6 May 8 - 14, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents items away, you just exacerbate the already harsh conditions and the difficulties we have to face, especially when you’re a trans- gender woman in a men’s facility.” Conditions Worsen O ne of the joys of girlhood is the pleasure of pampering. To run your fingers through the softened strands of freshly brushed hair, to feel the dull ends of a makeup brush prick your cheeks as you rouge them with powder blush, to have blackened and spidery, mascara-gooped lashes crawling from the eyelids of your reflection; those are the immutable joys of femininity for many women. And they are the joys Flores had en- joyed most of her life, even while confined at Seagoville, until January. After arriving in early November, she spent most of the money on her prison card on makeup and hair products. She braided her long, dark waves into new styles and played with the few hair products available within the prison. In her mind, it was one of the few ways of finding beauty and individu- ality in a place that whittles her existence down to a number. “Some of my favorite products I used to purchase in commissary were hair prod- ucts,” she said. “There were pomades, there was styling foam, very obviously feminine products that are no longer available to us.” At the commissary, the prison store where inmates use their own money to pur- chase additional luxuries, Flores bought makeup brushes, mascara and a treasured eyeshadow compact. The products were far from affordable. She estimates that bargain quality had cost her a markup value of $20 per item, but the sparse items were worth buying to clutch onto the last remnants of her femininity. Like the starter makeup kits little girls play with, the simple products were Flores’ last grasp for some normalcy. But officers removed those sorts of products from the Seagoville shelves, and the last makeup crumbs, with the metal base pan peeking through weakened layers of product, are all Flores has left for the re- maining eight months of her stint. “I’m a big makeup lover,” Flores said. “I’ve been doing makeup since I was 13, and it’s a great way that I used to express myself and build my confidence. Without it, it’s a bit disheartening. They have allowed us to keep our makeup that we’ve already pur- chased when it was still available. But once that makeup runs out, there won’t be any new ones to buy.” The removal of the products seems to serve no purpose other than to eradicate the joy and feminine expression of transgender inmates. “[We] are already going to deal with stuff from staff and other male inmates,” she said. “At least when you have these things avail- able to you, it can relieve that.” Flores says the presence of makeup and hair products at the commissary was ac- knowledgment enough, and solidified an unspoken protection for transgender in- mates. When the items disappeared, a door for increased harassment was cracked and burst wide open with the removal of the only accountability system. Transgender inmates were allowed to file grievances with the prison enabled by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA); it was a way to document inappropriate behavior, and gave a voice to the women. PREA, passed in 2003, mandates a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment and abuse within prisons. Flores says that since Janu- ary, the misgendering of transgender in- mates no longer constitutes a PREA violation at Seagoville. Misgendering and deadnaming are not explicit violations of PREA, but umbrella inclusions banning ha- rassment once covered them. “There were policies in place to file griev- ances against staff members who are dis- criminatory, like calling us ‘he’ or stuff like that,” she said. “But now that’s not even the case anymore. So now these staff members can call us whatever they want, and we can’t really say anything about it.” Flores, though a woman by every defini- tion except chromosomal, is misgendered regularly by her fellow inmates and the offi- cers overseeing them alike. In one instance, Flores found herself back in the lieutenant’s office right after New Year’s Eve after she had been falsely identified as the target of a prison yard scrap. As she tried to clarify the situation and assert that she had not been at- tacked, she was distracted by the stabbing sound of the word “he.” Each time she begged the officer to use “she,” the officer ignored her. “He’s like, ‘Shut up. I can call you what- ever I want,’” she said. Another officer entered the room and ac- cused transgender inmates of being “enti- tled.” He dared her to file more grievances and emphasized their futility. “‘You guys don’t deserve anything like that, and you guys can write me up as much as you want, but guess what? You’ll never win with me because I dot my I’s and I cross my T’s,’” Flores quoted him. Flores hasn’t stopped thinking about that day in January and the threats since. “[Being misgendered is] definitely em- barrassing if it’s done in front of other peo- ple,” she said. “If [correctional officers] call me ‘he’ in front of other inmates, all these in- mates feel that they can call me ‘he’ as well. It triggers me very much. It’s very upsetting because I’m very clearly, very visibly pre- senting as a female, and I’ve been so since I was 13.” While words are sure to hurt, the true sticks and stones, Flores