#carceral feminism

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"MORE DESERTERS AND WIFE-BEATERS," Montreal Gazette. October 15, 1913. Page 5. --- Society for Protection of Women and Children Handle Increased Cases ---- LAW NOT ACTED UPON ---- Legislation Providing That Husband in Jail Should Support Wife Adopted, but Not Enforced ---- The need of enforcing legislation for the protection of wives from dissolute husbands is emphasized this year to an even greater extent than formerly by the steady increase in the number of cases dealt with by the Society for the Protection of Women and Children according to Mr. O. H. Skroder, secretary of that body. This Increase he believes, is to a great extent due to the non-enforcement of existing laws, as well as the need for more severity in dealing with wife deserters.

An amendment was passed some five years ago providing that prisoners confined on such charges should be given work to do, and paid wages, their earnings to be devoted to the support of their families.

The increase in cases dealt with by the society has been noticeable for some time, most of such cases being wife desertion and wife beating. In June, July and August of 1912, 215 cases were dealt with, while during the same three months of the present year this number grew to 260. In September of last year the cases numbered 96, while last month there were 108 This increase has been steady, the number of cases increasing almost every month during the year, and it is feared that if some remedial measures are not taken the coming winter will be one of much hardship.

LAW ALREADY PROVIDED. The solution for much of the trouble according to Mr. Skroder lies in the enforcement of the law providing for the payment of wages to prisoners. About five years ago an amendment was introduced at Quebec and passed providing that men confined in jail on charges of wife desertion or similar offences where the wife and family had no means of support should be paid for their work during the term of the sentence such wages to be given for the support of the family. When the amendment had been passed and the first prisoner sentenced under its provisions it was found that there was no money to pay him wages. The city denied responsibility and the Government took no further action. Towards the end of the year the Society for the Protection of Women and Children usually introduces amendments which it desires to be made by the Provincial Government, and this matter may be taken up next month.

A case illustrating the need for such an amendment came to the notice of the Society yesterday, a man being convicted by Judge Lanctot and his wife and two children left absolutely without support. It appears some weeks ago he went to a hotel in Lachine, living there with his family, but paying nothing. He repeatedly told the proprietor that he was expecting mail from England with a cheque and on entering the hotel always asked if this mail had come. A few days ago it was discovered that he had left instructions for letters to be sent to the Montreal Post Office, and as he owed about $60, a warrant was obtained for his arrest. He was convicted yesterday morning, and will be sentenced next week. Meanwhile his wife and two children, one two years, and the other two weeks old; were left penniless. They were taken to the Sheltering Home yesterday until something can be done for them, but should the husband's sentence prove to be a long one such charitable institutions are not always able to maintain the family indefinitely."

[bookofshitposts]

Feminism’s embrace of carceralism, like it or not, gives progressive cover to a system whose function is to prevent a political reckoning with material inequality.

Amia Srinivasan, “Sex, Carceralism, Capitalism”, The Right to Sex

[reasonsforhope]

Legal protection against domestic violence has become widespread

"This chart shows the share of the global population living in countries that criminally sanction domestic violence or provide protection against it. The data comes from the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law project.

Throughout the decades, the legislation on domestic violence has increased markedly. Until the 1990s, less than 1% of the global population in countries was legally protected from it, with only Canada, Sweden, and Ireland providing such safeguards. And as recently as 20 years ago, 80% of people lived in countries without legal penalties for domestic violence.

But by 2023, this had more than reversed, and 9 in 10 people lived in countries with legal measures to combat domestic violence. This shift highlights an increased recognition around the world that domestic violence is common, especially against women."

-via Our World in Data, September 19, 2024

--

Note: This really puts in perspective just how much and how quickly attitudes on domestic and gendered violence are changing. Look at that graph! Look at it!!

Thirty years ago, there was only a single country in the entire world that thought hitting your spouse should be a crime, and had acted on that. (It was Ireland, go Ireland.) That is a world of difference from where we are now.

[notchainedtotrauma]

I think of Debbie Africa, who gave birth secretly in prison, how the other women prisoners used sounds to shield her birth process. They protected the two of them from guards so that she and the baby were able to share precious time together, undetected for days. I think of Assata Shakur too, impossibly conceiving and giving birth to her daughter while being a political prisoner, mostly in solitary confinement. And how she listened to her angry daughter, and the dreams of her grandmother when they told her she could be free. They could be together.

from Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

[theburialofstrawberries]

it's actually so so gratifying that angela davis devotes a whole chapter in women race class to dismantling susan brownmiller

[questioningespecialy]

re: Tory Lanez getting 10 years for shooting Megan Thee Stallion

Gonna quote my response to the Waving the Red Flag podcast discussing this yesterday. (timestamped @ 48:57)

