Sexual Violence in Prison shows Gender not about Genitalia
In 2004, pictures released from u$ prisons in Iraq showed amerikan
bio-wimmin warding over primarily bio-male Iraqis in acts of rape and
sexual assault. This incident helped substantiate MIM’s long-standing
line that gender is not based on genitalia and that amerikans with
female genitalia are in fact gendered male. The male gender, by
definition, being the dominant group in gender relations under the
patriarchy.
MIM had already suggested that prisoners in the united $tates might be
gender oppressed before the Abu Ghraib pictures came out. This was due
to the control of the sexuality and leisure time of prisoners by the
state. In particular, Black men as a group are prevented from having
consistent sexual relationships. This of course affects the family
structure of the oppressed and therefore is a form of national
oppression as well.
To help sort out the gender status of biomale prisoners, a recent
Department of Justice report gives us the surprising statistics that,
“In State and Federal prisons, 65% of inmate victims of staff sexual
misconduct and harassment were male, while 58% of staff perpetrators
were female”. (Here we are discussing the 52% of reported sexual
violence in prisons where the captor assaulted captive. The rest were
inmate-on-inmate assaults, addressed more below.) (1) In the general
population 97% of sexual violence reports are wimmin victims and the
perpetrator is generally male (around 98%). The instance of female
perpetrators is actually a higher rate in instances of assaults on
males, estimated at around 14%. (2) Much higher than female assaults on
wimmin, but nowhere near the 58% of assaults on prisoners of any
biology.
With 93% of the u.$. prison population being male, we would expect a
much higher percentage of assaults to be against males than females,
even if rates of assault for wimmin was higher. But assuming 97% of
victimization is of bio-wimmin as it is on the street, you’d only get
29% of the absolute number of assaults being against men in prison. So
we’re seeing a ratio of male to female victims on the order of 2 times
the general population. In other words, if wimmin are five times as
likely to be assaulted in prison than they are on the street, then men
are 10 times as likely.
Unfortunately, the study does not breakdown the statistics of female on
male vs. female on female assaults. But even if we assume that all of
the 35% of staff sexual assaults on wimmin in state and federal prisons
are perpetrated by wimmin, that leaves another 23% of the perpetrators
who are females attacking males (assuming one-to-one incidents, which
was the vast majority). Even if you want to argue that no male guards
ever sexually assault female prisoners, you see a significantly greater
rate of bio-wimmin engaging in sexual violence against males in prison
compared to the general population. Since female assaults on males in
the general population are much higher than female assaults on females,
we would be better off assuming the opposite. If we assume a
proportional breakdown you’d be comparing 58% female perpetrators
against bio-men in prison against the 14% on the street. If that weren’t
bad enough, we must factor in that females are still only a minority of
prison staff, accounting for 22% in the federal system. (3) So that 58%
of assailants is coming from maybe a quarter of the staff that happen to
be bio-wimmin. These are the statistics that back up our line on Lynndie
England that it could have been any amerikkkan womyn sexually assaulting
Iraqi bio-men. And if we acknowledge that Iraqis under occupation are
much more powerless and oppressed than amerikan citizens, then these
statistics speak even louder to say that amerikan bio-wimmin are the
enemies of the oppressed.
So first we saw that the vulnerability
of men to sexual assault increases twice as much as wimmin after
incarceration. On the flip side, we see bio-wimmin working for the state
greatly increase their rates of assault compared to wimmin on the
street. They go so far as to overcome men at the state and federal
levels. In local jails the stats were closer to life on the streets,
with 80% of the victims of staff sexual assault being female and 79% of
perpetrators being male. (1) But even there a 20% rate of victimization
of bio-men and 21% rate of assault by bio-wimmin is a noticeable
difference.
Prisoners More Vulnerable than Wimmin?
