How would you cope if you faced criminality every time you tried to come?
In America, sexuality in prison is censored.
Masturbation is effectively banned.
With hours to fill and little to no stimulation, the temptation for sexual self-release is high.
Donnie tells us why sexuality in prison is such a controversial issue.
Masturbation as a topic evokes all sorts of anxiety and fears of judgment.
Yet, we know nearly everyone does it, but only a select few are willing to openly speak about it.
We all remember our first contact with the word “masturbation”.
It may have been through any of its common euphemisms, e.g., jacking off, jilling off, rubbing one out.
We always knew exactly what it was and we probably thought it was nasty and sinful.
Getting caught would be the last thing we’d ever want to happen to us.
My first memory of masturbation dates back to when I was thirteen years old.
My uncle caught my cousin doing it in the restroom.
It was quite a scene.
Instead of making my cousin feel comfortable with his sexuality, my uncle ridiculed him in front of me and my cousins..
I’m not gonna lie and say I didn’t find it funny at the time because it was hilarious and not happening to me.
But now I wonder what exactly my uncle would have preferred for his son.
Would it have been better if he were out gathering infections and impregnating other teens?
Back then I thought masturbation was weird and nasty too.
I was only thirteen, so I had an excuse for feeling that way.
My uncle did not.
Maybe that experience was the reason why I never masturbated at a young age.
Either that or I just didn’t know-how.
I can honestly say I never had the urge.
I wasn’t asexual, maybe just not auto-sexual enough.
Then I got myself locked up.
I was sixteen and while I was a first-timer that wasn’t the case for everyone.
What I didn’t know then but know now is once a person enters the system, they usually return to it.
So here I was learning the ropes from juvenile veterans of correctional facilities.
I was placed in a security unit where everyone was in solitary confinement.
With over sixteen hours spent alone in those cells, privacy wasn’t an issue.
Boredom might have been.
We were only allowed two books or magazines, letters and photos from family, and writing materials.
For those lucky enough to have someone to correspond with, writing broke up the monotony.
There was only so much reading and writing a person could do though.
Boredom was inevitable and this is where masturbation entered the picture.
Honestly, masturbation never once crossed my mind until I saw one kid stashing some hair grease from the containers in place for general use.
When I looked his way, he proudly proclaimed the reason for his theft.
“I’m getting some pussy tonight”.
That was my indoctrination and initiation into the club.
I never became as boisterous about it as he was, but I was a sixteen-year-old looking at fifteen years or more.
I sorely needed new ways of dealing with my stress and boredom.
When it comes to sex, everyone knows some people live their lives faster than others.
As a distinct class of people, those who wind up in prison have likely lived theirs just a little bit faster.
Of course, there’s always the exception, but I’m willing to bet you’d find it hard to find a twenty-year-old virgin in jail or prison.
I’d also bet you probably have more than one living in your home or nearby.
For one reason or another, prison really is a revolving door.
Most people currently incarcerated as adults are likely to have spent time in juvenile facilities during their teen years.
It is also likely to be true that most of them were sexually active before entering those juvenile facilities.
How those kids learned to cope with the loss of their newfound sexual identities and expressions is overlooked or understated.
Sex and sexual expression are some of the most polarizing topics in American society.
It should not be a surprise that auto sexuality in prison has been suppressed by the puritan principles lurking within prison regulation.
Sexuality in prison is seen as something dirty and counterproductive to rehabilitation, even when that sex is with oneself.
Section 3007 of the California Code of Regulations Title 15, Division 3, which governs prisons states:
“inmates may not participate in illegal sexual acts.
laws that remove legal restraints from acts between consenting adults specifically exclude prisoners.
Inmates must avoid deliberately placing themselves in situations and behaving in a manner, which is designed to encourage illegal sexual acts”.
Section 3000 defines the terms used within the regulations and defines “Sexual Activity” as:
“[…] any behavior of a sexual nature between an inmate and a visitor, including but not limited to:
- Sexual intercourse, oral copulation, or masturbation.
