There is good news, and bad news, and completely predictable news in the fight against prison rape. The good news: the Justice Department last week announced a major new initiative designed to fight against prison rape. The bad news: it’s being opposed by right-wing ideologues. As Think Progress explains:
This week, the Department of Justice published new standards addressing the epidemic of rape and sexual abuse in our nation’s prisons. The guidelines, which apply immediately to federal prisons and give financial incentives for states to comply, are a laudable, widely praised, and long overdue step in combating rape in the United States.
The American Action Forum, a Wall Street-funded group whose C(4) runs millions of dollars in attack ads against Democrats, responded by lambasting the move as too “costly” and “complicated.” …
The Weekly Standard echoed AAF’s response, bemoaning the cost of preventing people from being raped in prison. The total expected cost is less than 1 percent of the overall cost of our prison system and ultimately “end up saving money — for example, by avoiding the medical costs of injuries suffered by rape victims,” according to the New York Times.
The completely predictable news? Men’s Rights Activists are completely oblivious to all this.
If the Men’s Rights movement were truly concerned with helping men, rather than playing “oppression Olympics” and complaining about feminists and women in general, they would be all over this issue. But I have seen nothing about this on any site in the manosphere, aside from one post on the Men’s Rights subreddit that drew all of six (mostly ignorant) comments. (Looking through one large thread on the subject of prison rape that was recently on r/mensrights’ front page, I found zero references to the Justice Department’s new initiative.)
What accounts for this obliviousness? It could be because MRAs tend to regard the Obama administration as a tool of our (imaginary) feminazi overlordsladies. Or because they would have to acknowledge that women are also raped in prison. But I think the real reason is that MRAs are so disconnected from real activists working in the real world to combat prison rape that they are completely unaware of any of this.
If you are interested in getting involved, or just learning more about the issue, I’d suggest checking out the website of the group Just Detention International, which campaigns against prison rape.
For more links, see this post of mine.
Well and even better than rehabilitation in prisons would be an actual system of restorative or transformative justice, so it’s not just the transgressor who is “fixed,” but the victims and society as a whole. But that’ll never happen.
And even betterer, a society where we care enough about people to try to help them (improve their health, their housing quality, their nutrition, their education) before they commit crimes in the first place.
I haven’t seen American Citizen X, but lots of people really like this movie and it went well with the critics as I remember. My husband saw it and was pretty appalled. It’s a guy who’s a nazi, eventually gets to prison, is raped in prison, comes out again, now realizes that it’s wrong to be a nazi, and tries to deter his younger brother from becoming a nazi too. My husband was appalled because he thought the movie sent the message that the first guy realized it was bad to be a nazi because it landed him in jail where he EVEN GOT RAPED – like, the rape had some beneficial effect on him, contributing to him realizing how wrong he’d been before.
I haven’t seen it though, so I can’t judge for myself. Anybody else who saw the movie and got the same impression as my husband?
I am guessing that MRAs aren’t talking about it because they don’t profit off victory.
And it’s American History X. Being raped was not what changed him for the better. The compassion of a black man who taught at his local high school, his actually interacting positively (being assigned to work with him) with a black inmate, and his neo-nazi “brothers” turning on him, helped him reflect. The rape was part of them turning on him, but it wasn’t a positive thing. He had to take his blinders off that had allowed him to dehumanize POC.
I dunno, I’ll always love that movie.
The film you’re thinking of is American History X, and it’s certainly overrated; according to Wikipedia the director tried to ‘Alan Smithee’ the film (ie, have his name replaced with a pseudonym on the credits) after he saw the studio edit. My biggest problem with it is that the Nazi character is constantly spouting bullshit racist talking points and all the other characters – mainly teachers and family – just sit there gawking in shock rather than providing any responses to them, so that the movie, although the narrative is clearly trying to be anti-racist, unintentionally ends up seeming like a bit of a soapbox for bullshit racist talking points.
Other than that, yes, the main turning point in the plot is that Nazi guy is raped by other Nazi guys but befriends one black guy who protects him from all the other black guys in prison. On the plus side, the message is that however much they talk about ‘justice’ and ‘equality for white people’, neo-Nazis are universally just a bunch of lying, sadistic assholes. On the down side, I don’t think the fact that one black guy was nice to one racist white guy is really going to convince anyone who needs convincing that racism is wrong. But ultimately it’s a Hollywood film, so I guess nuanced or detailed analysis was never on the cards. If you want a truly brilliant critique of fascism in a movie, watch Pan’s Labyrinth (and then watch Harry – He’s Here To Help, because Sergi Lopez is awesome).
