Breaking Women by Jill A. McCorkel

Author:Jill A. McCorkel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2013-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Like most of the inmates, PHW counselors reserved some of their harshest criticisms for heterosexual women who had sexual relations with other women during their incarceration. What was problematized among counselors, however, was not interpersonal deception per se, but the expression of “inauthentic” sexual desire. There was no other bit of information about prisoners that drew the attention and focus of the counselors more than reports of sexual relations or romantic overtures between women. In the privacy of staff offices and during get-togethers outside the institution, such information was always met with one or more expressions of disgust and disapproval (e.g., “That’s disgusting,” “These women are crazy,” “Don’t leave me alone with her—she may jump me,” “It gives me the creeps to know what they’re doing”).28

When staff learned of liaisons or romances between prisoners, they staged fairly lengthy, public confrontations of the sort described previously. Over the course of my participation in the setting, there was no other behavior or rule violation, including violence, that drew so much attention and intervention from staff. During the confrontations, counselors cultivated expressions of outrage and condemnation from other prisoners to drive home the point that expressions of same-sex desire were, from the perspective of program ideology, inauthentic and deviant representations of the self. The following exchange occurred after counselors caught a prisoner named Tracy kissing another PHW prisoner. In this confrontation, counselors showcase how the “inauthentic” expression of desire reveals something “wrong” about the self:

COUNSELOR #1: What’s going on, you gay now? Dialogue.

TRACY: No, I ain’t gay.

COUNSELOR #1: What’d you call making it with another woman? I’ve been around a long time. In my book, that’s gay. [Counselor #2], how would you call it?

COUNSELOR #2: I’d say she’s wrestling with some feelings and issues deep down inside. Better get in touch with that. Women just don’t get those feelings for women, something’s going on, right Family?

PRISONER #1: Hell yes!

PRISONER #2: She’s a lesbian, she’s gay for doing that.

PRISONER #3: I don’t want no gay stuff going on around me! That’s sick!

PRISONER #4: She’s jailing and faking it in here. She’s not being honest.

COUNSELOR #1: OK, enough, hold up, Family! [Tracy] you need to deal with this. If you’re not gay or you’re not wrestling with feelings about your sexual identity there’s something real bad going on, you see? I ain’t never had no feelings for no woman—you see what I’m saying? I’m not saying it’s wrong if you a lesbian, but you either are or aren’t! You just don’t get feelings for a woman and act on them in a sexual way. I understand you reaching out for another person, we want you to feel safe emotionally, physically, and spiritually in here. But you crossed the line and made it sexual. Something inside took you there, that’s part of what’s wrong in here, inside you.

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