Trans of Color Entrapments and Carceral Coalitions

Abstract

An introduction to my book project currently titled "Trans of Color Entrapments and Carceral Coalitions," this short essay demonstrates how mainstream protrans identity politics have become influenced by procarceral politics. This piece introduces the concept of carceral coalitions in order to spotlight how and when coalition-building might perform a cross-identity, multi-issue, multicultural politics while also reinforcing ongoing carceral agendas and carceral futures. The manuscript attends to how 1980s Los Angeles charted a new era in which minoritarian social movement and civil rights organizing under the banner of "antiviolence" became dutifully tracked into a vision of winnable goals by way of law and order, and the endless multiplications of anti-Black criminalization and punishment that have followed. With brief examples such as the 1985 Los Angeles–founded K6G (formerly K-11), considered the first official self-segregated gay and transgender jailing unit in the U.S., the essay demonstrates how state-based gender-responsive entrapments have only further carved out penal pathways as models for securing trans "safety," and how abolitionist feminist interventions might be possible in revisioning safety altogether.