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.
“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?”
One word Ruby — No.
“I have to laugh at you, Kyrie. I’m a law abiding citizen who loves her family, gives to charity, and rescues homeless pets. But, because I don’t think just like Kyrie, I must be a terrible person. Unbelievable.”
Nope, it’s that you think there are circumstances under which rape is both funny, and justified; and worse, that you think you’re enough of a special snowflake to decide what those circumstances are.
“GUYS RUBY MEETS THE MINIMUM BASIC STANDARDS OF DECENT HUMAN”
No, no she doesn’t, not my definition of decent human anyways (I just gave a “being a decent human being” lecture to glossary troll like, yesterday, he fails the same damned thing — blaming victims =/= being a decent human being)
…or was that sarcasm? Maybe I should sleep…
At this point, I almost want to pull out the MRA canard of “you would feel differently if it were a woman being raped instead of a man” and ask Ruby “Do you think it’s funny for female convicts to be raped in prison?” Something to get past this mental block of “it couldn’t happen to me, therefore it’s fine.”
I almost don’t want to know the answer, as it could only lead to more horrible, but there we go. 🙁
Nobinayamu – I’m so sorry about what happened to your friend.
@Kirbywarp: of course, there’s one major difference in the statistics about women raped in prison and men raped in prison.
Men raped in prison are more likely to be raped by other prisoners.
Women raped in prison are more likely to be raped by the guards.
Wikipedia is a good place to start on those statistics. There are links.
So, Ruby… do you laugh at them too? Remember that any individual woman imprisoned is more likely to be raped than any individual man.
@kirby
im pretty sure rubys hatred for those dirty theiving poors with their saggy pants and hip hop magazines transcends gender
@kirby
Ruby would never dream of discriminating against anyone based on gender. Don’t you know that she’s a good person AND a feminist /SNAAARRRRKKKKKK
kirbywarp — I have an example that might work — the law student best friend got arrested for being on the sidewalk during the G20, while legal observing in NLG’s hilarious neon green hats no less. He spent an afternoon in holding with a bunch of protesters, got the charges expunged once he did community service, but hey, an arrest is an arrest amirite? (It was kind of hilarious, I’d just gotten off a “I haven’t been arrested yet” phone call with him, ~5 hours later he calls me to say our paddy-wagons are very poorly ventilated XD )
@Argenti:
I think it was referring to Ruby saying that she is “a law abiding citizen who loves her family, gives to charity, and rescues homeless pets,” and that therefore every thought Ruby has must be good.
I notice though that this logic points out Ruby’s fundamental problem; doing good things doesn’t necessarily mean you are a good person, and doing bad things doesn’t necessarily mean you are a bad person. You don’t judge people based on whether they are “good” or “bad,” you judge actions. A “good” person can still do bad things, and those bad things are not excusable (talking about you, Ruby). And “bad” people don’t automatically lose their human status just because they’ve done a bad thing.
Ultimately, in the context of justice, there is no such thing as a “good” person or a “bad” person. There are just people who may be rewarded for good deeds and punished for bad deeds.
@Shadow:
Funny (not actually funny), I remember reading that quote. *sigh*
Way to go Ruby, using gendered slurs like a true feminist.
that couldnt happen to ruby though because she worships at the altar of Traditional Authority
By the way Ruby, congrats. I no longer think you’re a shitty feminist. As of now I’m not willing to entertain the notion that you’re any kind of feminist. Just a sexist, classist, ridiculous hypocrite.
“that couldnt happen to ruby though because she worships at the altar of Traditional Authority”
That won’t help any when the police pepper spray gets in her home’s ventilation system so she goes outside — shit I could not make up if I tried, that happened, to a man with an infant, so, understandably, they were also on the sidewalk when the “we’re arresting everyone” happened, afaik he wasn’t arrested, but yeah, totally could’ve been.
Watching the G20 protests up close and personal was a serious object lesson in just how fucked up the US’s “justice system” is btw.
