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Elizabeth Remick
April 27, 2016
GSWS 401-901 Senior Seminar
Dr. Liz Canfield
Colonial Gender Scripts Compounded through Prison and Modern Lynchings
Prison will make you something other than the man or human being you thought you were.
David, age 34, an excerpt from Re/Constructing Black Masculinity in Prison
Not only is gender a social construct that is often left unexamined by greater society, but
its dichotomous nature and implied binary is not universal our current gender system is one
maintained by Western imperialism and reinforced by our ever pervasive roots in monotheistic
religion, specifically Christianity. However, in the United States quest to become the worlds
giant prison, gender is compounded by this binary into a system that simultaneously asserts the
dichotomy and denies gender autonomy to its forced inhabitants. Prisons maintain this system of
categorization without an intersectional approach, but many would argue that criminals do not
deserve gender autonomy nor that it is an existing problem. Regardless of ones opinions on
criminality and the deserved autonomy, the binary remains unexamined as a product of
imperialism and can be seen as a microcosm in prison culture. The ties between our societys
fascination with Black criminality and the ways in which we are gendered is important in
understanding the inherent values that are placed on groups of people by our systems and
institutions and how our ideologies, rooted in a gender binary, affect these groups in ways that
often end in incarceration as a tool of power and control. Those who are not incarcerated are
ultimately killed, though their deaths are often positively sanctioned as reminders that you do not
break the law in any case especially if you are Black. We see in these cases a cognitive system

that genders, racializes and criminalizes minorities, especially in Black communities, and then
cages them or kills them because of these colonial indicators of a less-than humanity, if there is
any indication of humanity at all.
Neocolonial gender descriptors apply to all things that can be valued or devalued, which
includes people, who are divided not only based on their physical appearance and/or genitalia
(male or female), but under a scope of masculine or feminine values, with white heteropatriarchy
at the top of the value pyramid. The people who have value through this binary are the
colonizers, while the people who are victims of the system are the colonized. People of color,
lower classes, and people with mental disabilities among other oppressed groups have
historically been denied any benefits of their gender, and it is magnified in our current model of
incarceration and prison culture, including the recent public executions committed by
representatives of the government, as in the case of Michael Brown and Sandra Bland. The
people who benefit from the binary are seen through a lens of whiteness: a construction of
systems, institutions and ideals that peg white as an invisible norm while creating a system of
racialization that others people who do not adhere to the scope. Not only is gender used as a
descriptor, but it is a title given to people deemed worthy of humanity. Unlike other animals,
humans are a gendered species which allots them value under a scope of dichotomous gendered
value. The people in prison, and the types of people considered criminals, do not gain value
through the gendered binary unlike the people who successfully navigate it and are awarded
value through the binary. It is much easier to murder and incarcerate people when they are
dehumanized, and the way weve imperialized gender and use the binary as a way to
humanize/dehumanize specific groups of people is directly evidenced in our carceral system.

The people in prison, disproportionately people of color, are denied gender autonomy and
denied gendered value under the imperial binary system. The masculinity and femininity that are
implied with the prison systems are extreme dichotomies and are valued less because the binary
does not benefit what society deems to be criminality criminals are no longer people with value
and no longer deserve respect. Our modern American prison system is based on a gender binary,
as are the ways in which we criminalize people. As a microcosm of this gendered power play, I
look toward lynching, which provides a delineated narrative of the ways in which the gender
binary as a value model is denied to Black people. According to Dianne Williams, between
1930 and 1973, Southern jurisdictions put to death 398 Black men and 43 white men for the
crime of rape (33). Not because Black men are more likely to, or actually do commit more acts
of rape, but because gender and sexuality in the sense of a racialized binary acts as a tool against
people of color and specifically against Black people. In order to understand the way that people
of color are criminalized, gender needs to be viewed as an intersectional composite of identity in
which it does not apply to all people equally.
Beyond applying the binary to autonomous persons, a consequence of implementing the
gender binary as a product of colonial/neocolonial modernity and as an accepted dichotomy, is
that transgender peoples face widespread violence and hatred. Smaller, tangible instances of the
implied binary such as mens and womens-only bathrooms reassert the normalization of only
two genders, however larger, more powerful systems of control such as prisons, compound the
normalization of the binary while denying its prisoners the right to be gendered (or not) and to
infer value under the binary. Because societal views on masculinity and femininity are so
polarized, the binary becomes a dichotomy and is used as a tool to oppress people who do not

