My Experience of a Period in Prison, Part 2 – Jennifer Toon

As part of Dr. Vishniac’s doctoral research, she conducted 14 interviews with 15 individuals. Nine of these individuals were previously incarcerated women who had experienced a period in jail and/or prison. These women had been incarcerated from days to decades in facilities across the United States and it had been varying lengths of time since their release. Below is a summary of one of these interviews, shared with the consent of the interviewee. This interview was conducted on January 31^st, 2022. This interview transcript has been broken into two parts due to length and has been edited for flow. *Note, this interview includes strong language.*

Jennifer Toon is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance. Her involvement with the criminal legal system began at age 15, when she was adjudicated under Texas determinate sentencing laws, leading to 27 years of system involvement. As Executive Director, Jennifer draws on her lived experience to elevate the voices of system impacted individuals, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ people, youth, and people with disabilities. She lives in Austin, Texas with her cat Taylor, who embodies the mischievous energy of Taylor Swift.

PART 2 – IMPACT AND MOVING FORWARD

What do you think the best way to handle menstrual products would be?

Make it an important part of your budget. That’s what the issue boiled down to. In terms of not having access or enough, it’s because you don’t spend any money on them. I feel like if this was something that was intricate to the male experience there would be an over-abundance of it. I think just women being a minority in the system and predominantly men in leadership, at the administrative higher level over the prison system, they don’t understand. It was the same way when I wrote the guy in region over commissary about, ‘Why are you only selling super tampons? This is not helpful. Maybe for a day. Do you understand there’s a reason why there’s different sizes?’ And suddenly we got a bigger pack with multiple different sizes. I think the answer to that is just making the budget, being able to buy the products and being able to give them out freely.

Why do you think this issue exists?

You know, not this past legislative session but the one before, we had a bunch of bills that were passed called the Dignity Laws, concerning the criminal justice system, jails and prison, about the different ways that women suffer indignities, such as being shackled during pregnancy, feminine hygiene products. And TDCJ, during those bills, said, ‘Oh, well they can ask whenever they want. This is not a problem.’ You had formerly incarcerated people continuing one after the other saying, ‘No, it was a problem.’

There is such a disconnect between what is really happening and what is written on that stupid fucking policy paper. I don’t care what the policy says, I don’t care. That is not what is happening in practice. And I don’t understand how you’re not getting that. I think what it boils down to is that they just don’t believe it’s an issue because we have it on paper that that’s what we do.

The only thing that motivates systems to change is the fear of public relations and, ‘Oh, we’re gonna be looked at as hating women or not progressive or-,’ and I think that’s what motivates systems to change or to take notice or to actually move or actually do something. But I think culturally, maybe we’re finally seeing that the ways that we’ve handled the criminal justice system have just not worked and why. It’s not as simple as ‘People can’t find jobs.’ It’s that we treat people like they’re nothing, like they’re garbage, like they’re trash. And the type of psychological, and I wrote another article recently about the psychological abuse that women experience in prison, which is very different from men. There were times me and my friends joked, ‘God, I wish that they would’—not that they didn’t physically hit us or anything like that but I wished it was predominantly that and not this psychological terror. Walking around with bloody clothes on, laughing at us while they make us degrade ourselves. Maybe people with lived experience are finally saying, ‘I’m gonna start speaking up and showing what has happened and telling my story and not being ashamed,’ you know? I know some friends that that this is something that bothered them and ate them up while they were there, but there’s no way they’re gonna get on Zoom with a stranger, or the telephone, even if it is anonymous, and say, ‘Hey, I had to wear a sock, and bleed into a sock and wash it out and dry it and wear it over and over while I was on my period in prison. Cause it’s just such a-, it goes beyond just our normal embarrassment as women. It’s degrading. It’s degrading, what you have to do as a woman when you’re on the inside. This is just one of many ways that women suffer psychologically in custody.

Did you notice any changes over time?

This is a span of 20 years. So, late 90s, there wasn’t really a lot of pain relievers. There weren’t tampons. They certainly were not even nearly remotely accessible if you had to go to an officer and approach somebody. Interestingly, we had not had tampons for years, not because TDCJ wasn’t gonna order them. It’s just that the lady at our unit, she got a bonus every year when she saved money, so she cut tampons out of the budget. I found that out through my boss who worked commissary. He was like, ‘Oh, well, it’s on the order for the unit supply. She just doesn’t order them because she gets a bonus.’ Ugh I was so mad! Like, you know what lady? There’s a special place in Hell for you.

