In September 2017, Halifax newspaper the Chronicle Herald published an article with anonymous quotes from a guard at Nova Institution for women objecting to the presence of trans women in the prison (the article no longer exists online). Staff complained, "A female guard could be told to strip-search a male," and "Many (guards) do not want to do this, and they want their rights recognized as much as the inmate's" (Elizabeth Fry Societies of Mainland Nova Scotia and Wellness Within 2017). Nova Institution is now facing a lawsuit by women who were sexually assaulted by a male guard in the prison. As a press release by the Elizabeth Fry Societies of Cape Breton and Mainland Nova Scotia and Wellness Within asserted, "Strip-searching is not a 'right' to be protected" and both organizations acknowledged that "strip searches should be stopped as over 90 percent of women have experienced violence and trauma" (2017, n.p.). Here, we see the legalized sexual assault of prisoners through strip searches reconfigured onto the body of trans women, as though it were the guards who were bring violated. The implication is that trans women are reduced to their genitals, which are configured as the site of violence.

— Abolitionist Intimacies by El Jones (Page 145)