I was inspired to write this article after reading one of Paul’s latest pieces about the same subject. Then I thought, “This is already being talked about too much.” Then I figured that it would look like I was trying to jump on someone else’s bandwagon, so I should just drop it. Then I wrote a two-part article about two silly movies to change the subject. Then I read an article about prison rape that uses the most sensationally sex-neutral syntax I’ve ever seen. Then I got so angry that I started rambling like a ten-year-old (aside from the use of alliteration).
The subject of rape is indeed discussed too much. Simultaneously, one aspect of it is discussed too little. So let’s talk about rape now, the kind of rape you aren’t supposed to talk about, unless you’re making a joke. (Go to 9:30 in that video.) Let’s talk about men being raped by other men in prison, and the fact that most of these men don’t belong there in the first place.
An article entitled “Prison Rape and the Government” at “The New York Review of Books” is an important exposé on the continuing atrocity of men raping other men in prison. You wouldn’t know that, however, by the use of language. The article is filled with sex-neutral language like “people,” “they,” “inmates,” “officers,” “guards,” “staff,” “those,” “juveniles,” “victims,” “adults,” etc., ad nauseam. And I mean ad nauseam. This is in spite of the fact that the vast (and I mean vast) majority of prisoners are men, the vast majority of guards and wardens are men, the vast majority of victims are men, and the vast majority of prison rapists, since once again the vast majority of prisoners are men, are also men. In fact, one study actually says: “[T]here are more men raped in U.S. prisons than non-incarcerated women similarly assaulted.”
In spite of this, “The New York Review of Books” article starts off with anecdotal-yet-traumatic details about a female prisoner being raped by a male guard. Later on, the subject turns, quite naturally, to “…lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (persons whose biological sex is ambiguous) inmates…” First of all, how does one exhibit “ambiguous” biological sex? Are they actually talking about the infinitesimal number of humans walking around who have testicles on the outside and ovaries on the inside? Penises that look like clitorises? Clitorises that look like tiny little dicks? Secondly, exactly how many prisoners are going to openly consider themselves “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,” or “intersex”? No one seems to have any data on this, but given the level of persecution on the “outside,” who’s going to be flaunting it on the “inside”?
Then there’s this gem: “A sergeant named Brian Burzynski made the ninety-minute drive from his office in Fort Stockton that afternoon. ‘I saw kids [sic] with fear in their eyes,’ he testified later, ‘kids [sic] who knew they were trapped in an institution where the system would not respond to their cries for help.’” Wow. Just like school! “Suspected semen samples were taken from the carpet, furniture, and walls of Brookins’s office.” Wow. Just like “Law & Order: SVU (Semen Victims Unit)”!
One report linking to another report linking to another report fails to mention men in any specificity. It’s like reporting on the serious damage to surrounding buildings, then talking endlessly about what the new Iraqi government can do about sprucing up the building codes, while watching the slaughter of two dozen men in the “Collateral Murder” video, to which I will not link because I’m tired of videos where I have to watch men being mowed down.
There is more than one way to mow a man down, however. You can rape his life from him, and send him elsewhere to be reminded of the state’s rape of his life while at the mercy of another rapist. Watch his love of other men, and his love of mankind, die with his volition, relationships, wealth, and physical health.
The neoconservative desire for American Exceptionalism and enforced public morality has now led to “more than 1 million nonviolent offenders” being imprisoned. Mind you, the VAST MAJORITY of these one million nonviolent “offenders” are men, but then, that goes without saying. Literally.
Now that they’re successfully mowed down and thankfully emasculated, these men can be treated the way heterosexual male rapists treat women. Unless something truly untoward happens: “The department is worried that a ban on cross-gender pat-searches might mean facilities would have to fire many of their female employees and hire more men, which would be very expensive and perhaps illegal.” If it’s one thing the government is terribly concerned about, it’s spending too much money. And heaven forbid the state hire only men to deal with male prisoners! Had enough bold type? Me, too. Let’s pretend, then, that bold type really isn’t called for in what ought to be a “civil” discussion.
How’s this for civility? For the majority of men, life goes on for decades without a single other human being coming into contact with his anus. That’s how the majority of men wish to keep it. I am having a hard time substantiating it, but I have heard it said that the majority of straight guys, when they are with their girlfriends, insist on keeping anything and everything away from the “back door.” There are excellent reasons for this, each of them subjective, so I’m not going to try to convince anyone to think or behave otherwise. That’s not the point.
The point is that this area of the body is particularly sensitive and purposefully guarded, which is why most men are grateful that it remains safely hidden. It is not designed for entry. If it is not entered carefully when volition permits, it is extraordinarily painful. How painful? Let me give you an idea: If you ever get inflammation in that area, and your intention is to use your bowels for their intended purpose, be prepared to feel as if the bottom half of your body is going to fall off. Also be prepared to seriously consider death as an alternative option to any prolongation of the pain. I am not exaggerating. I have experienced that just from being sick. I am not a rape victim, yet the pain almost made me faint. How much worse is it for a man who has no sexual interest in men, who has safely hidden that vulnerable area for three or four decades, who has never experienced any sort of entry, to undergo such an ordeal at the hands of another man who is using one of the most private parts of his own body?
