Thai prison opens transgender wing
BANGKOK, Thailand — It has been a while since Ao recognized herself in the mirror. Her voice is still gentle and light, but her skin has become tougher; her muscles bigger and facial hair thicker.
“Everything is changing. I used to have a very feminine figure and long, flowing hair. It is all very scary,” said the 28-year-old, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence for smuggling 24 kilos of marijuana.
Like many transgender women, Ao had been taking hormones so that her physical appearance would better match her gender identity. In prison, however, such medications are not allowed.
“Changing takes a long time,” Ao said. “I started (taking) hormones when I was 13 years old. My family was always very supportive of me. But now I am being transformed back into someone I have not been for a very long time.”
Denial of access to medication is only one of the challenges transgender prisoners face, not just in Thailand but in prison systems worldwide. Transgender inmates, especially women, are more likely to be victimized by other inmates and by prison guards than other groups, global research suggests — including in the United States.
The heart of this issue is the basic problem of housing LGBT inmates within the strictly binary gender partition of prisons. Because there is no option in Thailand for people to legally change the gender assigned to them at birth, transgender women such as Ao are still men in the eyes of the corrections system and therefore incarcerated with men.
“You worry a lot about how to fit in with the other prisoners,” said Ao’s friend Thong, 34, also a transgender woman, who is serving time for car theft. (The family names of both are being withheld out of consideration for their relatives.) “But this is my second time in prison, so it is somewhat easier this time.”
Thirty trans women are here at Minburi prison just outside central Bangkok. Across the country, an estimated 1,200 transgender prisoners identify as women. In an attempt to better accommodate them and address some of the problems LGBT people face in prison, the Thai Department of Corrections is conducting a pilot project at Minburi prison. A special wing that will have the capacity to house 150 prisoners has been renovated and painted pink.