fall under the gendered binary, and the gender spectrum falls to the sidelines. Transgender teens
and adults are more likely to suffer from poverty, stigma and homelessness, all which attribute to
reasons for what is considered crime. There is also a disparity in the way that that trans people
(of any gender, or genderqueer) of color are treated because of the way we racialize criminality.
Therefore, the likelihood of trans people of color not only ending up in prison, but it a prison
system that defines their gender for them, is higher. When this gender binary is applied in
confined spaces and institutions, it denies the multiplicity of genders, which enforces a
whitening of genders. The strict definitions of man and woman and the idea that
masculinity and femininity are polar identities exists through and within Western imperialism. As
explained in the book, Penal Culture and Hyperincarceration,
Colonial understandings of race and gender permeated the development of institutional
forms of control including punishment. Systems of punishment differentiated between the
coloniser and the colonised and these differentiated systems were foundational to the
operation and understandings of colonial justice. Modernity and the development of
modes of punishment that disavowed corporal and capital punishment were understood to
be inapplicable for Indigenous people because they were defined as racially inferior.
(187)
Therefore, the modern levels of incarceration and the racial makeup have direct links to
the creation of a colonized binary and the implementation of racial criminality. William Pinar
adds to this by explaining that white male southerners tied slavery abolition to feminism, which
was feared because it disrupted the natural order of the genders and would therefore
completely dismantle the institution of marriage which primarily gave men property rights over
their wives (238).

The Gender Binary and Whiteness as a Colonial Concept

Our current gender binary, which emphasizes and venerates differences between the two
genders, while strongly enforcing patriarchy, is a product of colonialism. It is used as a tool to
separate the colonizer from the colonized under a system of patriarchy where white masculinity
is valued beyond any other gendered identity. Maria Lugones, who provides the argument that
the dichotomous nature of our current gender system is rooted in coloniality states, Beginning
with the colonization of the Americas and the Caribbean, a hierarchical, dichotomous distinction
between human and non-human was imposed on the colonized in the service of Western man,
explaining that during colonization, non-white peoples were considered less than human, and
therefore void of gender, and that the gender binary that was enforced upon the ground of
heteropatriarchy benefited white men and, due to the inhuman nature of non-whites, white
women as well (743). It is this ideology that pervades our current gender model, whereas
although it is generally known that non-white peoples are human, and therefore gendered,
there is still a distinction in our systems and institutions, such as prison and law, between good
gendered people and bad gendered people. She posits in her essay, Heterosexualism and the
Colonial / Modern Gender System gender arrangements need not be either heterosexual or
patriarchal (190) and that the gender binary changed with colonialism: although still hierarchal,
there were now multiple tiers of value.
Colonialism did not impose precolonial, European gender arrangements on the colonized.
It imposed a new gender system that created very different arrangements for colonized
males and females than for white bourgeois colonizers. Thus, it introduced many genders
and gender itself as a colonial concept and mode of organization of relations of
production, property relations, of cosmologies and ways of knowing (186).

This concept is encapsulated by our views of criminality and used as a tool of oppression toward
people of color and others that do not fall on the spectrum of whiteness. As an example, Lugones
provides that the Yoruba society did not have a gender system in place before being colonized,
but Western researchers misinterpreted the language to actively seek out a gender binary. The
Yoruba language includes male/female categories, but they are not dichotomous or hierarchal as
the colonial gender binary seeks out and dictates (196). She further explains that the white
colonizer constructed a powerful inside force as colonized men were co-opted into patriarchal
roles that did not exist before (200).
Because the colonial gender binary is implemented in a system that supports white
supremacy it is therefore beneficial to whiteness alone. As a construct, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz
explains whiteness; while it is tempting to see whiteness as skin color, whiteness is a structuring
and structured form of power that, through its operations, crystallizes inequality while enforcing
its own invisibility (264). It is a construct that encompasses forward mobility in institutions and
systems of power and places gendered values on all identities, though these values are not equal.
The positive attributes that are afforded to specific genders within whiteness are not attributed
toward people of color, and because gender is such a pervasive construct, it is important to note
gender experiences within intersectionality and not across the board.
Within white supremacy, certain privileges are even afforded to people both within the
gender binary and outside of it. Vidal-Ortiz continues, For instance, in contemporary trans*
spaces, the perception of having the choice about being genderless, gender fluid, or genderqueer,
is often tied to white privilege where non-conformity is seen as dangerous in communities of