I have a rough idea from seeing a video by chance, and I’m not talking about porn where two or three obviously gay guys pretend to be tough, tie up another obviously gay guy, and “rape” him. That stuff is out there, and it appeals to me not at all. (What happened to the far more romantic porn of the 70s?) I’m talking instead about seeing, on a friend’s television, a brief clip from some website that works to expose government atrocities in Egypt, where a man was apparently being raped by Egyptian police. There will be no link to that clip, and I’m going to expend no effort whatsoever to find it anywhere online. What I saw was a fuzzy image of the man’s head and shoulders while he apparently lay on his back. All I remember, beyond a faint image, is the screaming.
I’ve never heard anything like it in my life. It was the desperate cry of a man who no longer wished to live. There aren’t words to describe it. The clip was only five seconds long, at best, but it’s one of those nasty imprints that never leave your brain. I don’t ever want to hear that again.
Perhaps it was the intention of whatever journalists put together that piece on Egypt to simply inform us of the crime. Since television is a highly visual medium, perhaps a brief glimpse at that Egyptian dissident’s important website can be a useful visual aid. But I can’t do anything to help that particular man. I know next-to-nothing about Egypt. I never plan on going there. I seriously doubt that that poor man wanted anybody watching the instant replay. I wonder if he was even consulted beforehand. I wonder if he’s still alive. The clip of his suffering did nothing for me, other than spark another diatribe against misandry, which was put away until I couldn’t keep quiet.
I can’t shut up, because we aren’t supposed to shut up about “Take Back the Night,” even in a religiously conservative town. I lived in that college town, off an on, for a total of nine religiously conservative years. In all that time, a single instance of rape, as far as I can remember, was reported, and it was attempted rape. Not the fake kind; the real kind. A college-aged guy walked into an open door of a women’s apartment where only one girl was at home, and jumped her. Brave thing that she was, she fought him and got some scrapes. He knocked her unconscious. Then, with other people approaching neighboring apartments, he vanished, and the other people found an injured young woman passed out on the floor. The university paper decided against showing a photo of her bruised face. It was a lousy paper, but they made the right decision on that one.
“Take Back the Night,” you see, is designed to make sure that that never happens again. It is this mentality that wants female rape victims’ faces shown so that men and their penises (otherwise known as “semen victim units”) will remain safely corralled. What these misandrists want is a continuation of the festivities at the expense of all men who don’t toe the line. The writers at “The New York Review of Books” appear to feel the same. If these “progressives” and Leftists wanted to actually prevent rape, there would be tables set up for gun manufacturers to sell their wares: “Take Back the Night – with a Tippman TPX!” The cry of “RAPE!!” is an excuse to insist that feminists’ precious bid for “equality” has not been achieved, that men still need to be taught by women. None of this helps a man who has been raped.
Do you want to hear from one such man?
“A Texas inmate [sic] described such a scenario to Human [sic] Rights Watch:
‘[My cellmate] was younger, stronger than I and larger. He introduced himself as a bi-sexual. And was for two weeks “touchie-feelie.” I had to screem [sic]/yell at him to stop. The officers here 1. Ignored my complaints. 2. Asked me if I was his lover. 3. Did nothing. He became more difficult to deal with and started to threaten me. Finally one day he attacked me.’” The “Texas inmate” rape victim had a penis and testicles, by the way.
Back to an article linked previously that dares to mention men: “Struckman (2000), who conducted a study of prisons in three Midwestern states… found that approximately one in five male inmates reported a pressured or forced sex incident while incarcerated and about one in ten male inmates reported that they had been raped. In addition, rates for women, who are most likely to be abused by male staff members, vary greatly among institutions. In one facility, 27% of women reported a pressured or forced sex incident while in another facility, seven percent (7%) of women reported sexual abuse. Furthermore, Forst found that youth [sic] in detention are also extremely vulnerable to abuse, and those juveniles [sic] incarcerated with adults [now I’m sic] are five times more likely to report being victims of sexual assault.”
The numbers for women look just about equal, don’t they? Of course, the alert reader will take note that the high percentage of women raped in prison also coincides with a much smaller percentage of female prisoners overall. But
27%
looks awfully, awfully bad, doesn’t it? And, of course, the “juveniles” (all of whom are capable of reproducing human life on an “adult” scale) are sexless.
But prison ratios are far from sexually equal for “juveniles,” either: “In 2003, 9,875 juveniles were in jail or prison… Of these juveniles, 6,869 were in jail… and 3,006 were in state prisons… Juvenile males (2,880) far outnumbered females (126) in state prisons.” Please remember, since the authors of the article failed to mention it for some reason, that the majority of “juvenile males” in “detention” are men, and that they don’t even belong there. (Whoops! Accidentally hit Ctrl + B. Won’t happen again.)
You want to know what I think about our country’s prison-rape culture? Watch Spike Lee’s masterpiece “Malcolm X” sometime. In the middle of the movie Malcolm is talking to a fictional character named Brother Baines (who represents all those who had a hand in the real X’s conversion to Islam) as they stand in a prison yard. While Baines rants about America’s hypocrisy (at approximately 6:00 in the linked video) and its half-measures to reach out to those who were discriminated against by law, the camera pans one black man’s face after another as they sit on a bench. I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling that Lee deliberately got permission to use actual prisoners. Just look at their beautiful, manly faces. All of them.
That’s what I think.