When we complained enough, and they had always sold them on commissary, like a six piece box, but that’s $5, $6 a box. That’s another problem too, why feminine hygiene products are so expensive everywhere, but they were certainly expensive on commissary. But it did get a little bit more manageable when we had tampons accessible and we had some pain relievers like ibuprofen that we could buy on commissary, but that’s it. That was the only major development. When I did finally start writing grievances about, you know, you only offer super tampons on commissary. Those are the only tampons I have access to. It’s not safe to wear those all the time like that. So they ended up selling the multi 24 different size pack but again they’re, like, $11 or something.

But that’s it, really. And when we passed the Dignity Laws? Nothing changed. Next session when TDCJ had to answer for how hard is it with the Dignity Laws and they were like, ‘Well, we already did that, so, I mean, we told you that so there wasn’t really anything to report.’ So nothing really happened.

They took TDCJ’s word for it, which is the probably number one biggest problem with Texas’ prison system, is that we have no independent oversight. So anything, any legislation that is passed, in regards especially to conditions, programming, or anything like that, there is no mechanism to independently verify that those things really happened.

So TDCJ can come to the legislators with their report and say, ‘Oh we did x, y, and z,’ and there you go. And there is no way to really refute that other than to have people that are in the system say, ‘That did not happen. That’s not happening.’ ‘Oh, yeah it is.’ Well, who do you believe, the ex-convict or TDCJ official? And I was proud that there were some legislators, and we testified this year about the other, were like, ‘So all the people came across the state of Texas to lie to us? I don’t believe that.’ But, like you said, how do you enforce something when there’s no enforcement arm? There’s no independent oversight.

What do you think the impact would be on incarcerated people if they had access to the menstrual products and support they needed?

Well, I think it takes away another abusive tool that certainly is used against women and their dignity. If this was accessible, you didn’t have to beg for it, you didn’t have to cancel your visits, you didn’t have to worry about, you know, it’s such a big deal when I need to take a shower cause I’ve bled all over myself. I mean, if all those things were taken care of, well then this is one less way for them to treat me like an animal, like I’m not human. It helps us maintain our dignity, right? That would be the outcome of having these things more accessible. And all the other things that go with that. Stopping the shaming and the guilting and the different ways that they use that to treat us badly.

The women that I see who have come out and have not been successful, usually it’s rooted in an abusive relationship. Most women’s downfall when they get out is, you know, there’s other things like housing, but those things typically people can push through if they have enough self-confidence and drive and support. But women leave the system feeling like they don’t matter, that they’re, like, why else would you treat me like this? You must treat me this way because I’m not worth anything. So then I gravitate towards relationships that treat me that way, to jobs, to a system around me that also reaffirms what you just taught me while I was in custody, which was that I was worthless. Society wants us to come back and be like, ‘I’m ready to be a contributing citizen!’ I don’t wanna give you anything. You treated me like a dog, like an animal. You said I deserved it for what I did. So why do I want to be a part of you? I don’t feel worthy, number one. Number two, I’m angry and rebellious, so I don’t wanna have anything to do with this. So, staying in community, in healthy community, and holding onto your humanity despite all that, I know that has played a huge part in my success.

My Experience of a Period in Prison, Part 1 – Jennifer Toon

As part of Dr. Vishniac’s doctoral research, she conducted 14 interviews with 15 individuals. Nine of these individuals were previously incarcerated women who had experienced a period in jail and/or prison. These women had been incarcerated from days to decades in facilities across the United States and it had been varying lengths of time since their release. Below is a summary of one of these interviews, shared with the consent of the interviewee. This interview was conducted on January 31^st, 2022. This interview transcript has been broken into two parts due to length and has been edited for flow. *Note, this interview includes strong language.*

Jennifer Toon is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance. Her involvement with the criminal legal system began at age 15, when she was adjudicated under Texas determinate sentencing laws, leading to 27 years of system involvement. As Executive Director, Jennifer draws on her lived experience to elevate the voices of system impacted individuals, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ people, youth, and people with disabilities. She lives in Austin, Texas with her cat Taylor, who embodies the mischievous energy of Taylor Swift.

PART 1 – PERIODS IN PRISON

How did you learn how you would get menstrual products?

When you finally settle in, the girls in the dorm would tell you, ‘Hey, once a month they do tissue and tampons, pads, and that’s usually this certain time or whatever.’ They just kind of word of mouth let us know if the time changed and that, but certainly nothing was posted. They would issue toilet paper to us once a week, and it alternated between one roll or two rolls. Once a month they issued six tampons and 24 pads. Those things could be bought off commissary. But a lot of women were indigent and couldn’t afford to buy tissue and tampons. Pads were never sold. I think pantyliners were eventually sold, but you did get a free issue once a month.

