CRG - Old Discourses, New Tropes: Rethinking the Trans Prison Policy Debates and the Construction of Dangerous Others - Sarah Lamble
Location:
Virtual Event
Date/time
Mon 25 January 2021
12:00-13:00
The University of Edinburgh Criminology Reading Group Seminar Series 2020/2021 presents:
Old Discourses, New Tropes: Rethinking the Trans Prison Policy Debates and the Construction of Dangerous Others
Dr Sarah Lamble
Reader in Criminology and Queer Theory
Birkbeck, University of London
This paper offers an analysis of a widely publicised case in the UK, where Karen White, a trans woman with a history of sexual offences was remanded to a women’s prison and subsequently sexual assaulted four women prisoners. White was then transferred to men’s prison and given a life sentence. While public debates about the treatment and placement of trans prisoners had been ongoing, particularly following the deaths of several trans women in men’s prisons, White’s case marked a key shift in public discourse on trans prison issues where concern moved from the vulnerability that trans prisoners face to the risks they ostensibly pose to others. The White case has been since mobilised in a growing backlash against trans rights in the UK and elsewhere.
Drawing from a queer feminist transformative justice perspective, the paper argues that the White case was successfully deployed by anti-trans forces in part because of a political inability to address the figure of the sex offender outside of punitive, disposability logics. The paper suggests that a combination of carceral politics and sexual exceptionalism, which cuts across both left and right politics and has roots in racialised tropes of dangerous outsiders, has given new life to older discourses of sexual predation that were previously attached to the figure of the homosexual. Such narratives, while ostensibly claiming to guard against sexual violence, actually work to obscure and limit the capacity to meaningfully address sexual harm.
This event will take place for an hour with an opportunity for Q&A and discussion towards the end. The event is free for all and will take place on Zoom, please register to get the link!
Any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
We look forward to seeing you at our first event of 2021!
Image Credit: Photo by Rajesh Rajput on Unsplash