IN Solidarity with Trans women in prison: STATEMENT ON CAWSBAR’S CAMPAIGN TO KEEP TRANS WOMEN IN MALE PRISONS

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No Space for Hate: Queer Activists Plan Counter-Demonstration in Response to Planned TERF Protest at Grand Valley Institute for Women Kitchener

We are a group of 2Slgbtqia+ activists who are counter-protesting CaWsbar’s anti trans protest at Grand Valley Institute for Women on Saturday, Oct 17th, 2026, 1-3pm.

CaWsbar is a TERF (trans exclusive radical feminist) organization that promotes hatred towards trans Women. They believe in the scientifically disproven notion that there is a strict sex/gender binary. They are opposed to Bill-16 which protects against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender based hate speech.

Ex-prisoner and caWsbar Steering Committee member, Heather Mason, heads up a campaign to see trans women incarcerated in men’s prisons. Mason and CaWsbar negatively stereotype trans women as a threat to the safety of cis-women (someone whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth). What is true is that in a patriarchal society where sexism is prevalent, all people are capable of causing harm regardless of sex or gender identity; that is to say, there is no pattern of harm against cis women that is exclusive to trans women.

As abolitionists, we understand the prison as a site of colonial oppression where “rehabilitation” exists as another source of coercion. The vast majority of people in prison are from backgrounds of poverty, many are disabled, have experienced profound trauma, been unhoused, and are disproportionately Indigenous and Black. The most entrenched form of violence in prisons is from the institution itself: from police violence and the(in)justice system to the administration and guards who harm, manipulate, traffic drugs, and sexually abuse prisoners with impunity. This toxic culture engenders instances of lateral violence among prisoners, including sexual coercion and violence among cis women.

Facts are:

  • Trans women comprise a tiny minority of the prison population (.4%)
  • The majority of trans women in women’s prisons are post-op
  • CaWsbar represents a minority view on trans women in women’s prisons: most prisoners are unconcerned about this made up issue
  • The most dangerous place for sexual abuse of all women and girls is the gender/sex
    binary culture of the nuclear family
  • Trans women are disproportionately subject to discrimination and violence in society and this carries over, at an escalated level, in prisons for women and men.

CaWsbar’s denial of the existence of trans women and their demand to place Trans women in a men’s prison exacerbates and justifies violence against trans women. CaWsbar claims that they are “non partisan,” but their anti-trans position is core to far right ideology, their members hold parallel far right beliefs, and they are funded by far right organizations such as the Democracy Fund. For these reasons the Canadian Anti-Hate Network understands caWsbar as the hate group it is.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

  • Develop an individual or group public platform in solidarity with trans prisoners and their rights to do their time in women’s prisons and free from, discrimination, harassment and violence.
  • Identify CaWsbar as an anti-trans far right hate group and include CaWsbar as a target for anti-fascist organizing
  • Donate to Joint Effort so we can provide gender affirming pen-packs for Trans prisoners

*This statement is written in consultation with Métis Trans elder, Fallon Aubee who has lived experience as a Trans woman in both women’s and men’s prisons.

What’s in a name? (change!!)

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Everyone, I just wanted to say thank Joint Effort again for helping me.


Trying to change my name has been a nightmare and the funniest thing is it’s my real name!!!


So in order to change your name legally here is what I had to do…   


I had to first get 2 pieces of ID with my “LEGAL” name on them which was a hassle all on its own. One of them has to be a government picture ID with proof of residence, the other needs to be your birth certificate or social insurance card.


Once you have these things you are set, all you need is to book an appointment with the closest police station or RCMP for fingerprinting and name change. The fingerprinting costs $103 and they fill your paperwork out there. Then they tell you it will take 2-8 weeks for a response about your name change.


Once you hear back it says the cost is $137 and to keep your receipt from the fingerprinting. Then you will have to pay to have all of your ID changed to your new name which of course I haven’t gotten to yet. However, I have done the first step.


Thanks to Kirsten and Joint Effort. I hope writing this description can be a little helpful, I’m not the greatest writer. I am grateful though….  So thank-you guys.

Ode to civilization after prison: I was inside for a couple of decades and it ate my brain

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Prose-poem by Cathee, performed at the Vines Festival in Vancouver, 2022

I’m confused now.  Fortunate entry into unfortunate times makes beauty seen everywhere but in a dream.  The dream of being in the outside, outside of the normal, inside of the city outside myself is…too many directions.  Side to side if time permits.  Up and down?  Never.

Serotonin, Norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors are my shoes…allowing me to walk…albeit with a lot of ripping oozing blisters

I’m nervous now.  Nervous to know,  what will i say, sound like, behave as…who am I other than the inmate, the criminal who did things in places and times…of being another entity?  Will I get fired, lose friends, make the paper while not being safer than inside the walls of prison violence, shame, and cloistered control? …. see more

Sexual Assault at FVI and GVI

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TRIGGER WARNING – medium explicit content

Joint Effort has become aware of this situation unfolding at FVI and GVI. We stand with the prisoners who have been harmed and those rallying around them and are in solidarity with the actions that they want to take. Joint Effort is in the process of making contacts to figure out a response from those of us on the outside.

Community Theater Project

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Joint Effort is embarking on a new theatre project. We will be working with Nicola Cavendish (actor/playwright) to do a performative reading of Pamela Mala Sinha’s play, ‘Happy Place.’

Community Theatre Project (CTP) brings together formerly incarcerated folx from the prison for ‘women’ with non-incarcerated Joint Effort community members and professional actors. Playwright, actor and director, Nicola Cavendish will guide participants in a reading of the play, ‘Happy Place’, by Pamela Mala Sinha. The final project will be presented to a select audience of Joint Effort community members and theatre people.

The CTP will create a safer, supportive space for expression. We will engage with the characters in the play from our lived experience of incarceration (from both inside and out), and build theatre skills: reading, acting, interpreting.

About the play: Pamela Mala Sinha’s play explores the lives of seven women aged 23 to 60 who are residents of an in-patient care facility: a microcosm for the world outside its walls. What is it to live inside the suffering of these women…addressing the idea that we are not so different from each other, though our circumstances may be? Each woman must try to find a way to fit into a world that can’t respond to or redress a pain that is ‘un-see-able”. But they are also the ones who can teach one another how to live with what happened to them as no one else ever could. Even if they can’t always do it for themselves.

The CTP’s engagement with this play connects two sites of confinement: a patient care facility and the prison. Both are locations within the carceral continuum of institutions which hold and ‘treat’ those confined within. The carceral continuum is a network of institutions in which relations of domination, corruption and violence underly claims of ‘care,’ and ‘rehabilitation.’ The carceral continuum is a socio-economic strategy to manage poor and disabled people, understood to impact peoples who are disproportionately Indigenous, Black, POC, queer and/or gendered.

Joint Effort signs on to initiative for an Ex-Inmate Committee

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“It was a hard-won victory to have Inmate Committees set into law under Commissioner’s Directive 083, which establishes “a means for inmates to provide input regarding institutional operations.” It took a tragic riot at Kingston Penitentiary 50 years ago and a Commission of Inquiry before Inmate Committees were established as a means of improving conditions within correctional institutions. Progress like this is the reason incarcerated people can vote in Canada, why we have a Correctional Investigator, and why we have Inmate Committees in every penitentiary across Canada. The formation of an Ex-Inmate Committee is a natural next step to ensure a seat at the table not only inside institutions but outside as well.” Written by Kevin Belanger Former Inmate Committee Chairman Joyceville Institution JAU & JISMU 2009-2011 & 2018-202.

See proposal here: Voices on the Outside