Was that at the Toronto G20 or at some other shameful police state defense of neoliberalism?
Pittsburgh, complete with the LRAD (which is apparently somewhere between annoying and agitating on the lower settings — totally ineffective, but intimating). Among the protestors my best friend was held with was the man we’ve affectionately dubbed “LRAD dude”, because this takes guts.
It was absolutely absurd, to the point of my law office coworkers being all “maybe we should carry weapons in case protestors smash through the glass windows” my only reply when my head stopped spinning was that I was the only one on the first floor, they’d have time to run upstairs >.< (and, predictably, want to guess who started the violence? If you said "the cops" have a cookie)
Despite all the ways I’ve fantasized taking revenge on rapist, this was never among it. I never got people’s ideas that prison rape was some sort of a just karma for a rapist(or other felon) I mean I hate rapists so completely, why would I want there to be another one?
Ruby is a perfect illustration of the “good people”/”bad people” divide we were talking about earlier in this thread. My personal theory is that it’s indicative of a lower level of moral reasoning (like Kohlberg’s fourth stage), where she’s literally incapable of conceptualizing right or wrong except by dividing people into “good” and “bad” based on whether they have broken the law or not.
Ruby’s also illustrating a pretty common idea in America, which is that if a person deserves punishment, they deserve all the punishment. You can’t say “we’re taking away your freedom, but we’ll try to be decent about it”; no, you have to take away their freedom and give them no recreation and no privacy and make sure that all the clothes don’t fit and all the blankets are itchy. Because any creature comforts mean that they aren’t experiencing total punishment, and since law-breakers are totally bad they deserve no less.
It’s a really fucked-up perspective, and it gets in the way of a lot of innovative rehabilitation programs, because if the program involves showing any kindness to the inmates or investing any resources in them, people start complaining that we aren’t punishing the bad people hard enough.
So Ruby can’t conceptualize of a person being sentenced to, say, “two years prison and five years probation”; the only sentence she knows about is “we’ve decided you’re bad and should be treated bad.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one….
@kirbywarp
That was addressed in the thread Ruby linked to. Ruby said:
http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=16694#p251784
So, yeah, she’s okay with prison rape whether you’re a man or a woman. That’s… I’m not sure if that’s better or worse, really.
Well, at least she can use the clichéd “I hate everyone equally” defense. I suppose that’s.. something.
The worst part is that all this shit is incentivized for private prisons. After all, they don’t want to release people who have been rehabilitated and go on to be functioning members of society. Those people won’t become ‘repeat customers’. Much better to dehumanize prisoners to the point that they can’t possibly reintegrate when they get out, so they’re sure to come back and keep generating profits.
I don’t think it’s possible to have a functioning private prison system for this reason. Even if you could fix every other problem with the system, you’re never going to get the goals of the government and the private prisons to line up. The prisons just have too much to gain from poor results.
NWOslave, you said, “Only a fool would promote sodomy and then not expect sodomy to be prevelant where there is no escape.” Does this mean that you do not see any difference between consensual sex and rape?
Fatman, NWO has no idea what consensual sex is.
Ruby: Sweet fucking Christ but that shit you are spewing is vile. I’m glad you got some jollies that an MRA got bounced, but it’s stranger than strange that you thought we’d ignore you encouraging fucking rape …
I’m a a loss for words. I’ve thought your instrangient insistence that TV shows = science was stupid, but I didn’t really think you an evil person.
I was wrong. You are right up there with Aktivarum, NWO, and all the rest of the people who are saying rape is a perfectly fine thing… just so long as it happens to other people.
Most MRAs are better than you are. They are honest.
(addendum, since I saw this before I went to hit post)
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!
No, that doesn’t make it better. That’s a Mellerian POV: the people whom you don’t like deserve to be abused, made into sexual playthings and otherwise treated as subhuman.
It’s not a hategasm. I don’t hate mosquitoes either. But I smash them when they bite me.