Association of Libertarian Feminists

ALF NewsNo. 69, Winter 1999

Sexual Abuse Is Not a Fact of Life For Incarcerated Women

by Dyanne M. Petersen #59500-065

[On March 4, 1999, Amnesty International (AI) issued a report called Not Part of My Sentence: Violations of the Human Rights of Women in Custody, which focused on several areas including sexual abuse. An article on the report and AI’s associated campaign in the publication Amnesty Action highlighted the case of Robin Lucas, an inmate in federal prison in Dublin, California who filed a sexual abuse complaint against a former prison guard, Jon C. Hyson. As of May 1, 1999, Hyson was still awaiting sentencing after entering into a plea agreement in that case. This article is a response to that Amnesty Action article. —Ed.]Contrary to the impression given in the Spring 1999 issue of Amnesty Action, sexual abuse is not a fact of life for incarcerated women in the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) nor the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) in Dublin, California. I am one who knows: #59500-065 has been my federal registration number and FCI/FPC my address for over five years.

The "sexual slavery" case of 1995 was certainly sensational and the more recent indictment of ex-officer Jon Hyson on charges of sexual misconduct and abuse created local media excitement. Reported together, an image is created that perpetuates the myth put forth in too many made-for-TV docudramas and "Babes Behind Bars" exploitation movies. It is fantasy and dishonest. It is also insulting to incarcerated women who take pride in their integrity and strength, go to great lengths to care for and protect each other and reject the fashionable, politically-correct role of victim often assigned to us.

Most responsible, intellectually honest reporters know there is usually a story behind "The Story." And those who aren’t pushing a political agenda or pursuing attention-grabbing headlines investigate a little further to find perspective and truth. I offer you both, with no expectation of convincing you to revise your lead story or to amend your mission to help end abuse against women in U.S. prisons. I agree that your mission is an important one and I condemn, with AI, all acts of aggression and non-defensive violence against humans, incarcerated or not. I only hope to redirect your heroic efforts to those who most need your attention and assistance.

Jon Hyson was the Officer-in-Charge (OIC) when I was assigned to his housing unit upon my arrival at FCI Dublin in March 1994. My surprise was total when I witnessed my first 4:00 stand-up count with OIC Hyson: wolf whistles followed him down the halls, women stood in their doorways licking their lips, offering open mouths and tongues or making lewd comments and gestures. After count cleared and until his shift ended at midnight, women flirted shamelessly with him. It was often impossible to reach him at his officer’s station to ask a question or get one’s mail because so many women were jockeying for his attention. And this was repeated on each of his work shifts. I witnessed scores of provocative women offering themselves to him during my full year at the FCI and for almost four years at the FPC.

The women’s lack of respect for the officer and for themselves was disturbing and embarrassing. And the disrespect was not directed exclusively to Officer Hyson. All relatively young or good looking male staffers found an abundance of sexually willing and eager women to tempt and proposition them; men who were less attractive or desirable were also propositioned but the sexual favors they were offered often required payment in contraband, cosmetics, or other goodies.

It is inconceivable to me that Officer Hyson would seek out "victims" for non-consensual sex. What is conceivable is that inmates who had consented to sexual activity but were dissatisfied with the level of emotional commitment or special favors they were receiving registered complaints. Inmates who were suspicious or jealous of relationships between inmates and staff or envious of the special gifts and favors granted, would also be probable sources of complaints.

What in fact happens is this: the prison administration attempted to enforce its own policies to prevent inappropriate physical contact between inmates and staff. The "investigation" of Officer Hyson included using inmates to entrap him, to lure him into acts of sexual misconduct that he did not initiate nor coerce. The incentives for the inmates to cooperate with the investigation and entrapment range from simple vindictiveness against staff/officers to promises, real or imagined, of administration-directed favors. Cooperating "victims" have the added incentive of pursuing civil litigation for monetary awards if the criminal charges against the "offender" are proven. There are plenty of crusading and feminist lawyers to offer pro bono assistance and even more ambitious ones willing to pursue a large cash settlement from a federal agency on a contingency basis.

