When the news broke that President Trump followed through on his promise to bar taxpayer-funded gender surgeries in federal prisons, headlines swiftly shifted toward transgender-identifying inmates. Yet the women forced to endure confinement while male inmates encroach on their privacy—those who were left out of the narrative—remained unheard.
As a former inmate who served five years at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, I witnessed firsthand how prison policies have systematically sacrificed the safety and dignity of incarcerated women. After my release, women still inside California’s system began contacting me with alarming reports: Administrators were moving men into women’s prisons.
These male inmates often claim female identities because women’s prisons are less violent than men’s facilities. Some do not even identify as women but declare themselves “nonbinary,” gaining admission without regard for their criminal histories or the severe risks they pose. Among them are rapists, child molesters, and individuals who have committed brutal, unthinkable crimes.
For years, Bureau of Prisons policies on transgender health care prioritized ideological experiments over the physical safety, privacy, and survival of incarcerated women. Officials treated the demands of male inmates as more critical than the well-being of women confined alongside them—a reality that has left trauma survivors trapped in environments where they cannot lock doors, choose cellmates, or even shower without supervision.
Prison has never been a laboratory for social experimentation. Every decision inside these walls affects real people in extreme proximity. Yet policies have routinely sacrificed the safety and dignity of women to accommodate male identity claims, regardless of violent histories. Women who entered prison after surviving domestic violence, sexual assault, or trafficking are now forced to relive trauma while navigating threats of real harm.
President Trump’s executive order barring taxpayer-funded gender surgeries in federal prisons marks a crucial shift away from treating incarceration as a site for ideological trials. It prioritizes the safety and dignity of women by ending the harmful practice of placing men with violent histories into living arrangements that endanger their physical security.
Incarcerated women deserve to heal without being sacrificed to ideology or policy failures. Their right to privacy, safety, and basic humanity cannot be compromised in the name of an untested experiment. The system must end its disregard for those it claims to protect.