What quality were the menstrual products you had access to?

Oh terrible, terrible. Terrible! The girls used to make their own tampons out of pads, which they said held much better even though they didn’t have an applicator and they just had to insert it. I would not do that because I’m scared of toxic shock, but the quality is just terrible. The worst, most uncomfortable, cheap product. The pads would fall apart inside your panties. The cotton would come undone. The tampons were just the cheapest cardboard kind.

Could you ask for more supplies?

Theoretically, by policy, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (hereafter TDCJ) will say that yes, you can do that. But no, you can’t. Now you can go to a guard and say, ‘Hey, I need some pads and do you have any tampons?’ It was never mandatory they give out tampons. But it was theoretically mandatory that if you asked for a pad they had to give you one. Now that was up to the officer if they felt like it. But most of the time they simply didn’t have it. Period. It was always in short supply all over the unit. So that’s why women would hoard those things. But of course, in prison, you have all these, especially with women, very arbitrary, petty rules that men often aren’t subjected to. And I don’t know if that was the system’s way of finding some way to fuck with us because we didn’t have the type of issues that men did. Women would hoard things, but you had your allotment, I think you were allowed to keep 12 tampons and 24 pads on your person. If you had more than that, you got a disciplinary case for it. So, the women that bled heavily, they would go through that package of pads pretty quickly and a lot of times the tampons, they weren’t really effective. They didn’t last long. So they would hoard those things. And they would get them confiscated. A lot of times an officer would go through the door and would look to confiscate those so they would have some in the picket [communal box] to hand out if people needed one.

So, you could ask the women around you if you were in the dorm. We tried to be as generous as we could but a lot of times, I remember telling my friend, it was in the article that I wrote, like, ‘Girl, I gotta hide and make sure nobody sees me pulling these tampons out cause I don’t want nobody to ask me for one because, now I’ma feel bad, but I can’t afford it. I’m not gonna.’ I remember times not having anything. I’ll never go through that again. So I would hide my stashes at work. So, you could ask somebody, but if you got caught giving that to one another, even though it was a state-issued product, you’re gonna get disciplinary cause you’re not allowed to give each other stuff.

If you don’t have anything, you make something. And this is true in county jails as well, especially depending on what county you’re in.

There was a time I had to wear a sock in my pants.

I cannot go to court and not have anything. I can’t, because I think as women we all know that there’s just this cultural shaming if we have blood on our clothes. It’s one of the most terrifying things that you experience as a woman and as a girl as you get your period.

In TDCJ, in state prison, our uniforms are white. And we had to keep our shirts tucked in. So, when women bled on themselves, it was pretty noticeable.

I worked in the education building. And, we had three female officers that worked in our education building. We were only given bathroom breaks at a certain time, and if you had to come use the bathroom outside of those times there was a lot of shame, guilting, threatening with cases. Going to the bathroom is such a big deal at a women’s unit. So, the women would come out and say, ‘I need to go to the bathroom. I feel like I’m bleeding on myself. I’ve bled through and it’s on my clothes and I need to go to the dorm and change.’ The officer would take her into the bathroom, ‘Show me. Show me on the inside of your clothes, if I can’t see it on the outside. Show me.’ To prove that you’re not lying, that you’re not trying to go back to the dorm. And they would say, ‘That’s not enough.’ Like, you haven’t bled enough through your clothes to go back to the dorm. So, these women are walking around like that, and that happens a lot.

It’s a very specific feeling of degradation. I remember last winter Texas had a terrible winter storm. Our electric grid almost collapsed. The officers at all the units were short-staffed because of covid and then they couldn’t get in because of the storm, so the officers that were at the units were forced to have mandatory overtime and were not allowed to leave the unit. And it was really interesting that some of the female officers complained about how they had bled through their clothes because they couldn’t leave the unit to go to their car to get another tampon because they didn’t bring enough in their bag and being at a male unit, certainly nothing was available. And so they’re like, ‘We had to have these degrading moments of walking around knowing that we had bled through the inside of our panties and we had to go into the bathroom and wash them out and dry them under the dryer, and how degrading we were put through this!’ And I’m like, wow, it doesn’t feel good, does it? When it was us, they certainly didn’t mind terrorizing and using that as something to degrade us with.

Was this a regular concern?