color. Whiteness allows a certain degree of comfort in gender expression, because whiteness
allows respect to autonomy. We see this in the recent transition of celebrity Caitlyn Jenner, who
is largely given support despite her conservative views and anti-lgbq sentiments. Jenner is hailed
as, at the very least, providing visibility to the masses, but her ability to pass and her whiteness
can provide again a negative landscape to trans visibility. We see her exuding not only the binary
but applying whiteness to trans issues, and many people would not look beyond her example,
because within the binary we are not often asked or interested in stepping outside of it. We
accept the embodiment of transgender issues in Caitlyn Jenner only, because although her
gender in relation to her is sex is not dichotomous, she still invokes the binary. The ways in
which systems and institutions has viewed and implemented gender in people of color is
animalistic and dehumanizing, which allows for inequality and disproportionate violence against
communities of color. Therefore, the absence of visibility in trans communities of color, and in
the lack of coverage on the epidemic of trans women who were murdered in 2015 - twenty-one
so far with the majority being women of color provide a narrative to how we view trans people
as a gendered society.
Lugones states that this animalistic view of colonized genders for instance the idea
that although colonized women were female, they were not feminine and therefore without
humanly value allowed for the rape and mistreatment of colonized women, mirrored in the
individual and systematic mistreatment of women of color today. Although colonialism invoked
the power of patriarchy, white femininity still reigned above either gender of colonized peoples:
Colonized females got the inferior status of gendering as women, without any of the privileges
accompanying that status for white bourgeois women (Lugones 203). To further appeal to the

detriment of this gender dichotomy, Lugones states that white bourgeois women were considered
far more inferior than Yoruban women before colonization (203). Even when people of color are
gendered, the rules are not the same. For example, when Black men are seen as masculine, it is
used as a tool of violence against them seen in prisons and police forces who actively victimize
Black men for being Black and for being men. This masculinity presented as valuable is
applicable only to white cisgender men. In cases of violence against Black male children or men,
their masculinity becomes a buffer in which to judge them. Words like thug are masculinized
in negative ways and used against Black men to assert their natural inclination toward
criminality.
As a morbid example, as recounted by Dianne Williams, in 1984, a 37-year old white
man killed two young black men and injured two others on a subway in New York. Many
Americans at the time hailed him as a thug buster and he was not charged with murder: he had
no criminal record, whereas the four Black men did, although he admitted his intention was to
murder them, to hurt them, to make them suffer and the jury was majority white (Williams 4).
This, and more recent extrajudicial murders of Black men and women such as Michael Brown
and Sandra Bland, speak to the coloniality of denying people their humanity via a system of
gendered value. It is seen again and again in our media, as we watch a white cop in South
Carolina, also home to the most violent attack on Black people in the U.S. in 75 years, throw a
black teenage girl across a school classroom. In this recent example, the value that the gendered
binary places in white femininitys innocence and fragility is nowhere to be seen. The false
narratives of concern for safety when it comes to femininity is only applicable in instances of

white womanhood. Although our common, incredibly ironic and shallow, idiom for men, Its
never ok to hit a woman is widely accepted and touted as an inherent societal rule, it is clear the
rules can be broken by certain members of society, as shown in videos of white policemen and
community members breaking up a pool party in Texas. Young Black teenage girls are repeatedly
thrown to the ground and manhandled, and an innocent pool outing becomes a site of extreme
racial tension on behalf of the white community members who are more concerned with
protecting property (that they do not even own) than assuaging racialized violence. We see over
and over again Black feminine bodies treated as objects and it is clear that the protection of
femininity applies only to those who exist in the scope of whiteness.