- The rubbing or touching of breasts, buttocks, or sexual organs for the purpose of arousing, appealing to, or gratifying lust, passions, or sexual desires.
- Exposure of breasts, buttocks, or sexual organs for the purpose of arousing, appealing to, or gratifying lust, passions, or sexual desires.”
“Sexual Disorderly Conduct” is defined as:
“[…] every person who touches, without exposing, his or her genitals, buttocks or breasts in a manner that demonstrates it is for the purpose of sexual arousal, gratification, annoyance, or offense, and that any reasonable person would consider this conduct offensive”.
The language in Section 3007 implies that not all sex acts are forbidden.
Only the “illegal” ones.
What exactly is an “illegal sex act”?
In order to understand the coded language used here, one has to look no further than Section 3323(g)(3).
It punishes “consensual participation in sodomy or oral copulation” with a 31–60 day loss of good time credits.
The states wrote these regulations before they officially recognized gay marriage and relationships.
Making matters worse is the fact Section 3007 has no cited authority from the California Penal Code, unlike most prison regulations.
In essence, Section 3007 is an underground regulation with no real authority.
Look no further than the fact that every California prison allows condoms, and allows prisoners to possess up to three at any time, for proof.
So I could literally go and grab three from the condom dispenser right this moment if I chose.
Why would condoms be accessible if sex is illegal?
If sex is truly illegal, wouldn’t the act of providing condoms be considered aiding and abetting illegal activity?
Going further it’s also logical to assume the condoms are in place for potential sex with staff members.
The regulations do not and cannot punish a prisoner for so-called consensual sex with a staff member because inmates are not legally able to consent to sex.
Staff members presumably are aware of this.
Due to this:
Prison staff wield immense power over an inmate’s liberty.
Legally, any sex between staff and an inmate is rape.
For any further confirmation just reread the definition of “Sexual Activity” and notice that it excludes staff and other inmates.
Only when sexual acts occur without a staff member’s consent does an inmate face disciplinary action.
Inmates can be charged with “Sexual Disorderly Conduct”, as defined above, for touching themselves.
They can be charged with indecent exposure for masturbating in their cells or living area.
This fact is the most troubling of all.
That is if a staff member happens to appear and see.
Theoretically, the censorship of sexuality in prison is to protect prisoners from staff sexual misconduct and harassment.
But the force of the regulations is not as swift and severe as those geared towards inmates.
All staff has to do is tie their actions into any official security concern to get away with almost anything.
Arguably, a staff member is being voyeuristic when they watch an inmate masturbating.
But the staff can always say they were doing “Security Checks”.
Simply put, privacy, and the expectation of it is not a fully recognized legal concept for male inmates.
They do not exist in the same way a free person can have or expect.
So, in theory, masturbation constitutes an “illegal sex act”.
The government has gone out of its way to attempt the suppression of sexuality in prison by way of censorship.
In 1993, the California Department of corrections banned the viewing of R-Rated movies within all of its institutions.
The sex and nudity depicted in such movies caused the ban.
Christian prisoners and their allies allegedly spearheaded the ban.
In a bid to please the religious right, the Department of Corrections went along with the program of the Calvinist oppressors.
Three years later, the Department of Corrections banned magazines containing sexual penetration.
Seven years later a ban on nudity followed.
The main culprit for the latter bans was the female staff members who felt harassed or compromised by the open display of such explicit images within inmates’ cells and living spaces.
More than a few inmates refused to follow the rules by keeping such materials out of casual view.
The second cause of concern, however, was the careless and often deliberately harassing actions of male staff when handling explicit materials in the presence of female staff.
The end result of each of these regulations and restrictions has been an attempted suppression of sexuality in prison at all costs.
The only reason why condoms were made available to inmates was through the intervention of the Federal Government.
It has taken a more pragmatic approach to the potential spread of STDs inside of institutions and out into the communities.
The states, which never truly seem to understand or respect the separation between church and state, continue on in their attempts at suppressing all sexuality in prison no matter the place and time.
Donnie has no access to the internet, the articles come to us through the post.
We slightly modified the article to optimize its readability for the internet.
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