US — Washington; UK — Kew Gardens, England. Males convicted of sexual and/or violent offenses – one a former inmate and another still behind bars – have been identified as being amongst the foremost activists of the cause to transfer male inmates into US and UK women’s prisons.

Jessica Phoenix Sylvia, an aged 45 inmate incarcerated in Intensive Management Unit/Violator Unit in Washington, pleaded guilty in October 2001 to the offense of Possession Of Child Pornography, and four months later to Fail To Register As Sex
Offender. His criminal record also includes charges of Attempted Murder In The First Degree and Interfering With The Reporting Of Domestic Violence, and has received numerous infractions for being “aggressive and abusive” in custody. He was put in solitary confinement in September on suspicion of “starting a riot.”

From prison, Sylvia has become an important activist for transgender-identifying inmates, launching the Gender Identity Justice campaign, and blogging extensively about the tribulations of life in prison as a “transgender woman.” Despite being white and labeled white on prison records, Sylvia repeatedly uses the self-descriptor “trans woman of color” Jessica Phoenix Sylvia describes himself as a “trans woman of color” who “strive[s] for a Black feminist consciousness” in his blog post “Celebrating Pride From Men’s Prison.”

Aside from accusations of misgendering, the “oppression” Sylvia outlines in “As a Woman In a Men’s Prison, This Is the Transphobia I Face Daily,” published in the transgender advocacy magazine Them, is an incident in which a female corrections officer noticed that Sylvia, who was previously named Ernest Andrew Sylvia, was not wearing a bra. The officer scolded: “I know you are not wearing a bra because I can see your nipples are erect and protruding through your shirt,” the inmate claims. According to Sylvia’s account, the guard said he became belligerent, slamming a pitcher down and demanding to speak to her supervisor. She wrote the 6′, 210 lb inmate up for sexual harassment and strong arming / intimidation.

Sylvia also received an infraction for going topless in the prison yard, the other detailed example he offers of the “gendered hate … that is more concentrated in prisons.” The infraction report explained that removing the “shirt and exposing transgender breasts [is]…considered indecent exposure to a reasonable person.” Sylvia complains: “a man in my situation would not be written up for having a bare chest in the yard.”

Feminist Geneviève Glück has noted that most of Sylvia’s social media followers are journalists from such major publications as the The New York Times, CNN, NBC, the BBC, Telegraph, The Guardian, Huffington Post, the Boston Globe, NPR, Rolling Stone and The Atlanta.

While Sylvia’s ultimate goal is the abolishment of prisons due to their being “no good care in a cage,” he has also specifically indicated discomfort with men’s prisons, writing of being “surrounded by sexually frustrated men” who “only want one of two things: some form of sexual pleasure — always at my expense — or to harm me,” the “daily hyper-surveillance under the watchful gaze of prison staff,” which he says comes under the guise of protecting transgender-identifying inmates, and the hope presented by new policies that offer “possibility for gender-affirming housing that is not based solely on genitalia.”

The language about prison life now used by Sarah Jane Baker, known as “Britain’s longest-serving transgender inmate,” aligns with Sylvia’s. Baker, whose Twitter profile lists “Founder of Transprisoner Alliance, Journalist, Intersectional activist, Polyamorous transactivist, Sexworker, Artist, Author” as occupations, was aged 43 and serving an indefinite prison sentence in 2013 when he changed his name from Alan Baker and sought cosmetic surgery to resemble a woman.

Baker’s life of crime began in drug dealing, eventually graduating to armed robbery. He was sentenced to a seven-year stint following the kidnapping and torturing of his stepmother’s brother. While incarcerated, Baker was handed additional time for the attempted murder of a fellow prisoner.

Though Baker initially bragged about being a “professional prisoner” who felt “happy to be locked away,” and would “throw away the key” if offered release from a life of “no responsibility, free food, laundry, healthcare, a job” as well as free Open ­University courses, he later claimed to be too fearful of other inmate’s violence once it became known he claimed to be “a woman trapped in the wrong body.”

Calling the experience of being in male prison “isolating,” he told Reuters: “Fellow prisoners either desire you or hate you, or both. When people found out I was trans, I became a human punching bag.”

Although Baker amputated his own testicles in a desperate bid to get hormones and be incarcerated with women, he served out his sentence in a men’s prison. At the time, prison policy required male inmates seeking transfer to women’s prison to have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) and proof that they had been “living in their gender” for two years.

Since Baker’s September 2019 release, the 52-year-old has launched the Transgender Prisoner Alliance to help inmates “obtain a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, hormones and eventually gender reassignment surgery without this diagnosis.” The organization also brings the male prisoners makeup and tights. According to transgender advocacy magazine Pink News, Baker applauds that prisoners no longer require a Gender Recognition Certificate to be moved, but says more needs to be done. Baker and his prison activist work have been profiled in such mainstream sources as Reuters and U.S. News & World Report.

As the number of sexual attacks and violence against incarcerated women by male inmates rises worldwide, many women’s advocates have decried the dangers of moving any men into women’s prisons, regardless of the men’s identity, hormones or surgeries.