Several months after my transfer to the FPC, across the street from the FCI, in March 1995, a friend and two other campers were ordered into the Special Housing Unit (SHU/disciplinary segregation) for a marijuana possession investigation. Campers were normally taken to the SHU at the FCI but because of overcrowding at that time, the women were put in temporary segregated custody at the Federal Detention Center (FDC) which houses male inmates. During the first half of 1995, FCI inmates, including Robin Lucas and her co- litigants, were also sent to the FDC for disciplinary housing when the FCI SHU was full or while it was under renovation. Although I do not know the factual circumstances of the charges in the Lucas case, I do know that my friend and companions returned to camp from their extended FDC segregation with happy stories of repeated sexual activity with the male inmates, facilitated by one or more FDC officers. Although these women couldn’t verify the arrangements made between the cooperating parties, it was assumed that the inmates paid the officer for opportunities to be with the women of their choice. The women were willing, eager, consenting participants in the sexual activity.

Once the stories spread through the FPC, an epidemic of bad behavior began by campers hoping for disciplinary action and housing at the FDC. One can expect that the same thing happened among the FCI women who also sought vacations at the FDC. It’s not a pleasant story but it’s also not a story of coercion, abuse, or violence.

The impression that all women in prison are weak, helpless, potential victims is Victorian insulting nonsense. Women, like men, are sexual beings and most women inmates, separated from their husbands, lovers and/or children, are hungry for physical and emotional affection. Others see sex as a tool or weapon with officers and staff to secure lighter work details, special privileges, money, or contraband. And some women become the sexual predators other women fear.

There is no consensual sex in prison because prison policy prohibits it for the same reasons universities, the military, and many corporations prohibit superior- subordinate sexual relationships: discipline and objectivity are compromised and opportunities for abuse and coercion increase. And I believe the policy is a good one. But I would never advocate civil or criminal penalties for consensual relations. Abusive, rogue officers here are dismissed and frequently criminal charges are filed and convictions reached. But abuses are also perpetrated by inmates who, out of anger, frustration, boredom, the desire for monetary rewards or hope for early release, will destroy an officer or staff member’s reputation, career, and family.

I witness truly tragic human rights violations every day and most are the result of legislation and the court of public opinion, a misguided, paternalistic team that will remove men and women from their families, friends, careers, and communities for peaceful, non-aggressive, non-coercive, non-fraudulent, and genuinely consensual activities and warehouse them for years and decades with murderers, arsonists, terrorists, rapists, and thieves. What outrages me, what I can’t say loud enough or often enough, is that half the women don’t belong here because they’ve done nothing wrong, they have no victim; the other half doesn’t belong here because it’s too good for them.

The model of egalitarianism that is prison houses and feeds and punishes the marijuana grower and the serial killer together and in the same way—and at a cost to taxpayers of over $20,000 per year per inmate. This is an atrocity that far exceeds the questionable claims of possible sexual abuse from a nano-fraction percent of the thousands of women who have been in custody at FCI/FPC Dublin in the past five years.

Life in prison is far from my idea of a good time, but I’ve traveled enough in my pre-prison life to know and appreciate that women in FCI/FPC Dublin live, by any objective standard, better than three-quarters of the world’s population. I am safer from random acts of violence or rape than free women in Washington D.C., Belfast, or Kinshasa. And I’m old enough to remember fugitive Black Panther’s Eldridge Cleaver’s comment to the press when he returned from exile to face prison time in the U.S.: "I’d rather be incarcerated in America than free in Algeria."

There are real problems in our nation’s prisons and I applaud AI’s efforts to bring attention to and correct them. But please, please, focus more of your energies on reforming the draconian drug laws, mandatory minimums, and sentencing guidelines that are filling up America’s prisons and jails. Rally support for the hundreds of thousands of victims of the War on Drugs, not just as "prisoners of war" but as "political prisoners" who are imprisoned for holding dear and expressing in practice the radical ideas of self- ownership and individualism.

Rape is not part of our sentence at FCI/FPC Dublin. It’s not encouraged, condoned, sanctioned; nor is it a systemic problem: it is an anomaly, an ugly and infrequent exception to a vigorously enforced rule.

I don’t fear sexual abuse here as much as I fear being released into an America with fewer and fewer personal freedoms and with increasing violation of the rights which used to enjoy constitutional guarantees and protections that made us the envy of the world.

Book Review:

Gender Double Standards

Ceasefire! Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, by Cathy Young. New York: Free Press, $25, 360 pp.

This is a book whose documentation about how far some feminists have succeeded in influencing political policy with their "pro-woman" views is so devastating that it made me seriously reconsider (briefly) for the first time the tactical validity of my public commitment to feminism, and to understand more fully why some libertarians are loathe to make a similar commitment.