While it is important to move away from one-on-one relationships in
trying to understand gender systematically, incidents of sexual violence
remains a widely accepted and useful indicator of gender oppression. The
DOJ study showed sexual violence to be reported by prisoners at a rate
of 2.9 per 1000 (it is not broken down by biology). This is about the
same rate that 16-24 year old people, the age group with the highest
rate, report sexual assault in the general population. The overall rate
of reported sexual assault in the united $tates is 0.8 per 1,000
according to Department of Justice statistics. Only counting wimmin, the
rate is 1.4 per 1000. Going back to prisoners, if we only look at state
prisons the rate was 3.75 per 1000. All of these statistics are based on
reported cases, and there could be reporting discrepancies between these
groups. However, the statistics for prisoners are reported by the
prisons, whereas the other stats are reported directly by the individual
to the survey. Therefore, incidents not reported to police may be
captured in the general population data, while they will not be
reflected in the prisoner data.
So, it seems that prisoners (of both genders) and youth (of both
genders) are reporting more sexual assaults than wimmin over all. If
being young or incarcerated is really twice as risky as having female
genitalia as the report rates suggest, then not only are there other
considerations to determine someone’s gender status, but there are
factors that are much more important than what genitalia a persyn is
born with. Below we will see how age and incarceration intersect to
create one of the most gender oppressed groups in the united $tates.
MIM has established the basis for gender as purely gender in a persyn’s
physical development, age and health status. Therefore, when nation and
class are not major complicating factors, such as within the amerikan
labor aristocracy, these are the basis for gender differences.
However, the greatest differences in gender are found between the
imperialist nations and the Third World people. Therefore when we talk
about the spectrum of gender oppression we place most First Worlders on
the male end of the spectrum, regardless of biology. We have
demonstrated how First World bio-wimmin benefit by the patriarchy
elsewhere. (4) The picture of bio-wimmin as sexual assailants in prisons
above only adds to this argument. Now let’s continue to look at how
bio-men in the internal semi-colonies suffer under patriarchy via the
criminal injustice system.
Are Black Men Gendered Female?
MIM circles have suggested that Black men could be gendered female due
to their high rates of incarceration and historical vulnerability to
whites who accuse them of rape. In other words, their gender power is
limited by white hysteria around the Black rapist, and Black crime in
general, in the context of a white-dominated society. The recently
released statistics on sexual assault in prisons help to support this
argument.
Among staff perpetrators in prisons and jails, 71% were white; 20%,
black; and 7%, “Hispanic” and these averages were pretty similar to
jails and prisons taken alone. (1) It’s hard to argue that the 71% is a
disproportionate number of assaults by white staff, as that is close to
the representation of whites in the general population. However, in most
service or otherwise undesirable fields of work, whites are becoming
less common. It is a contradiction of our times that Blacks and Latinos
are doing more of the footwork of the criminal injustice system than
ever before. In the federal bureau of prisons whites make up only 57.2%
of the staff. This number likely varies greatly among state prisons and
local jails. Many states are still working on the good ’ol boy network,
but some more prosperous states have taken the neo-colonial approach.
Among inmate victims, 80% were white; 14%, Black; and 5%, “Hispanic” in
local jails, while 54% were white; 32%, Black; and 12% “Hispanic” in
state and federal prisons. (1) In this data you see once again that
whites are disproportionately the victims, even if they are slightly
more likely to be the perpetrators. A couple explanations for this are
suggested below. Even using the state and federal prison data, whites
are 1.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than average, while
Blacks and Latinos are below average for the prison population.
However, if you create an index based on the general population and not
on prison populations you’ll see that the u$ prison system results in
Black bio-men facing much more sexual assault than other bio-men,
especially whites who now have an index below average at 0.78 (see
figure 1). By comparing these indexes between Blacks and whites one can
see that when someone is born in the united $tates, h chances of being
raped in h life would be 3.3 times greater if she is Black as opposed to
white, ignoring other factors.
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The identity politics crowd takes a mechanistic approach to oppression,
giving the Black gay wimmin the pedestal of the most oppressed. They
often put the straight Black man and straight white womyn on a similar
level as each having one strike against them. But not only have Blacks
historically been at the bottom of the national hierarchy in the united
$tates, in the realm of gender they can compete with the white womyn
pretty well for the title of oppressed. In general, all u$ citizens are
gendered male anyway though. Just as the Black man is torn between his
position as an amerikan citizen and an oppressed national, he is able to
taste great gender privilege as well as oppression.