Y'all lookin' at this from a punishment POV. Mofo, what good does somebody being outta society (and outta their loved ones' lives*) for x years do? You'll feel safe for the duration, sure, assumin' they don't send someone your way, but what improved? Was there a lesson to learn from losing x years of your life? A lesson beyond "don't get caught"? This some basic-ass children shit tbh. I get wantin' somebody to suffer (as a form of revenge especially), but wtf is the actual point when the suffering is x years of their life? They either 1) came out scared of consequences (and traumatized), 2) came out mad as hell (and traumatized), or 3) came out having learned a lesson that surely would've been more effectively taught through actual rehabilitation (and traumatized). Do I want abusers to suffer for their actions? yeah Would I rather they just become better people through healthy means? 👈🏿👈🏿 edit: About the "outta their loved ones' lives" part, there's gonna be people who want (and need) the abuser around for whatever reason. Just factoring them into it since they're affected too. Should've probably said "dependents", though. 🤔

Gonna provide oliSUNvia's "why does mainstream feminism support the prison system?" video for some context of sorts for my opinion. Not assuming she'd agree with me, though. (before y'all claim some shit)

Gonna link @reasoningdaily's post about the case since it's informative.

[please-picturemeintheweeds]

I have Opinions about the discussion that pops up every few months about the ethics of labeling JM an abuser but I am afraid of the vague posts and anon hate I would get if I posted them 🫠 which probably means I should be brave and post them. Speak now or whatever she said lol

[metamatar]

How to reconcile the obvious desire for women’s liberation with the fact south asian and east asian feminists are just so transphobic

we have no need to make excuses when movements attack their most marginalised constituents. these are not monarchs to be sworn fealty to, there is nothing to reconcile here, they are social processes we criticise and engage with. we need to recognise the material conditions that make these feminisms take these paths, the constitutive ways imperialism and racism heighten local transmisogyny etc. the terfs in the west are not disconnected from these processes. this is urgent and necessary work as transphobia kills.

this is not some exotic and impossible problem, savarna feminists in india obscure dalit feminisms, bourgeois feminists obscure working class feminisms, carceral and anti sex work feminisms have always dogged the project. personally, i think this is the price of any movement that cuts across such a broad swathe of people.

elevate the ones who aren't transphobic. trans women of colour do excellent activism and scholarship and atleast in india are quite recognisable. see grace banu. even on this website you can find trans women from india (@/taliabhattwrites) and south korea (@/rui-cifer) writing critically about popular transphobic feminisms in their country.

you can also choose to distance yourself from the project if you want and hitch your horse to another movement and view women's liberation part of transforming the relations of production or power so on.

[severeprincesheep]

Her family (i. e. Hanchett’s widower Daniel Hanchett) opted not to post her $1,000 bond because he feared that she might be a danger to herself or others, i.e. he didn't want to spend the money. But maybe now he can sue and see a profit.

rest in peace to Shannon Hanchett, and Oklahoma woman and bakery owner who died due to after getting put in a “temporary” cell during a mental health crisis. The room she was put in had no sink, toilet, and no bed for twelve days. The lights were kept on 24 hrs a day so she couldn’t sleep.

Allegedly she was denied water for 12 straight days.

At the time of her death, police and staff were joking and laughing just several feet away from her body.

[gatheringbones]

[“Intervention by the juvenile system can lead to incarceration—called “secure detention” in the juvenile system. “Every day, girls are securely detained for offenses that would not result in detention for a boy,” Sherman has argued.

While some young people are detained because of the gravity of their offenses, others are held in a misguided attempt to help them. Young people are placed in secure detention to protect them from conflict in the home, danger on the streets, potentially abusive boyfriends, their own impulses, being commercially sexually exploited, and returning to their traffickers. Prosecutors ask for young people to be held, and judges detain them because they see detention as the only way to provide young people with (or force them to accept) services. Young people are detained to ensure that they appear in court—either in their own cases or to testify against those who have harmed them—with the assumption that the legal process will somehow benefit the child. Young people who come into the system as victims of commercial sexual exploitation are often detained by judges who believe that holding them will prevent them from being revictimized, sometimes without evidence that they are actually at risk. In a Baltimore court, for example, an attorney explained that her client had been labeled as trafficked based on unsubstantiated information from a school resource officer; the girl did not understand why she was being described as a prostitute in court.

In their zeal to prevent trafficking, law enforcement officers and judges fail to recognize that involvement in the juvenile system makes young people more vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation. Musto calls this use of detention “carceral protectionism”: “enforcement with a protective bent or carcerality inflicted with care.” Detention in a carceral protectionist world is not always meant as punishment, but instead is seen as a necessary evil intended to benefit young people. “]

leigh goodmark, from imperfect victims: criminalized survivors and the promises of abolition feminism, 2023

[bimboficationblues]

The “carceral feminism is a loser ideology” mantra remains undefeated

[severeprincesheep]

A Woman's Place is NOT in Prison, a set of 7 Youtube videos about carceral feminism/prison abolition for women.

