NEW BOSTON, Tex. (New York Times) — The inmate, dressed in prison whites with a shaved head and incongruously tender eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, entered the visiting room with her wrists joined as if she were handcuffed. At 31, she had spent her whole adult life behind bars, and it looked like a posture of habit.
She introduced herself: “My given name at birth was Joshua Zollicoffer, but my preferred name is Passion Star.”
A transgender woman whose gender identity has been challenged by Texas authorities, Ms. Star herself is challenging Texas’ refusal to accept new national standards intended to eliminate rape in prison, which disproportionately affects gay and transgender prisoners. Last spring, Gov. Rick Perry declared in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that Texas had its own “safe prisons program” and did not need the “unnecessarily cumbersome and costly” intrusion of another federal mandate.
Ms. Star, who says she is a victim of repeated sexual harassment, coercion, abuse and assault in Texas’s maximum-security prisons for men, disagrees.