Violent, Racialized Masculinities & Femininities

Crime has historically been seen as something in the realm of men, and later in the realm
of masculinity, as a general concept. This is problematic both because it assumes that crime and
violence are inherent to men and that women who commit crime are not truly feminine and are
therefore not staying in their lane. Criminalizing gender therefore masculinizes feminine
identities and feminizes masculine identities. Furthermore, women who commit crimes or acts of
violence are often seen as acting out in a masculine fashion. According to Lyn Brown, Meda
Chesney-Lind and Nan Stein, Most media treatment link the increase in girls violence to girls
becoming more like boys (the dark side, if you will, of girls and womens quest for equality)
(21). According to their research, criminologists have been warning the public for years that

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equality between men and women would lead to women behaving like men, especially in the
character and frequency of womens crime. They continue, Forms of girls minor violence
that were often ignored are now being criminalized with serious consequences, particularly for
girls of color (22). Severely criminalizing minor crimes can affect minorities and economically
marginalized communities, disproportionally affecting Black women, who are policed more
often and more consistently than white women. According to statistics, Chesney-Lind provides
that Black girls are more likely to be considered criminals or be suspended from school:
It should come as no surprise that youthful arrests in this area are up as a consequence
with both race and gender implications. Specifically, while African American children
represent only 42% of the public school enrollment, they constitute 61% of the children
charged with a disciplinary code violation. And these violations have serious
consequences; according to a U.S. Department of Educations report, 25% of all African
American students, nationally, were suspended at least once over a four-year period
(Harvard Civil Rights Project, 2000) (5).

Whereas now that crime has been expanded to include women, these women are othered and
placed into a category where ladylike qualities do not keep them safe from criminalization
(Brown, Chesney-Lind and Stein 25). Black trans women are often accused of prostitution via
their very existence, and in the media are taken less seriously than white trans women. This
criminalization of non-normative gender identity, in a context of intersecting systems of
oppression, leads to extremely high rates of incarceration for transpeople of color. The rampant
criminalization of trans bodies normalizes the ideology that existing outside of the imposed
binary is deserving of incarceration. Furthermore, it proves the general ease in which society
locks people away, especially if they are easier to dehumanize because they do not follow the
confines of whiteness or gender.

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Black men are also routinely accused of criminality based on social views of Black
masculinity as aggressive and routinely violent. However, Williams claims that social systematic
and institutional obstacles are more likely to explain why people of color, especially if they are
Black, are more likely to be incriminated and therefore unjustly accused of inherent criminality,
stating, Today, studies show that race is the single most important factor in the likelihood of
being arrested, convicted and imprisoned, compounded only by employment status (6).
However, race cannot be separated from the gender binary and as Lugones claims, The gender
system is not just hierarchical but racially differentiated, and the racial differentiation denies
humanity and thus gender to the colonized (748). In M. Nandis, article, Re/Constructing
Black Masculinity in Prison, she recounts her experiences working as a prison correctional
officer and during a study she did while working:

During the five-week academy training that Maryland requires, we were offered no
lessons on race/gender/class politics, and the instructors told us repeatedly that we would
be equipped with only two weapons while at the prison: our minds and mouths. Given
what most of us had learned to think about criminalsparticularly Black maleswe
would employ these weapons often, and heavily, to let the prisoners know how negatively
America thought of them. (94)

Respect, an idea so integral to ones self-worth and a large part of hegemonic masculinity, is
denied to prisoners even through the people hired to protect them. When respect is not given in
general day-to-day context of environmental factors, such as the surveillance of police, it is
compounded by the lack of freedom prisoners are given to define their own lives even so far as
in the scope of gender.

