Dee Farmer in Dialogue with Badly Licked Bear: On Mutualism and Trans Prisoners’ Rights

November 19, 2026 | 7:00pm

Location: Choi Auditorium

Lecture

RVSP HERE

Transgender legal expert, advocate, and poet Dee Farmer will share her multi-decade advocacy for the incarcerated trans community. Dee Farmer was the first transgender plaintiff to bring a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Farmer v. Brennan was heard by the United States Supreme Court in 1994 and the court ruled unanimously in favor of Farmer. This case was foundational to the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003.

Dee Farmer will be in dialogue with Los Angeles-based artist and mutual aid worker Badly Licked Bear for the evening.

This event is sponsored by LA Encounters and the Mary Norton Clapp Library with funding support from Pohlmann-Gawley Fund for the Study of Los Angeles, the Art and Art History Department, OXY ARTS, Center for Community-Based Learning, the English Department, and the Critical Theory and Social Justice Department.

Please RSVP at this link to join us!

All exhibition events are free and open to the public. Hold Each Other's Hands is co-presented by One Institute and OXY ARTS as a part of One Institute’s Circa: Queer Histories Festival. You can view the full schedule of CIRCA events here: https://www.oneinstitute.org/circa/

About the Speakers

Dee Farmer

Badly Licked Bear

Dee Deidre Farmer serves as an expert consultant for attorneys and law offices in civil rights cases nationwide. She is a frequent public speaker and writer, and serves as the executive director of the nonprofit Fight-4-Justice Project. Ms. Farmer spent more than three decades incarcerated, and much of that time she studied law and filed cases pro se. In that capacity Ms. Farmer assisted hundreds of prisoners with their cases, resulting in releases, reduction of sentences, injunctions, and monetary awards. Without a lawyer, she successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Farmer v. Brennan case, resulting in a rare unanimous decision in 1994, and becoming one of the most cited cases in modern Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. In opposing her successful work on behalf of incarcerated people, the government once nicknamed Ms. Farmer “the lean, mean, litigation machine.”

Since her release, Ms. Farmer’s casework has resulted in the release of seven people from federal incarceration and she is now in the process of supporting many more individuals fighting for freedom. She is a graduate of Georgetown Law School’s paralegal program and a current student at Catholic University. As an expert, Ms. Farmer has also worked with prominent national civil rights and human rights organizations, including: Human Rights Watch; the National Center for Lesbian Rights; Gay, Lesbian, Advocates, and Defenders; and the Sentencing Project. She has also testified on Capitol Hill. Ms. Farmer co-authored a chapter for the book, The History and Future of Correctional Psychology, and served as co-editor of the JLM (Jailhouse Lawyers Manual) published by Columbia Law School. She is a recipient of the 2024 Haymarket Writing Freedom Fellowship. Ms. Farmer is currently a consultant to the Special Litigation Unit of the DC Public Defender’s Office. Ms. Farmer and her work are the subject of a documentary which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this year.

Badly Licked Bear is an educator, storyteller, artist, and mutual aid worker. She is a voice for transgender civil rights and culture, and uses the power of storytelling. Often through objects and performance, to make that which is invisible, visible. Badly is the author of the PBS Independent Lens Map of Gender-Diverse Cultures, I identify as a threat (it’s not just a meme), and Give Me Sodomy or Give Me Death, and will be featured in the upcoming edition of Making Art During Fascism, published by the Feminist Center for Creative Work. Her work touches on apocalypse, Queer realism, and transgender surrealism, and can be found in the numerous museum and university collections. She or her work has been featured in publications ranging from ArtNet to AVN. In 2024, Badly was a recipient of a California x Culture Bearers & Artist Disruptors Award.

Badly is a Founder of the Council of Indigenous Leather. She is an educator for and Board President of Pelvic Sanctuary. She serves on the steering committees of the Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Art & Culture Coalition and the CIRCA Queer Histories Festival.