said, is the revoca- tion of pink cards, the colloquial term for a PREA protection identification card that disallowed male officers from subjecting transgender inmates to bodily searches. “[Pink cards] helped a lot of the transgen- der female inmates here not have to be forced to be touched or groped by a male correctional officer, or having to strip naked in front of a male correctional officer,” she said. “But now those are also taken away as well. So a lot of us who have breasts and have developed a lot from the hormones or sur- geries, now we are forced to get naked in front of a man and have to get groped and touched by a man. That’s very upsetting for any woman, trans or not.” Quick Changes T he federal government, never noted for speed, reached a surprising new veloc- ity when Trump began his second term. Based on his first presidential term, a litany of executive orders was anticipated, but the speed and broad-sweeping topics of such or- ders likely were not. Order after order flew from the Oval Office, with little time for clarification before the next one came out. On his first day, the president fulfilled many of the wishes of his most conserva- tive constituents and set the tone for a pres- idency with limited permissions and compassion for those who do not fit within conventional identities. Matching the eager haste of the new administration, correc- tional officers at Seagoville pulled products from the commissary store’s shelves in Jan- uary following a directive from the Depart- ment of Justice (DOJ), according to a spokesperson for FCI Seagoville. Then the trans women of Seagoville, roughly 40, were packed into the prison’s auditorium and told they would be losing all gender-affirming care, starting with their federally provided undergarments. The spokesperson recalls the dissemination of information differently than Flores, who said a computer screen memo told her to turn over her bras and panties. The next steps were unknown, and the women were left to wonder about their hor- mone therapy, their access to mental health care and their safety. “They’re still giving [estrogen] to us,” Flores said in March. “But it is not a for-sure thing that it will stay like that. It’s like an im- pending doom. We’re all pretty scared. That’s a scary thing because when you’ve been on hormones as long as I have and as long as many of these other girls have, when you stop taking them abruptly like that, the changes are very jarring.” The prison spokesperson said the facil- ity, when ordered, will wean transgender inmates off estrogen to reduce the side ef- fects associated with a cold turkey removal of hormone replacement therapy. For now, the women are receiving their daily doses, which is essential medical care. Transgen- der women who cease estrogen in one fell swoop will regrow facial hair, experience vocal changes, can get random erections and usually suffer from debilitating de- pression and anxiety. Transgender women who have undergone bottom surgery, the removal of male genitalia, require lifelong estrogen doses to avoid severe health de- fects like osteoporosis, or bone density loss. “Removing essential hormones from post-op trans individuals isn’t a political statement, it’s medical malpractice,” wrote Dr. Helen Webberly on her clinic’s website, GenderGP, an online gender clinic based out of England. The prison spokesperson confirmed that the prison revoked pink cards. All transgen- der inmates were reclassified as “male” and lost their ability to file PREA violations against cross-gender searches. All officers were instructed to refer to inmates by their last names only and avoid gender-affirming pronouns. As officers removed stock from the com- missary, other correctional officers were busy clearing cells for the anticipated arrival of transgender inmates who had been au- thorized to live within women’s prisons. The American Civil Liberties Union esti- mates the tally of transgender inmates in the U.S. is 2,000. The low-security facility south of Dallas was to be the rehoming location of five women. A class action lawsuit filed by three trans- gender inmates who were transferred to a prison in line with their assigned gender at birth in New Jersey, Minnesota and Florida delayed the transfer of any prisoners. But Flores said Seagoville still has the holding space ready for their arrival. A holding center was prepared for their arrival, according to the prison spokesper- son. The prison planned to keep them to- gether to foster community and ease acclimation. Still, Flores said the beds pre- pared are in the general population, housing the women with more than 1,000 male in- mates. “The rooms that were vacant for them are still vacant. So it’s like they’re waiting for their arrival. Like they’re waiting to bring them. It’s a general population that’s within my unit, and I’m housed with male inmates. So they will be housed with just everybody else. They’re not isolated.” Women Stick Together T he 38 women of FCI Seagoville men’s prison stick together — at least, the best they can. They may be all each other has. They braid each other’s hair, gossip and bond over their shared and unique Unfair Park from p4 >> p8 “Some of my favorite products I used to purchase in commissary were hair products. There were pomades, there were styling foam, very obviously feminine products that are no longer avialable to us.”
