O.K., maybe I’m an idiot, and maybe this has been answered before, but I can’t help wondering about it:
Why are so many people in prison seemingly homosexual, or is this a myth?
If 1 in 10 people is supposedly gay in the outside world, and of these, many are often ‘in the closet’ for fear they’ll be beaten up or killed (ala the poor guy in Wyoming), I find it hard to believe all the tough macho guys in prison suddenly ‘switch teams’ just because no women are around. I’ve heard anal rape is supposed to be a power thing, but wouldn’t they get the same message across if they beat up the person instead?
which would be more demeaning to you, getting beat up, or taken from behind. besides bruises show and you have to look for, well the other kind of wound. maybe it’s easier to get away with.
You raise some good points. For people on the outside, and people who aren’t sociopaths, beating somebody up gets the message across just fine. Prisons are different. Not all prisoners need to be incurably evil - just a few prisoner are, and they are allowed the power to turn the place into their own little torture pit.
For one thing, there is a very different definition of homosexuality in the joint. The perpetrator of the sex crime is not considered homosexual. It seems that the aforementioned incurably evil criminals (and I do believe that - there is never a justification for rape) need someone to dominate sexually, just beating on each other isn’t enough. Outside of prison, they may be sex criminals, or they may dominate women in a (theoretically) consensual manner. http://www.igc.apc.org/spr/docs/prison-sex-lecture.html is the detailed lecture on this matter.
I’ve been interested in this for a while as a human rights matter. (I started by happening upon the matter of female genital mutilation in East Africa, a human rights problem compared to official connivance in prison rape its scale and severity.)
Could we eliminate prison rape? As usual, no. Could we reduce it? Yes. It is a moral imperative? Yes. Does this mean the average voter is going to start demanding change? No, just the ones whose kids get brutalized and psychologically damaged for life cause they got caught with a joint and had bad luck in a cellmate.
America: Wake up and do something about what is happening in your prisons
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
In some cases also, human males have a basic urge to stick their dick somewhere warm and move it around. Since there are no coed prisons, and conjugal visits from the fairer sex are not frequent for many inmates (or allowed in many jails), you take what you can get, so to speak.
Commiting a homosexual act does not make you a homosexual, any more than changing a pipe makes you a plumber.
According to what I read in Playboy, many prisons forbid the inmates to receive copies of that magazine.
You have to wonder just how many rapes could be prevented if the prisoners had some more, uh, mainstream ways of relieving their tension. No, I’m not saying that allowing copies of Playboy would eliminate prison rape, but it alleviate the problem a bit.
Can anybody think of a rational reason why prisons would disallow subscriptions to Playboy?
By ‘seemingly homosexual’ I mean that I can understand these macho tough guys may do the ‘rectal mambo’ with each other in prison but lead a heterosexual lifestyle when they return to the outside world.
As has already been mentioned, committing a homosexual act does not make one homosexual.
In other words, why are they committing this act at all? Based on the way other prisons treat child molesters (i.e. beat the crap out of them) and based on how gay people are treated in the outside world, I would think the first time a prisoner anal raped someone, everyone in the prison would beat him up/ kill him and this type of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. That’s why I question if it was a myth.
And even without Playboy, I’d still rather jerk off.
People get raped in prison. Rape is not about sex, it is about power. Men have sex in prison. Oftentimes a gay person will submit to another man for a protector and/or sexual gratification. The sexual urge is much stronger in people than most would credit. Most people I know who don’t have sex on at least a semi-regular basis tend to be in bad moods often. Go figure, pent up anxiety, not dealing with one of the primal forces of the self, and just the desire for companionship are all stifled in a prison situation. It is not surprising with these basic three (there are more) forces acting that men would have sex together in prison. Have you ever watched Tim Allen’s (from Home Improvement) old stand-up comedy act? He used to talk about giving blow jobs to guys. He said something that was basically, “friends do a lot of things together.” He was also in prison on some type of drug charges. The way he talked about oral sex with men sounded like he had experienced it first hand. The real issue at hand is how do they reconcile their homosexual acts when they are out of prison. I don’t really know but my WAG is that they simply don’t acknowledge it, or if they do they probably say it is just a prison thing.
On a related note, and tending to support the “when it’s all you’ve got” theory, I remember a conversation I was in with several soldiers during my army days. While they were all blatantly, straightforwardly gay haters, they were calmly and factually discussing that fact that soldiers in trenches during World War I gave each other hand jobs and blowjobs as a friend does a favor for a friend.
When I related this to a friend majoring in costume design (and studying the history of fashion), she told me that the flapper fashions of the twenties (short, boyish haircuts and long, straight dresses that hid curves) were a reaction by women to men who returned from the war less interested in buxom femininity than the kind of easy gratification they’d experienced with their fellow soldiers.
“A homosexual act does not a homosexual make.”
—Markxxx (et al)
Oh, really? C’mon you guys. Sounds a bit like rationalization to me. Is this true for both parties? I personally don’t care who’s doin’ who (adults), but I don’t think someone who has sex with another of the same gender can honestly claim to be “straight”. That would mean you could have sex with your wife 3 times a week, blow the neighbor once a month, and still hate gays. Too easy.
Truth is, men will screw just about anything.
We have our preferences, sure, but if we can’t have what we want we’ll settle for what we can get.
That’s why, as Boris so passionately states, our penal system should do more to protect the weak and unwilling.
I’ve never been in prison (or the Boy Scouts), but I’m not about to say I’d never boink the (willing) cutie-pie in the next cell.
That’s what I think.
Peace, mangeorge
Work like you don’t need the money…
Love like you’ve never been hurt…
Dance like nobody’s watching! …(Paraphrased)
I don’t like rhubarb or watermelons, but if I was stranded on an island and that was all that was available…
I really don’t know what I’d do if I went to prison. My first reaction is that I’d simply, uh, date my palm. But I can’t honestly say that I know how the experience of prison would affect a given person, and whether (if they temporarily “switched teams”) the change in sexual proclivity could be considered irrevocable.
[Hats off to you, BB, most interesting and informative thing I’ve read lately, and for me cancels out the last ghastly link I found on the SDMB, celebritymorgue.com, don’t ask.]
WELL worth the read, probably answers any question you ever wanted to ask about prison sexual behavior. Everything from facts and stats to the implications for concepts of homosexuality.
There are many cases of people when they are younger who experiment. Tons of coeds in college have played with their roomate, and there are tons of stories about HS boys who wind up experimenting.
According to you, these people are automatically gay (or at least bi-sexual), and I don’t think so.
If you were raped, would that make you cum? If a guy went down on tyou against your will, and you came (natural reaction to stimulation) does that make you gay?
I sumbit none of the above are gay, if they are not attracted to the same gender.
Now there’s something meatier.