But Prisoners are Rapists Too
The Bureau of Justice reports that 48% of the incidents of sexual
violence reported by prisoners were perpetrated by other prisoners. The
idea that prisoners rape each other is nothing new to amerikans. It is
probably more surprising to cop-loving amerikans that 52% of the
incidents were actually perpetrated by prison staff, despite research
that has shown the tendency of people to mistreat others when they have
control over them in an oppressive prison environment.
One question that comes to the forefront in looking at
prisoner-on-prisoner rape is whether these instances parallel lines of
national oppression, with the oppressed being disproportionately
victimized in gender relations. However, the prisoner perpetrators of
sexual assault according to the reported incidents are approximately
representative of the prison population by nationality. Meanwhile, the
victims of rape are 72% white, when whites only make up 35% of the
general prison population. As mentioned above, the accusal of rape
against Blacks and other oppressed nations has been a tool of both
national and gender oppression. It is possible that some of this
statistic is an exaggeration based on white hysteria. But there are also
reasons to believe that whites may face greater threats of sexual
assault, such as the decline of white street organizations and the
association of whites with the power structure. Franz Fanon and Eldridge
Cleaver both talk about the socio-political motivations behind the
pursuit or rape of white wimmin by Black men. In the all-male prison
environment the white man can step in to play this symbolic role. If
anything, gender is used as a counter-balance to national oppression
among prisoners more than an extension of white power. It is on the
systematic level that Blacks are facing significantly more gender
oppression as explained above.
One area there seems to be a significant difference in rates of
victimization is between different agegroups of prisoners. MIM sees age
as part of the gender strand of oppression, so this seems intuitive. In
the last two years of data, victims were on average younger than
perpetrators. The latest data from 2006, show that 44% of victims were
age 24 or younger, while 81% of perpetrators were age 25 or older.
Unless 44% or more of the prison population are under age 24 (U.$. Dept
of Justice does not seem to publish this data), the most vulnerable age
group to sexual assault appears to be disproportionately more vulnerable
once put in prison. Another source indicates that youth in adult prisons
are 5 times as likely to be sexually assaulted than if they were in a
youth prison. (6)
Some 82% of the victims in inmate on inmate sexual assaults were male.
Where assaults are almost exclusively same-sex this is merely indicative
of the significantly greater propensity for men to rape. But we cannot
ignore the fact that 82% of the victims are bio-men as well. It is
clearly a case of population dynamics. In this sense prisons are a
perfect example to prove that gender relations are not dependent on
having certain genitalia. By eliminating bio-wimmin, sexual assault does
not disappear, in fact it increases for a variety of reasons in prison.
And we see factors such as age, health status and physical development
more clearly define a persyn’s gender status. The young, physically
small, mentally ill but physically healthy are the primary targets for
gender oppression. (7)
In some ways the patriarchy within prisons is just a reflection of the
greater society and in others it is a more extreme microcosm of power
dynamics. This is indicative of the two levels on which fighting gender
oppression in prisons must be conducted. The first level requires the
transformation of the prison system to one that builds communal values
rather than being a tool of oppression and punishment. The second
requires combatting the eroticization of power in society in general and
the dismantling of the patriarchy. Both require the revolutionary
dictatorship of the oppressed to become realistic.
In the meantime, the extremes of amerikan prison life serve as an
educational tool for the masses. It is much easier for a group to accept
the “all sex is rape” line when they have been on both sides of
patriarchal oppression, when they’ve been the victims of the extreme
power dynamics of prison life, and when many have had their own gender
privilege taken away for doing what every one else is doing and just
calls sex or love. It is in these ways that we take some positive
lessons from these statistics for the future building of a proletarian
feminist vanguard among lumpen youth in the united $tates.
The clearer lesson we take from all this is the negative lesson of the
alliance of amerikan bio-wimmin to the patriarchy. The group that is
traditionally considered the greatest victim of patriarchy by the white
nationalist left is behind 58% of sexual assaults in u$ prisons. That
just doesn’t add up.
