Captive Genders at Swarthmore College
Come celebrate the release of: Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex!! This panel will highlight the connections between mass incarceration, trans/queer lives, and the politics of abolition!
Pathologized, terrorized, and confined, trans/gender non-conforming and queer folks have always struggled against the enormity of the prison industrial complex. The first collection of its kind, Eric A. Stanley… and Nat Smith bring together current and former prisoners, activists, and academics to offer new ways for understanding how race, gender, ability, and sexuality are lived under the crushing weight of captivity. Through a politic of gender self-determination, this collection argues that trans/queer liberation and prison abolition must be grown together. From rioting against police violence and critiquing hate crimes legislation to prisoners demanding access to HIV medications, and far beyond, Captive Genders is a challenge for us all to join the struggle.
This panel will offer the audience an overview of the major themes of the collection, including current and historical examples of the ways police and the prison produce the violence of gender normativity, and examples of past and current organizing against the prison industrial complex.
with:
Eric A. Stanley works at the intersections of radical trans/queer politics, theories of state violence, and visual culture. Eric co-edited Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2011) and along with Chris Vargas, directed the films Homotopia (2006) and Criminal Queers (2011).
Ralowe T. Ampu is the seductive fragrance wafting through milieus of unbridled danger and intrigue. Yes, whether it be outing gay Castro realtors as AIDS profiteers with ACT UP and GAY SHAME or trying to free the New Jersey 4, or prevent the non-profit management company in her SRO from killing her neighbors, Ralowe is there.
Toshio Meronek is on the editorial collective for The Abolitionist, Critical Resistance’s newspaper and runs whereslulu.com, a website on disability and popular culture.
Che Gossett is a black gender queer writer and activist, they are committed to struggles for prison abolition, gender self determination and trans liberation, black radical politics and AIDS activism.