I’ve always avoided writing about gender. By which I mean, not whether an individual is a man or a woman, but the tricky issue of differences in the ways in which men and women behave, and what these differences indicate about nature and nurture, biology and culture. The issue is a trap for feminists: everyone waits with bated breath to see if they will exalt the ways in which women differ from men, or on the other hand will deny that there are any.

Cathy Young, a woman who arrived in this country from the Soviet Union at the age of 17 looking for a feminism that would hold that "what I was and what I did was not defined by my sex," is braver than I. She has written a whole book about the political misuse of gender. The book has generally been taken as a conservative attack on contemporary feminism (Young writes a column for the Detroit News and has often appeared in The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, and The Washington Times) but the behavior she chronicles is indulged in by feminists, politically correct politicians, conservatives, and "masculists" alike, and she is no respecter of persons. She devotes space to what is wrong with the other side of the "gender wars" also.

The book is divided into three parts: the first, "Myths of Difference, Myths of Oppression," examines studies that cast doubt on the assumptions of "difference feminists" and biological determinists, looks at the plight of working mothers and stay-at-home dads, and counters with copious evidence what she calls "oppression stories" of backlash, gender bias in school, economic discrimination at work, and biased medicine.

The second section, the main part of the book, deals with male violence, and is called "Innocent Women and Bad Men." Here she questions the assumption that all men are inherently violent and women are the victims of violent gender bias that underlies many contemporary changes in domestic abuse law, rape law, and sexual harassment law, each of which gets its own chapter. Male abuse, she says, has been "redefined as the enforcement rather than the violation of social norms." And females are often abusive too, which is excused as being uniformly defensive.

The last section, "Toward a New Paradigm," deals first with the legal treatment of fathers in support and custody disputes, devotes two chapters to the questionable assumptions and shortcomings both of supporters of the men’s movement and of conservatives, and ends by suggesting a twelve-step program toward an equal-rights-for-individuals movement.

Young’s particular targets throughout are the exhibition of generalized anger against the opposite sex, mistrust of the Enlightenment legacy, feelings of victimization, claims of misconduct that don’t stand up to scrutiny, and the double standards by which feminists will often adopt sex-role stereotypes when they are positive, while denouncing them when they are negative. Above all, she deplores the "shift from women’s rights to women’s wrongs," which is evidenced not only in contemporary feminism but in those whom she dubs "victim antifeminists."

Her message is best summed up in the following quotation. "A conservatism that came to terms with women’s (and men’s) new rules would have much to contribute to the discussion of the issues of the day. So would a feminism that repudiated victimhood, gender warfare, and a knee-jerk alliance with the left. But to be relevant to the lives of millions of men and women living in a time of change and trying to find their own imperfect balance between the modern and the traditional, both movements must give up the identity politics of gender and see men and women as human beings—a vision missing from our public discourse today."

As a feminist who repudiates victimhood, gender warfare, and a knee-jerk alliance with the left or the right, I applaud the publication of this provocative book.

Update

Once again your editor must apologize for the lateness of this issue, which although attributed to Winter is appearing in June 1999. In the fall of 1999, New York University Press is planning to publish a new Joan Kennedy Taylor book, What to Do When You Don’t Want to Call the Cops: A Non-Adversarial Approach to Sexual Harassment. So during the end of ’98 and the first six months of ’99 I have been spending most of my time on preparing that manuscript of mine for publication.

Since, as far as ALF News goes, "L’etat, c’est moi," I have unfortunately gotten behind on its schedule, a fact that I hope to rectify in the next few months.

Dyanne Petersen, the author of this issue’s lead article, is a long-time libertarian activist who has run a libertarian supper club in New York and worked in a free market think-tank in Illinois.

Sharon Presley, who is ALF’s West Coast Coordinator and the Executive Director of the non-profit educational organization, Resources for Independent Thinking (RIT) has been teaching two courses at Cal State Hayward during the spring semester and will be teaching Social Psychology there during the summer as well as a course in Personality at Diablo Valley College.

In April she gave a talk about early anarchist and libertarian feminist women (including Angela Heywood, Lillian Harman, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Suzanne La Follette), "Women Resisters to Authority: Anarchist and Libertarian Women in History" to a meeting of the Bay Area group Free Exchange, sponsored by the International Society of Individual Liberty. The talk was so successful that she was asked to give it three more times in April and May, to student groups at Berkeley and San Francisco State, and to the Atheists of San Francisco.

Although RIT no longer has an office in the Bay Area, its mailing address is still

484 Lake Park Avenue, #24

Oakland, CA 94610

RIT’s new phone number is (925) 228-0565.