@jessay – just wanted to say that I hadn’t read your post when I wrote mine, so it wasn’t intended to be quite as directly contrary as it sounds! Anyway, varying opinions FTW and such.
Another thing that pissed me off was the last scene in Boogie Nights. It’s a feelgood montage set to God Only Knows by the Beach Boys, showing how all the characters have overcome their problems and got their lives together – but thrown in there is a shot of one character who has gone to prison for taking pictures of pre-teens, whimpering in the corner as he is smacked in the head by his stereotypically gigantic and tattoo-laden cellmate. People who’ve fucked up their lives are being tortured by other people who’ve fucked up their lives – all’s right with the world!
I am shocked, shocked, I tell you, that Ruby find prison rape hilarious. /sarcasm
All right, maybe a little. And she link to it herself, on a page about “prison rape is bad”. Even for her, that’s bad. Can I call her a troll, now? 🙂
Only a fool would promote sodomy and then not expect sodomy to be prevelant where there is no escape.
OK, maybe amazed is too strong a word, but godDAMN is she stupid.
On top of what everyone else has said: sometimes, people who end up in prison are actually innocent of any crime. It’s not a big point to argue (because, even people who are guilty of a crime do not deserve to be raped), but it does present a problem for the buttheads arguing “it’s always justice”.
OMFG. On this forum, there several posters who call prisoners ‘animals’ and ‘savages’. I know Holly quoted it already, but holy fuck indeed:
Meanwhile, some more ‘moderate’ commenters seems to think raping prisoners is only funny is they’re murderers and rapists themselves. Another doesn’t care because he and is children are good people and will never go to prison.
The prison system in our country is seriously borked. It’s largely turning into a “for profit” industry, which is completely fucked up. That puts an incentive not to decrease the prison population but to increase it — no prisoners, no profit. Our manufacturing sector is dead, we don’t build or make anything anymore. Our blue collar workers don’t work the assembly line, they work in the prisons (unless they’re part of the military industrial complex, of course) — the poors guarding the poors.
Not to mention the racist component– black males recieve longer sentences for the same crimes. (which everybody here probably already knows, but it bears repeating, a lot, till it gets better)
So think about that a little. We’ve eliminated slavery! But prisons are profit centers. And black men are given disproportionate sentences to keep them in the profit centers.
British prisons don’t, as far as I know, have the same prison-profit thing. Prison rape jokes exist over here too.
Morka–sounds like some people want to change that. The for-profit piece–I assume the same folks would have no trouble with rape jokes. Being as they apparently have dried-up beef jerky where their souls should go.
Everyone is making so much sense I think my brain might have exploded. Maybe it’s because I read too many things I know I shouldn’t (Anyone else have that issue? Where you read an article or blog post somewhere and you know the comments are going to be shitty.. but you read them anyway?), but by now i’m more surprised when I agree with someone than when I don’t.
I always go into things relating to crime expecting to see “prison = punishment = awesome” that people not getting how awful and non-functional that is isn’t shocking anymore. 🙁
Also, I think the reason it’s not like that over here (the UK) is we have a lot more of that scary socialism, and so the government runs stuff. I’ll defer to people with more knowledge though, because sad as it sounds I actually know more about US politics and stuff than that of my own country.
There aren’t. There was a century ago, before we had evidence they were as pointless at actually stopping crime as they are. That was then, this is now.
One thing that always surprises me in defenders of prison rape and other prison abuse is that there is often someone who says that it is to counter the “luxuries” the prisoners get, like three square meals, a warm place to sleep and access to TV. If those things are considered luxuries then there’s a serious problem, but it’s not with the prisons, it’s with society in general.
I clarified my position, “As for rape in prisons, I only think it’s funny when it’s done to those WHO HAVE CAUSED THE SAME MISERY TO OTHERS.” Now are you guys finished having your hategasms? LOL!
Whooosh… (Sound of The Point sailing several hundred miles above Ruby’s blissfully unaware head)
Nope. You’re still a terrible person.
“I only favor unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment that would make Jesus cry for rapists. Or those who cause more misery.”
(Jesus was totally all about prison reform, by the by)
BTW, I didn’t think it was funny when the main character in The Shawshank Redemption was raped in prison. Why? Because he never victimized an innocent human being.
So you’re against the innocent being raped?
Query: are you aware how many folks are in jail who did not, in fact, do the crime? How do you propose to mark them out so they don’t share the same fate you giggle about when the guilty recieve it?
@Ruby:
Everybody caught your “clarification,” and it doesn’t change anything. Raping a rapist is not ok.