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Lisa Growette Bostaph states in Karen Heimer and Stacy De Costers , The Gendering of
Violent Delinquincy, In a patriarchal culture, what it means to be feminine and masculine is
rooted in adherence to specific gender definitions. To be feminine is to be nurturing, passive,
intuitive, and in need of protection due to an inherent emotional and physical weakness in
comparison to men. To be masculine, then, is to be the opposite: self-sufficient, rational,
physically strong, and aggressive (438). Although masculinity is ultimately praised and valued
as the most powerful and revered identity in our society, its shown that this applies only to men
who exist within the confines of white masculinity Black men are seen as the extremes of the
masculine binary and incarcerating them ultimately feminizes them by taking away their power
as autonomous people. The applied binary fluctuates based on environment and is situational
white women are very rarely viewed as criminals unless they are from lower classes. White
feminine beauty ideals offer up respect, and although it is generally still subordinate, any benefits
are reaped only by those who can access their femininity through whiteness.
During the Civil War, when so many men were leaving their households, white women
therefore were forced to fulfill the role of the patriarch, which included overseeing slaves. As
Pinar explains, slavery itself is rooted deeply in hypermasculine values of subjugation and
sadism: Public discourse as well as government policy in the Confederacy explicitly
acknowledged the gendered character of the Old South's system of subjugation and mastery.
Indeed, the very meaning of mastery itself was rooted in the concepts of masculinity and male
power (243). In these cases, womens whiteness superseded their gender roles, which begs the

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question of whiteness as wholly masculine and anything non-white as feminine, which our
society generally and inherently devalues based on the colonial gender binary.

Lynching: A Microcosm of Colonial Gender Hierarchy

The history of the effect our modern gender binary system, and the way it fails people of
color especially, can be seen during slavery and in the cases of lynching. Lynching can also be
tied to our current systems and rates of imprisonment as a means to control minority populations,
including people of lower classes. According to Jacobs, Malone and Iles, If criminal sanctions
are partly shaped by the menace of a large racial underclass, a greater use of a severe punishment
such as imprisonment is likely when or where this threat is greatest (170). For instance,
sociologist researchers have found that in states with the highest rates of lynching, there are
higher rates of capital punishment, especially when Black death sentences are considered (Baller,
King and Messner 292). The gendered focus of lynching, wherein Black masculinity was seen
as a threat (while white masculinity is valorized) and white femininity was cherished as pure
(while Black femininity was devalued and sexualized), it is no wonder that this history leaks into
the judicial systems and in systems of incarceration. Lynching also exists more frequently after
slavery, when lynching would mean a slaveowner lost valuable chattel.
While the binary was denied to Black men and women, it was used to accentuate the
plight of the white woman and the divinity of white men, especially in cases of lynching. Black
men were routinely accused and murdered based on accusations of improper behavior toward
white women. On the contrary, white men were not accused nor murdered for raping their Black

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slaves. This can be explained through the gendered value system: white women were considered
to be pure and virginal, and Black men were seen as monstrous animals. Black women were seen
as sexually deviant and white men were seen as strong and manly in their duties. According to
William Pinar, in most lynchings the victim was a Black man and the lynchers were white men
and On rare occasions white men were lynched, as were Black women (158-159). He
continues,
Much more common was a mob celebrating the lynching of an alleged Black male rapist
or murderer (recall that these were the two most common rationales) Often the Black
male victims were not even accused of a crime but, as we have seen, lynched for writing
an improper note to a white woman, inadvertently bumping into a white woman on the
sidewalk, for greeting a white woman inappropriately (159).

White femininity was and is treasured, however Black femininity is questioned. Pinar goes on
further to explain that there was Black-on-Black lynching as well however it was rare and served
the purpose of simply punishing a crime while white-on-Black lynch mobs often tortured their
victims and focused often on their genitalia, serving to further illustrate how masculinity is not
autonomous for victims. White men often felt their divine place as both judge and executioner,
over whelmed by indignation, shocked by crimes against our pure and endangered white
women (Pinar 159).
Lynching can also be seen as sexual violence, with the majority of cases inflicted on
Black men in which Niambi Carter explains, Their race made them dangerous to white people,
yet their gender placed them in a weaker position relative to white men (418.) Castration or
maiming of the genitals was a common occurrence, and was inflicted under the guise of restoring
racial order, yet should be looked at through a gendered lens. According to Carter,

