Exactly. I’ve worked in prisons for over twenty five years and I can say that prison rape is nowhere near as prevalent as movies and TV would make it seem. My hunch is that a man in prison is less likely to be forcibly raped than a woman out of the street.
Essentially it’s a matter of safety. Even the biggest prisons in the country are just small villages - everybody knows everybody. Forcible rape is the kind of thing that can provoke anyone to go to extremes to get revenge. Rapists have to depend on anonymity to attack their vicitms and then get away.
So forcible rape just doesn’t work in the circumstances of a prison. If you hold a knife to some new guy’s throat and forcibly sodomize him today, you’re going to be living with him and seeing him all the time for the next ten years. What are the odds you’re going to survive those ten years without him cracking the back of your head open with a weight bar?
Seeing as I’m gay, I’ll try to answer it the other way. Could I practice heterosexuality?
Since prison won’t work, let’s say I’m stuck on an deserted island with a woman. As much as I don’t like to think so, I possibly could after it’s been a while.
I can’t figure out if the OP is about homosexual rape or simply about having anal sex with another man. I imagine the latter is much more common, even for happy, married men who aren’t rotting away in prison. At least if you go by Craigslist and sex advice columns.
Not about homosexuality per se. I think the thing that got me to thinking about it is the mechanics of it. As a guy I (generally speaking) need to be erect to have sex. Even if I felt I needed to ‘dominate’ another man for survival (in the prison set-up) I’m just so turned off by the idea of sex with another man I know I could never get it up for that stunt. Same goes for the sailor-at-sea aspect. No matter how horny I get another guy just ain’t going to do it for me.
I’m assuming by sailors the OP is talking old timey days, 15-1600’s. Back when the Europeans barely bathed. I can only imagine what a sailors ass could smell like after a month or two at sea. Even in modern times with showers and ass wipeys, not my thing.
What I want to know is how was the oral sex back in those days (hetero), was that a Saturday night before church only thing? I have no problem with a 24-30+ hour off a shower tasty bit(the right woman/women), sometimes more, but a week or more with non-modern soaps? I’d still do it, I think its more important than water, but how good was it, did the true flavor shine through, or was it just like licking a really sweaty, really wet, really nasty armpit, or possibly even a sailors ass?
I’m not disagreeing with this necessarily, but only clarifying based on my knowledge working in the corrections field.
Part of the confusion over the incidence of rape in the correctional setting is tha people focus, as Little Nemo does, on forcible rape and then say that it doesn’t happen much. But “rape” in this context is defined more broadly than that. The U.S. government’s definition includes, as well as forcible sex, “the carnal knowledge, oral sodomy, sexual assault with an object, or sexual fondling of a person achieved through the exploitation of the fear or threat of physical violence or bodily injury.” (Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003.) This type of nonconsensual sex does not require anonymity of the attacker; indeed, it requires instead that the victim be fully aware of the predator’s ability to cause him serious harm if he does not submit.
In fact, as Mr. Dibble said, research indicates that most rape in the correctional setting occurs not as a result of direct physical violence but as a result of credible threats of future violence. It is also worth remembering that in prisons especially, alliances and affiliations can be essential to an inmate maintaining his or her personal safety. If the inmate can only be admitted to an alliance or granted “protection” by sexually submitting, then he will do so. And due to those same alliances, incidences of sexual contact may involve not just two people (sex betwen cell mates at night) but a third person, fully aware of the circumstances, acting as a look-out in other areas (such as the showers). Inmates subject to potential victimization also may well lack the ability to directly retaliate, like by clocking their assaulter with a weight or otherwise attacking him, because that act itself can have serious reprecussions, from administrative punishment for fighting (segregation) to a retaliatory assault by the other person or his friends – one that may well end up with the victim’s death.
It is also worth noting that research confirms what I think most of us would expect: Victims of rape in a prison setting tend to be younger, smaller, more effeminate, gay, socially inadept, first offenders (who have no friends or alliances), or some combination thereof. IOW, those who are most at risk for victimization are in fact the ones most likely to be victimized. Those same types of people will frequently lack the skills or ability to either defend themselves from coercion/attack in the first place or to avenge themselves for it afterward.
It is also worth noting that virtually every authority attempting to research or document this issue concedes that the incidence of prison sexual victimization is vastly underreported. Even given that caveat, the latest U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics indicate that 4% of U.S. prisoners have experienced sexual victimization by other inmates or by staff. That’s some 70,000 inmates every year. It’s a problem, and the government acknowledges that it’s a problem, that’s why Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. Granted, they’ve done jack-shit with that law since passing it, but passage was itself an acknowledge of a serious issue.
This is a hijack from the OP, I know, but I spend a fair chunk of time explaining to detention officers that just because sex looks consensual doesn’t mean it is consensual, and that if inmates have the courage to report sexual exploitation, those reports must be taken seriously and handled without judgment.
Jodi, you are very knowledgeable, thanks for that information. It is very interesting, enlightening and also disturbing. What if your profession, do you work in prisons?
I am purely heterosexual and I certainly do not see men as sexual objects in any way. I don’t even like them touching me beyond a handshake. I especially do not like male anuses. Some people’s physical sex need seems to be a lot stronger than mine. As long as I have a free hand, it will obviously be a non-issue forever if need be. Until a decent looking female comes along, that will be the way it is.
I’m a lawyer working for a “project” at a major university, teaching and training in legal issues in corrections. I’m not faculty; when people hear you work for a university, they always want to know that.
I agree with what Jodi posted. Sex does occur in prisons and most of it is justifiably and legally definable as rape. Being coerced and/or intimidated into agreeing to have sex does not equal consent.
But most people when they talk about the issue of prison rape are thinking of it in the limited sense of actual forcible rape - somebody having a knife held to their throat while being sodomized in the shower. That particular type of rape, which many people feel is common in prison, is actually relatively rare for the reasons I mentioned.
I’ve been thinking about this (thanks a lot Dope) and to me this seems the crux of the matter. Either most people have stronger sexual drives that I do, which seems unlikely as I would like to have sex at least twice a day, or there’s a whole lot more gay guys out there than would normally admit it. I don’t know that I could ever be at a point where I woke up one day and said “Damn, I just have to stick my dick into something, and I don’t even care what.”
I don’t think it’s that there are necessarily people with stronger sexual drives. I think there are people that are lucky enough to regularly exercise their sex drive that don’t realize how strong it can be in the absence of a partner.
As for me, I’m only what I feel to be 80% straight, so I don’t doubt that in time I’d engage in some sort of homosexual practice. I don’t know if it would be up the pooper chooter, because that’s always grossed me out (with others… we all know my exploits). I’m just saying I have a need for sexual intimacy and I think it’s likely that I would adapt.
Yes, if for whatever reason I was put in a women’s prison - filled with beautiful young women who are in jail for being too hot - I’d engage in sodomy.