Thinking about when I was a freshwoman in college and a formerly incarcerated woman came to talk to my feminist theory class about how she believed in abolition but only for women's prisons. She spoke about how rare violent female criminals are, especially when you exclude abuse victims/self defense etc. She spoke about how many of her peers were broken and abused and needed help. She spoke about how isolating mixed-sex spaces for formerly incarcerated people were because so many of the men were openly threatening or misogynistic. She spoke about how complete abolition is unrealistic and impractical because of the epidemic of male violence. She had so many amazing hot takes that she would say without shame or hesitation. It really opened my eyes because I didn't think I was even allowed to think things like that. Anyway I hope she is doing well and I fully agree.

[cringefailvox]

https://www.tumblr.com/cringefailvox/764976225598029824/my-ultimate-fantasy-for-hazbin-s2-is-a-reveal-of?source=share

I give zero fucks about Alastor, but Valentino *IS* irredimable, rape *IS* the worst thing a person can commit. More than rape, Valentino ENSLAVES sex workers, dehumanizes them and abuse every single part of their existence. He is irredimable. He is a monster. Rapists are monsters and they don't deserve any kind of sympathy. The fandom hating Val more than Alastor is not a big deal as some people think it is, it's literally being a normal human being. (Alastor is also terrible, a serial killer and what he does to Husk is horrible, but even if he gets some sort of redemption it would be much better than giving a rapist redemption)

i hear you, but i respectfully disagree on a few points. apologies for how philosophical / unrelated to hazbin this is going to get, but i'm also a correlated philosophy major and i can't help it.

firstly, i generally resist the urge to strip the humanity from people who have committed atrocious crimes, because it's a slippery slope. dehumanization is always extremism, even if you're doing it to someone who you might think deserves it, because then how do we measure when a person has gone too far to be human anymore? how can we objectively measure the no-return threshold of irredeemability? i personally don't think we can, and that we shouldn't try. it classifies certain actions as outlandishly beyond the pale of the everyday person, when in reality anyone is capable of doing horrific things, and i'm not interested in obscuring that truth. it absolves responsibility.

secondly, with the understanding that obviously we're discussing a fictional character that has no bearing on the material world, i am wary of the claim that rape is the worst thing someone can do. not because i disagree, but because i don't believe in some objective scale of badness where each crime is neatly filed and ranked according to how horrible it is. it's sort of ridiculous how subjective morality is when you get down to brass tacks and super frustrating occasionally but it is what it is.

i also don't think there's such a thing as someone being irredeemable. cards on the table, i'm religious, and my tradition holds that redemption is possible for everyone - someone who is incapable of change may as well not be alive, and no one is incapable of missing the mark. in judaism, murder is the worst thing you can do someone, because there can be no complete repentance "unless the injured party has been appeased" (mishna yoma 8:9), and you can't repair a relationship with a dead person. of course, there's no compulsion for forgiveness either.

this is also tied to my rejection of punitive justice / the death penalty in general but i digress. this is really dicey, subjective moral territory, and i really don't have a perfect answer. i am just personally bothered by the idea that we can categorically revoke someone's ability to feel remorse and change their ways if they've "gone too far" and become some nebulous, inhuman monster by crossing the subjective line we've drawn in the sand. you can believe that rape is the absolute worst thing anyone can do, but i just want you to consider why you believe that beyond the cop-out that your belief makes you "a normal human being". your moral values are not universal, and neither are mine, and i would gently suggest examining your principles and whether they're based on punishment or rehabilitation & coexistence. there's really excellent scholarship out there on restorative justice and the shift away from carceral thinking, so i'll link some of those here:

breaking free of the prison paradigm by judy c. tsui

sexual violence and the possibilities of restorative justice by nicole westmarland, et al

restorative justice: the challenge of sexual and racial violence by barbara hudson

feminism, rape, and the search for justice by clare mcglynn

[notchainedtotrauma]

I would love to let go of the spinning of the capitalist wheels in my mind and meet the air on all my sides. If I could fly, surrounded all around by other dancers, chosen kin, free without an underbelly hid. I would. I did, it seems. Some time ago. Remember ? You were there.

from Undrowning: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

[lasdelaintuicionn]

The new trend of online "call out posts are inherently transmisogynistic" is so funny bc it was always going to get there. Just like warning people about men who commit sexual violence is "mob justice" "life ruining" and "carceral feminism"