Yes. Having your period in a correctional setting every month is stressful. You have to plan every activity around it. Am I gonna bleed through? It’s an ordeal. Am I gonna get strip-searched? Because if you’re strip-searched, you’ve gotta pull that pad off, show it to the officer, throw it in the trash. If you have a tampon, you have to pull it out. A lot of times I would take my fingernail clippers and clip my string and tuck the rest of the string inside, because it was so degrading to have to do that. Sometimes people would try to schedule their visits around it. I don’t want to go get stripped while I’m on my period. I was in a strip room with about 20 women who had already been stripped and me and my friend had come in late, they dropped us off late from a transfer, and the female officer said, ‘Get naked, strip, spread it. And take that tampon out.’ And so here I am in front of 20 women in this little bitty space and they’re all sitting around the walls just watching us get stripped. You just have to turn something off inside of you so you don’t feel anything. And I had to reach in there and pull that tampon out and hold it up and show it to her in front of 20 women. It was horrifying! So, it’s not just a matter of bleeding through your clothes or having to beg for products. It’s all the other things that could happen that you have to deal with in terms of being on your cycle.

Usually strip rooms did have something available, and they would allow us, if we had to go to visitation or go off-unit, to carry one tampon or one pad with us. Sometimes they just didn’t have it. Some officers would say, ‘I don’t care. In the name of security I need to search your bloody pad.’ Never one time in twenty-something years of being incarcerated did I ever see a woman hide anything in a bloody pad or a tampon. I just never did. Now, I have seen them hide things inside of themselves, but never anything regarding a menstrual product, especially if it’s being used. So, in the name of security, just some other thing to degrade us with.

Did menstruation ever prevent you from doing things?

Some women, especially those women that bled heavy, those women could go to medical and say, ‘I can’t stop bleeding.’ They would give them diapers to wear.

Well, a woman doesn’t really wanna go to visitation in one. And those women who for whatever reason medical would not acknowledge that they’re bleeding heavily, ‘Hey you have a visit.’ ‘Uh uh, I’m not goin. I’m sorry.’ Or just telling their family, ‘Look, don’t come right now.’ There was a time that they didn’t have any, they gave us our monthly issue, and I’d already used those, and commissary didn’t have it. They were in-between contracts so they hadn’t had tampons in who even knows, and I was new to the unit so I hadn’t made friends to the point where I felt comfortable asking somebody for something. I remember rationing out my pads and it was my first period day so I was bleeding very heavily, and I just sat. I just sat there, in front of the TV. I didn’t go to chow. I didn’t go to church or anything. And I didn’t lay down until it was time to really go to sleep, because I was worried I’m gonna bleed all over myself. I just remember hours of just sitting because I was afraid to move.

What was it like to have to ask a guard or officer for products?

I think, if you really had to ask a guard, the longer you stay there the more numb you are to anything, so maybe the first year or so it’s like, ‘I don’t wanna ask because I’m embarrassed,’ because of this thing that we’ve culturally made to feel ashamed of having a period. You know, I’m embarrassed and I don’t wanna ask, and over the years you’re like, ‘Can I have some pads?’ You know? There’s still this feeling of, I fucking hated asking men. I just did. It just made me uncomfortable. I just didn’t like it. But at the same time, the officers in education, oh my god, I don’t want to have to ask them because then I’m gonna have to hear all this shaming and berating.

It’s never just, ‘Ok, here.’ It’s never that! And that’s not just tampons or pads, and tissues, it’s anything. It’s never just simply, ‘Here.’ It’s not pleasant asking them for anything other than what you have been issued.

What is the experience of having your period in prison?

How do I articulate this? Out here you don’t really think anything of it, right? You’re like, I’ll put a tampon in my purse or in my pocket, I’ve got some in the car, I’m never anywhere without being able to reach for a tampon. It’s just a very simple thing, right? If you start cramping, you just go get some Advil (ibuprofen), you might lay in bed, you might eat some chocolate. You have things to comfort you through that, right? I used to get terrible menstruation cramps! Bad! There was a long time, especially when I first came into the system, that they did not sell ibuprofen, they did not sell it. You could ask the officers for one Tylenol (acetaminophen) tablet that came in this mini little envelope, right? And you couldn’t have more than six in your possession.

I would dread when I was going to get my period, because the pain would go almost all the way down to my knees. And I would have to work out in the heat. I would have to continue to do whatever I needed to do. It was such a dreadful, horrible, feeling of being outside in the yard.

Cause we didn’t have tampons then either. We only had pads, which is, to me, another level of uncomfortable. And just not having the things that make that experience tolerable on the inside, not being able to take a shower when you want to. So if you got up in the middle of the night and you’ve bled all over yourself, well, you can go to the sink and wash some of your clothes out, but the officer’s gonna say, ‘What are you doing?’ And you’re gonna have to wait until the lights come on before you can get in the shower. So, it’s just an unpleasant experience all the way around.