Meet the pioneering inmates who fought for gender-affirming surgery in US prisons

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. open image in gallery Ashley Diamond successfully challenged Georgia’s policy of limiting hormone access to trans people in prison She once wrote her “entire life has been shaped by the agonizing tension between the immutability of her gender identity and the often life-or-death danger of publicly living her truth.” Not long after entering the system, Langan began reckoning more directly with her gender, and started seeking hormone treatments, but it would take until 2012 to get hormone replacement therapy and take another four years to get moved to a women’s facility. “That was very contrary to the evidence in the case and the expert testimony…The other treatments were so inadequate that she attempted self surgery in order to treat herself.” The herculean, multi-year battles in court to achieve these surgeries are at odds with the basic facts of the law: courts, including the US Supreme Court, have long held that it’s a violation of the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment for prisons to deny prisoners vital medical care. “On top of that, the thing we’re seeing is wholly unqualified healthcare providers who don’t know anything about gender dysphoria, have never treated it before, or in fact are transphobic, and they’re the people who decide whether or not a trans person who is incarcerated needs gender confirming surgery.” Even to those who advocate on behalf of trans people in court, the rationale of when the BOP’s Transgender Executive Council provides certain care and when it doesn’t can be hard to parse. When she arrived in prison, Ms Diamond said she felt like a “deer in the headlights,” about to be housed in a men’s prison after decades of living as a woman.