Heather Mason: I was incarcerated with male sex offenders

Allowing male prisoners into what used to be female-only spaces has fundamentally “changed the landscape of women's prisons,” says Heather Mason, a former federal inmate turned advocate for women’s sex-based rights. Mason’s time in correctional institutions has given her first-hand knowledge of a jarring reality: that biological males in Canada are allowed to self-identify as women and then serve their time in women’s prisons – even when these men are convicted sex offenders who have not undergone any surgical changes related to the female identity they claim. Mason knows from experience why this poses such a grave danger to the women incarcerated in these institutions. Female inmates are an exceptionally vulnerable population. Many have histories of experiencing domestic violence, sexual abuse, and coercive control at the hands of men. That’s why an organization that Mason helped to co-found, Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights (CAWSBAR), is pushing back. The group has launched a federal court case challenging the policy that gives male inmates free rein to enter women’s prisons based solely on self-identification. To share her first-hand experience and discuss the coming legal battle, Mason joins Inside Policy Talks. On the podcast, she tells Peter Copeland, acting director of domestic policy at MLI, that for as long as the current policy continues, female inmates in Canada will be retraumatized and revictimized when they are incarcerated alongside men.