Years ago, I read a book called Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison, by T.J. Parsell — well-written but yet another stark reminder of how a deeply embedded dynamic of oppression is being played out in jails, detention centers, prisons, and penitentiaries across the Land of the Free™.
The men and boys (of all ethnicities) who are deemed “punks” or “fish” within the incarceration hierarchy are accorded the most degrading punishment any man (of any ethnicity) can conjure up: being treated like a female.
They are intimidated, harassed, threatened, and feminized (yes, the time-worn patriarchal ploy of portraying womanhood as nothing more than a costume or performance).
These feminized [sic] males, by design, wind up on the receiving end of misogyny. They are assaulted, battered, silenced, raped, prostituted, treated as property, and often — in a twisted Prison-Industrial Complex version of femicide — murdered without remorse or accountability.
For the longest time, prisons and jails were among the few places on earth where men couldn’t force their way into female spaces.
So what do such men do?
They create female “surrogates” upon which they can rain down all the pent-up hatred and violence they can’t impose on real women and girls while incarcerated.
Of course, more recently, some men will claim to have magically transformed into women and thus gain access to female prisons and all the vulnerable women therein.
However, please consider that the events detailed in Fish took place around 1980. Can you — dare you — imagine how much worse it is now?
Every nightmare Parsell describes in Fish now has an official (and popular) porn category as pre-teens with smartphones learn how abuse and torture can be rewarded with arousal and orgasm.
What are we doing about this ongoing crisis?
For starters, most folks are denying it. Pretending it’s not happening. Remaining willfully ignorant of our complicity. Acting as if it’s “edgy” and “counterculture.” Commodifying it. Getting mighty defensive when anyone dares to expose heinous male behavior.
What can we do about this crisis?
For starters, never forget: There can be no peace, no justice, and no victory in the current spiritual war until we end the abuse of females.
From there, we must ditch our denial and distractions and instead choose to name the problem collectively. And address the problem. And solve the problem. That, my friends, is how a positive and sustainable revolution might commence.
It isn’t “man-hating” to expect and demand that males nobly step up and do their part. I’m not focusing on criticism. Rather, I’m trying to encourage, inspire, and uplift.
What can you do in 2024 to operate from a place of empathy rather than ego?
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This culture of abuse seems to be closely tied to status panic. Men with weak psychic cores are prone to all sorts of ugly behaviours. They do it for relative standing against other psychically weak men, and women too of course. Not sure how to fix that. Skilled violence stops them, but that has many limitations.
Sigh. Just ... sigh. But also, thank you for talking about it!