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đŸȘ” The Threshold

Formalistic equality with male prisons makes women's prisons more repressive, not less.

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tagsja-picks, xref, question, contrarian_or_surprising, trade, singleton, category/contrarian-or-surprising
aliases@davis_are_2003, loc. 197

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Formalistic equality with male prisons makes women’s prisons more repressive, not less.

Evidence

In contrast to the nineteenth-century reform movement, which was grounded in an ideology of gender difference, late-twentieth-century “reforms” have relied on a “separate but equal” model. This “separate but equal” approach often has been applied uncritically, ironically resulting in demands for more repressive conditions in order to render women’s facilities “equal” to men’s. 
 It does not occur to her that a more productive version of feminism would also question the organization of state punishment for men as well and, in my opinion, would seriously consider the proposition that the institution as a whole— gendered as it is—calls for the kind of critique that might lead us to consider its abolition. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 197

Categorization

  • XREF: Davis’s critique of formal equality parallels her earlier analysis in Women, Race and Class of how liberal abolitionism reproduced hierarchy; connects to the contradiction of demanding ‘equality’ with an oppressive institution. — connects to: Men’s prisons are gendered institutions, not the norm against which women’s prisons are judged — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 158; Ignoring women prisoners makes the operation of state punishment partly illegible — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 170; Male prisons functioning as the punishment norm drives women’s conditions toward greater repression. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 204 (+4 more)
  • QUESTION: What would a genuinely structural (non-formalistic) feminism of punishment look like, that questions the male norm too?

Broader Connections

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