December 19, 2009 at 4:41 P.M. "Error" inserted in this essay. I have now corrected it.
August 16, 2009 at 11:33 A.M. The image that accompanies this essay at Critique depicts a group of women inmates in unshapely striped prison uniforms. That image and many controversial images continues to be blocked at blogger. My access to Critique is denied because MSN groups is said to be "closed." I cannot see my books on-line. One book will not be sent to on-line booksellers because of a single reference to Fidel Castro, I believe. The ISBN number that I purchased for that book may have been invalidated to prevent distribution of this work. Cyberharassment and cybercrime is a daily experience for me. Feminism is in the streets and on-line. This is a humble feminist statement from a supportive male. These are the issues where (I think) feminism is important, even a life-or-death matter.
February 12, 2009 at 10:59 A.M. "errors" were inserted in this essay. I will now correct them.
Do you think it helps in reintegrating incarcerated women into society to have them dress in cartoon-like uniforms? Do you think that providing every woman in prison with business attire that will allow her to interview, successfully, for a job when she gets out -- or even before leaving prison -- makes sense? I do. In the Internet age, office work and media outlets can employ women inmates for a fair wage, allowing them to have satisfying and creative employment PRIOR to returning to society.
Millions of jobs in personnel and data management, insurance and record-keeping now being shipped to China and India or Third World countries can be done by women inmates for decent money and benefits. If inmates can't go to the office, today, then the electronic office can come to them. Other societies -- like Denmark, I believe -- allow women to work for money in prison, to dress as they like, maintain all familial relationships -- and, especially, relationships with children -- living decently and facilitating reintegration into society.
This policy makes excellent sense. Women inmates can pay taxes, save for retirement, prove their ability as employees, stay in touch with people and events in society. As a result, they are much more successful in avoiding repeat offenses. Furthermore, I believe that women with such positions are less likely to commit infractions while incarcerated. ("Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison.")
People are not born criminals. Despite the nonsense still being disseminated by social scientists and others suggesting that brain chemistry explains criminality, we all know at a visceral level that crime is mostly, overwhelmingly, about responding to desperate conditions. Most people would not choose crime. Most women do not dream of violating the law or a life in prostitution. There are few options in this world for millions of people. For a tiny number, there are no options.
Part of the reason for this lack of options is feeding back to people early in life a negative image of their worth and capacities, instilling the idea in women (mostly) that they are worthless, that they do not matter, reducing them to the status of fungible goods, easily replaced and unworthy of respect or consideration. You have to turn people into nothing in order for them to see others as nothing. My friend, Sam, was recently arrested for being poor and homeless. This arrest will be really helpful with any self-esteem issues that he may be struggling against. I have never been charged with a crime in my life. The ad hominem stuff put out by New Jersey is bullshit.
It is not difficult to persuade women to accept such a demeaning identity when they find themselves so often utterly powerless, hungry, poverty-striken and without even the emotional resources -- the sense of being loved no matter what -- which allows survivors to cope with such adversity. ("Beauty and the Beast.")
I am not suggesting that media images are entirely to blame for such horror nor do I suggest censorship, I am merely saying that giving poor and powerless young women a feeling for their options and rights to respect as well as the attention of society can begin with media, schools, churches, government. Let's not have them wear striped prison uniforms, for instance, and work on teaching skills and methods of self-presentation that not everyone learns at home.
Censorship, insults, death threats and other pleasant daily attacks directed against me or my writings will have little effect at this point in my life, after my experiences, but they are likely to be much more psychologically devastating for young men and women encountering the system and reality of power in America for the first time. Most female offenders are under 45 years of age. Perhaps, today, even under 35 years of age. Many people are shocked at the extent and flagrancy of government criminality. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
I am still angry about this unjust reality. I continue to believe and argue that millions of shattered lives is simply unacceptable in our -- until now -- rich society. We cannot live with this incalculable waste of human potential and creative power when those qualities are more desperately needed than ever before. I experience this insight as wounding and painful beyond my ability to describe because of the persons I know whose gifts are thrown away, whose chances for some joy and meaning in life are trashed, whose victimization by power is turned into an accusation against them.
Each day that the cover-up continues, Mr. Rabner, is a renewal of the tortures for many persons, including women -- women who have suffered enough in hard lives where judicial robes and deference have not featured prominently. ("Letter From a Torture Chamber.")
What are we teaching women forced to wear this cartoon-like striped uniform? We are teaching them to see themselves as criminals, as laughable sub-humans, who are worthy of mistreatment and deserving of no other life but the needlessly miserable existence to which they are relegated by unfeeling judges. Most of those women will be leaving prison. Why should it surprise us that they will commit more crimes as soon as they get out? Or that they will come to feel that they belong nowhere else? We -- and that includes YOU -- are telling such women, usually terribly victimized, exploited, abused women, long before they get to any prison, that they are less than human, that they are slaves.
Dehumanization in all its forms is something I find unbearable. Delight in cruelty, pleasure in causing pain and destroying emotional lives is far worse because it speaks of the self-chosen moral deformations of power-wielders (Alex? Diana?), whose grotesque cruelties come to define them in time. Women's prisons seem to be filled with such people in minor administrative positions -- people whose tiny bit of power makes them god-like within the confines of a prison, but still the intellectually and morally repulsive individuals they are and always will be in society. Dodi?
Every kind of imposition of power produces its resistance in a dialectical dance that will consume both partners. Incarcerated women develop ways of resisting the conditions of violation and struggling for their humanity. Perhaps they modify their uniforms slightly, or develop a code of behavior and language among themselves that excludes the people who exclude them, or they may struggle to learn and read enough to work on their own cases in order to speak their truths to power.
The most overwhelming burden by the time a person reaches middle age is the realization that, perhaps, 90% of the world's cruelties are unnecessary. Worse, the infliction of pointless suffering on powerless persons gives pleasure to their tormentors in the dungeons of America -- like Trenton, New Jersey. Something highly disturbing about human nature is revealed in the images accompanying this essay, assuming they haven't been blocked by New Jersey's Cubanazo hackers, which would be even more helpful to my argument. ("American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?") Neither Menendez nor Posada Carriles is in prison:
"There exists a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge. If I fail to do whatever I can to prevent them, I too am guilty. If I was present at the murder of others without risking my life to prevent it, I feel guilty in a way not adequately conceivable either legally, politically or morally. That I live after such a thing has happened weighs upon me as indelible guilt. ..."
Please see "America's Holocaust" and "Crimes Against Humanity in New Jersey." This is not about personal guilt, morons, it's about our collective guilt for this unjust state of affairs. (One new "error" inserted by New Jersey shit heads. I have now corrected that "error" until next time.)
" ... Metaphysical guilt is the lack of absolute solidarity with the human being as such -- an indestructible claim beyond morally meaningful duty. This solidarity is violated by my presence at a wrong or a crime. It is not enough that I cautiously risk my life to prevent it; if it happens and if I was there, and if I survive where the other is killed, I know from a voice within myself I am guilty of being still alive."
Karl Jaspers, quoted in, Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy After the Holocaust (New York & London: Verso, 1998), pp. 53-54. ("Would you have helped Kitty Genovese?")
What have you become, Stuart Rabner? Are you not interested in New Jersey's "crimes against humanity." Governor Corzine? Stuart, this is not a matter that calls for "judicial minimalism."
