Living nightmare for transgender inmate at all-male prison
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/12/13/living-nightmare-for-transgender-inmate-at-all-male-prison.html
By: Travis Lupick Special to the Star, Published on Sun Dec 13 2015
Nastasia Laura Bilyk calls it a living nightmare.
A transgender inmate, who identifies as a woman, is doing time in the all-male Mountain Institution, a federal prison located on the outskirts of Metro Vancouver.
Now, she has filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission in hopes of changing things for herself and for all transgender inmates. She wants to force federal prison officials to recognize the gender she identifies with and treat her accordingly.
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Warning some potentially triggering and sexually explicit descriptions. This story while important about the abuse and discrimination faced by transwomen prisoners, is more important how they have been helping change the Corrections climate in several of Canada's Provinces to have transwomen treated humanely and changing policies to be housed at their gender correct facilities.
If she wins it will make a difference for thousands of people. Very sad, though, that she had to go through this in order for change to happen.
That's the difference between the provincial and federal correctional system. The province (Ontario) recognizes trans individuals and sends them to the appropriate facility based upon who they identify as. The federal system does not recognize trans individuals unless they have under gone full SRS.
I can use a female bathroom in a provincial facility such as a court house legally but not in a federal facility such as a military base or the like unless I had SRS. Not that there was any way of telling unless the bathroom police peeked up my skirt!
To change my gender marker on my provincial identification was easy, for federal things like passport etc, still required SRS. I'll be changing that in the new year because of the lengthy wait times precluded that and I still needed to travel outside the country.
Love,
Clare