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While the etiquette of lynching required an actual infraction against the prevailing
racial order, it was clear that lynching itself became far more fixated on the eradication of
Black masculinity (Brundage 1993; Harris 1995; Wiegman 1995). In many cases, this
came through an increasing reliance on castration and other forms of sexual mutilation
(417).
The masculinity and strength that was touted during lynching was a masculinity of white men
against Black bodies and was separate from Black mens masculinity. Carter continues, On the
other hand, Black men were routinely denied demonstration of their masculine authority, such as
the protection of Black women, the ability to carry a firearm or defend themselves against social,
political, and economic incursions (418). It was important to focus on the genitals because of
the binary that makes biology a stamp of behavior. Black mens masculinity was seen as socially
dangerous yet weak in that they were unable to protect Black women from rape at the hands of
white men. Black mens criminality was, and is still seen to be inherent in their form of
masculinity: a white heteropatriarchal claim enforced upon their bodies, their sex, and therefore
in their actions. By existing, black men threatened to uproot the safety of the colonial binary and
needed to be controlled.
Current legislation allows for public execution that barely differs from lynching in that it is
extrajudicial and accepted on grounds of racist ideologies. Instead of the immediate public
spectacle, however, these instances become hyperpublic via social media and news websites.
Laws such as Stand Your Ground exist in every single Southern state and allow a perpetrator to
use deadly force against their victim in public and does not directly relate to property. According
to Race, law and health: Examination of Stand Your Ground and defendant convictions in
Florida,

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One analysis of FBI data shows that homicides in which the victim is Black and the
accused is White are ten times more likely to be adjudicated as justified, than cases where
the victim is White and the accused is Black. And the magnitude of the disparity of
justifiable homicides between White perpetrators and Black victims is even larger in
states that have Stand Your Ground laws. (196)

The Problem with the Gender Binary in Prisons

Because race supersedes gender identities on an intersectional level, as a factor in the
very forefront of oppression, it is important to dissect that gender is not mutually inclusive. The
prison system benefits from the modern gender dichotomy where masculine is equal to good and
feminine is equal to bad, however as explained, gender is not an equal identity across the board.
As such an extreme dichotomy, and as a concept of coloniality, nothing that is feminine can be
masculine and vice versa. In addition, only the colonizer benefits from the gender binary. The
benefits of this modern binary are dependent on the concept of whiteness. Due to this, people of
color, male, female, or any person on the spectrum, are seen as less human because they are
denied the humanity of gender identity. By enforcing this gender binary onto our prison
structures, it exemplifies the binary while also denying prisoners their autonomy. The prison
system strips prisoners of their autonomous identity and then reinstates their gender by placing
them into binarized gender prisons. Jim Thomas writes, They are expected to develop
autonomy and individual responsibility even as conforming to the gender roles promotes
passivity and dependence within their prison culture (2). As stated by Esther Heffernan, early
womens prisons in the South consisted primarily of women of color. Quoting David Oshinsky,
Heffernan goes on to explain about Mississippi prisoners, While the womens numbers were

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low, their color never changed[typically being] young, poor and Black, [and] convicted of a
violent offense continuing, Oshinsky quoted local newspapers: It is a fortunate thing for
Mississippi that white women seldom indulge in serious crime. Probably half the counties
would be embarrassed if they had to confine a woman in their jails further illustrating that the
Black female prisoners were not truly seen as women.
This gendered criminality placed upon people of color becomes acutely aware within the
prison systems. By placing people into gendered institutions, the gender specified becomes an
overwhelming presence inside of the prison. Stereotypical gender roles become extreme, in
cases of not being masculine enough or not being feminine enough. Terry Kupers explains,
There is a narrowing of personal possibilities, and men are forced to act in hyper-masculine and
dominating ways merely to prove they are not feminine, they are not anyone's punk. This
hyper-masculinity reinforces the misogyny and toxic masculinity that are central to the male
prison culture (112). People are further gendered by existing in a singularly gendered
framework. Thomas explains, But just as appearing too feminine in a mens institution can lead
to predatory assaults or intimidation by other prisoners, in womens prisons, failing to appear
sufficiently feminine or ladylike risks sexually related ridicule by staff or other inmates, and
can lead to a staff-imposed label of not with the program or an aggressive troublemaker (8).
Not only are prisoners labeled by their gender on a macro level, but on the micro level of prison
life. The binary that does not favor prisoners outside of prison becomes a way to gauge in-prison
activity and success. Kupers maintains that there are two distinct gendered factors that drive
dehumanization and violence in prison: homophobia and misogyny. As far as misogyny is

