From Dragonfly: A Feminist

This is not going to be the most academic view of what it means to be a feminist in prison, but it's time that I reveal some of the thoughts I have about some of the things I see. One who is a feminist may think that a community entirely women-oriented would be a wonderful place for budding feminism. This is certainly not the case here.

I can't remember if I wrote about this before, but one night in my room, my bunkie was talking about how her girlfriend pissed her off and so she hit her. I was not part of the conversation, having been lost in the world of a good book, but I spoke up at that moment and said, "you hit her?" She said, "yes" and that sometimes it is the right thing to do. I then said, "it is never okay to hit a woman." My other two roomies disagreed with me and said that they believe that sometimes, someone deserves to be hit - especially someone we are dating. I spoke up and said, "okay, let's please talk about something else. My little feminist brain can't handle any more of this conversation. It is NEVER okay to hit a woman. It is never okay to hit someone we are dating. I've participated in countless activities to stop this kind of domestic violence." They stopped and moved on to a different topic. I laid in my bed, wondering, where in the world had we all gone wrong that women actually think it's okay to hit their female partners.

The thing is, I've seen too many "couples" get into physical fights here. The next day, after swearing they'll never go back with that person, the person abused goes right back to the relationship. I've seen fat lips, bruised arms, knotted heads, black eyes, as well as heard all the made-up excuses: "my locker did it," "I fell out of bed," "I tripped on the sidewalk." Meanwhile, they cry to their closest friends about how ABC punched them because they accused them of cheating or how they both punched each other in the rage of a fight. This happens so often, that I've become desensitized to the reality.

I'm not exactly sure how to best understand my experience under any feminist pedagogy. So many women, here, do stand up for themselves. In a community where women outnumber the men about 95:5, the women still back down if a male enters the space. They treat male staff differently than female staff. They talk about them differently, too. They respect them differently.

Even when I try to speak up about these observations, people just stare at me. Even those educated around me, would probably not refer to themselves as feminists. If ever there was a place to build the ideals of feminism: such as being independent, standing up for oneself, believing that females and males are equal and deserve equal treatment, demanding for tolerance of diversity, this is the place I would think it possible. But, then again, we are all "broken" and away from our comfort zones. Perhaps, that makes us the women society always said we were. I don't know. Just wanted to share a couple thoughts.