In Costa Rica, there is a man who goes by a woman’s name, “Nataly Monge Brenes”, because he is transgender. At 22, he was handed a six-year prison sentence for sexual abuse of a child. He was initially incarcerated in La Reforma prison which, however, is male. There she complained of repeated rape by male inmates. Feeling like a woman, she then asked for and obtained–after a series of appeals–transfer to a prison for women; El Buen Pastor in San Rafael Arriba de Desamparados, in the province of San José. She arrived there on the 4th of January 2019. In February 2020 she beat a female inmate, Quesada Hernández, with a bat and tried to rape her. Even before the attack she had shown herself (or rather, himself) naked to the female inmates, and even performed acts of “self-eroticism” in the bathroom.
It’s really strange that these males claim to feel and identify as females and yet, at the right moment, they use their virility as a blunt weapon. It’s also strange because no one is outraged, because no one is crying out in scandal, because no one dares to say that it’s all just a crazy farce. “Nataly” ended up in solitary confinement.
These things happen. Too often. In California there are about 300 men who, because they identify as women, are requesting transfer to correctional facilities for females. Are they all rapists? Of course not. But how can you not share the fears of women who, locked up in prison day in and day out, are supposed to share those spaces (fraught with all the difficulties and seriousness of their respective cases) with those who could potentially be rapists?
Why is it fashionable to always frame men as chauvinists if they abuse women, except when, magically, a male says he identifies as a female? Why is everything in our world now privacy except what something really deserves privacy?
Cases like this come and go. They are told and repeated on purpose. We purposely tell and repeat them. Because if ideology is blind by definition, someone needs to open people’s eyes to the reality of things as soon as possible.
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