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concerned, smaller instances that seem generally harmless in womens prisons lead to larger acts
of violence by normalizing the degradation of the prisoners. He explains,
When a warden or commissioner permits misogyny to permeate the prison culture, and
certain staff-members subsequently or concurrently sexually abuse female prisoners - and
we know from research and correctional experience that a culture of misogyny is
predictably the backdrop to sexual assault - then the warden or commissioner is
deliberately indifferent to women's rights to privacy and safety.

By dividing incarceration by gender, and by our gender binary, crime becomes gendered in itself.
The prison becomes a concise reflection of the imposed binary by perpetuating gender roles and
stereotypes. This is beneficial for no one, but especially for transgender and non-conforming
people. If gendered humanity is denied to specific groups of people, it should be considered a
ludicrous way of organizing the imprisoned. According to Julia Oparah,
Criminologists have demonstrated the ways in which prison regimes are gendered, often
seeking to induce appropriately feminine behaviors as a means of reforming unruly
women. Yet this insight has infrequently led to questioning the role of the prison in
(re)producing the binary gender system itself. The neat division of prison populations
into two genders is achieved at the expense of transgender and gender nonconforming
prisoners who are policed and punished because of the threat they pose to the gendered
order of the penal system (260).

Prisons reproduce aggravated gender ideologies and heteronormative ideas of safety. Oparah
continues, Studies of rape in mens prisons indicate that the creation of an environment of
hypermasculine control and dominance contributes to the high rates of sexual assault against
feminine, young and new prisoners (262). Distributing prisoners to gendered institutions as a
means of defining them ignores the multilayered intersectional identities that declares an
individuals expressed humanity.

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Heteropatriarchy, the gender binary model enforced into our social and governmental
systems and institutions, has not allowed for gender fluidity and expression, and very specifically
has been most detrimental toward people of color, especially in Black communities. To base an
identity such as gender on biological grounds, formed through Western imperialism via colonial
force, is to accept white supremacy. When imposed into a system that discriminately imprisons
an unbelievable amount of its citizens, it is undeniable that it is a tool of oppression. To
dismantle the socialized, colonial dichotomy of gender is a large task at hand, however, Maria
Lugones states, Unlike colonization, the coloniality of gender is still with us; it is what lies at
the intersection of gender/class/race as central constructs of the capitalist world system of power.
Thinking about the coloniality of gender enables us to think of historical beings only one-sidedly,
understood as oppressed (746). As a very visible facet of this oppression there are prisons that
deny gender autonomy and therefore identity as well as humanity to our prisoners. Prisoners are
still people, and it is important to look into our biggest systems of oppression to find roots that
can be tugged at, and gender as a truly recognized social construct with equal value is a place to
start.
However, this research is not to provide an argument for co-ed prisons. Female-only
prisons were created out of a need for protection, mostly from male prison staff and specific
needs due to the relatively low numbers of women prisoners. Adding female prisoners to allmale prisons would not close any gender gap nor would it provide gender autonomy for the
people imprisoned because the problem is inherent within the carceral institution itself. All
persons imprisoned are automatically deemed feminine because they are forced into a subjugate
role, and the fact that the prisons are disproportionately people of color maintains this gender

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inversion. The idea of the prisoner or the criminal as feminine within the imperial gender
dichotomy allows the normalization of mistreatment and abuse at the hands of the state. It is not
individual destiny that determines gender value, but a set of imposed colonial ideologies that are
the cornerstones of our systems and institutions.

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