone I have to worry about when I am speaking truth to power. She absolutely worries about retaliation from DOGE as a result of my activism. And yet, it’s the worst time possible that I could lapse into silence.
Valerie Simpkins, 37, is an advocate and entertainer incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution Butner in Butner, North Carolina.
I wore little purple strappy sandals to school at age 8. I came out as gay at 14, transitioned at 16, and quit school five months before graduation because of the cruelty of the kids. I was out in the world and in the workplace. I lived my life fully as a female. This is all I’ve known, until my arrest when I was 25.
I wasn’t on hormones “legally,” so the prison wouldn’t give them to me. It was 2013, and I went through withdrawals. I was on suicide watch for two months, and you’re not allowed a razor. So I couldn’t shave! I grew a beard! I got on hormones again in 2016. I pray they don’t try to take our estrogen. That’s my next fear. I know the psychological issues and anxiety that you feel, like you’re going crazy. I don’t know what it’s like to be masculine. I feel like I’m pretending if you tell me to be a man, because that’s not who I am, right? Now, it feels like it’s illegal to be me.
As soon as Trump put the order in motion, the prison posted a bulletin with a list of everything they would be revoking — female pat-search card, undergarments, the transgender commissary list with cosmetics, makeup, body washes. People made comments like, “Oh, you’re back to being a man in a man’s prison.” They no longer have to refer to me as “she” or “miss.” I was previously approved to be transferred to a women’s facility and, although I didn’t know where I was going, I was hoping to be more comfortable in a setting around women, where I felt like I belonged. Then the executive order happened. It feels humiliating. When people view you as a novelty or an object, you start to feel like that is all you are good for.
I have found solace in my relationship with Grace. The first day she got here, one of my friends told me there was a girl on the yard who looked just like me. I had heard other trans girls talk about Grace, that she does a lot for the community. She’s very involved in legal work. That was two months ago, and we’ve banded together ever since. She’s helped me to realize I’m not helpless, that there are outlets. That I’m not alone — and especially in a place like this, you do feel alone. I’ve been moved into the Residential Drug Abuse Program, so we’re no longer in the same unit, and I truly miss my time with her.
We both want change. Some girls are scared to act, but two people can’t do it all by themselves. We’re making an effort, because when we both get out, who’s going to continue this? I don’t want it to go by the wayside. I really don’t have a lot of legal knowledge, so Grace is helping me with that. I’ve never experienced the feeling that we can take a stand, talk to people. She’s put me on to the Remedy Project and places where we can be heard. My sisterhood with her doesn’t feel like I am in prison, it feels like a true bond that we have had for years. I lost my mother about two months ago, and she just hugged me and was there for me. I can honestly say that she is the real deal. Knowing that we both have fight in us to make a change is an added bonus.
I help her with confidence, with being comfortable in her skin. We may be bigger girls, but we’re still the ticket. I’ll say, “You’re beautiful, don’t let these people talk to you any way, because you deserve more.” I know that my sisterhood with her is going to go beyond these walls.
These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.