AUT: Re: emancipation and imprisonment

[Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

Katha, I am not ignoring your other critical remarks, like that
on child custody (1). It was just much easier for me to respond
quickly to this thread within our exchange of views.

                1) I'm writing an answer which begins as follows:
                "It was far from my intention to literally propose
                that men should through law automatically be
                granted the custody of the child(ren) after a
                divorce. I have no trouble agreeing with you that
                this would be outrageous."


                            * * *

You wrote:

        Yes of course, true equality for women in capaitalism
        would mean that women took on many more social roles
        than they now occupy. So in that limited sense, "criminal"
        would be one of those social roles, and there would be
        more female prisoners -- as, presumably, there would be
        also be more women physicists and car dealers (and male
        secretaries and kindergarten teachers).

Agreed.

        However, that wasn't all you said. You linked this growth
        of women prisoners to women's capacity to enforce their own
        liberation. To which I can only say, harald, look at the
        people who are prisoners now.  they are the LEAST equal people,
        the people LEAST able to enforce their own liberation: blacks,
        Hispanics, poor people, alcoholics, drug addicts, and the
        mentally ill.  the things people do that land them in prison
        are typically not about enforcing their own liberation, they
        are just desperately flailing about in a stew of violence and
        misery, hoping to make some money by robbing a store.  Poor
        black people mostly kill other poor black people etc.

The relations between "races" are not directly comparable with
those between men and women. They often are treated as such by
leftist organsisations when they draw up their shopping lists
of oppressed groups and good causes. Nonetheless they remain
qualatatively different relations which only can be understood
in their particularity and through their particular histories.
Had these relation been equivalent, women (whether black or white)
would come out as the "privileged" or dominating sex according to
your logic above.

There is nothing liberating in being a common soldier in the
wars of our "bosses", still the fact that more men than women
die in uniform in a morbid way reflects the dominant position
of the male in society as a whole, even if the great majority
of men, if they don't end up as corpses on the battlefield,
remain dominated.

It is most unlikely that those who spend their time on death
row feel particularily liberated, still an emancipation of
women on a general level of society would make it far more
likely that more women in the United States will meet this fate.
That is if not the gained equality of exploitation and
subordination is not turned into a joint force to get rid of
the death penalty, and hopefully also wage slavery as such.

You write:

        the romanticization of criminals -- which I still
        think you fall into when you link jail with "enforcing
        one's own liberation" -- has a long unhappy history in
        the American left. That's why I respond so strongly
        against your post.


I am as I see it not romanticizing anything, on the contrary.
That the the romanticization of criminals has a long unhappy
history in the American left, I do not doubt. It has been part
of the celebration of victimhood and collective guilt. It fits
well into a protestant ethic.


Harald


  in solidarity,
  Harald Beyer-Arnesen
  haraldba@xxxxxxxxx



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