ABSTRACT

Researchers working in South African men’s prisons have observed the readiness of the perpetrators of male, same-sex rape behind bars to report this violence as compared to the bashfulness of victims (Woodin 2002; Gear 2007a). While providing a jolt to assumptions, this situation is well explained by the social place of sexual violence in prison. Here, the meanings with which inmate culture imbues violence and the gender identities that violence is perceived to bring about, lead victims to go unrecognised or to receive only stigmatised and humiliating attention. Perpetrators, by way of contrast, go unchallenged and/or are valorised. Potent ideas of masculinity and sexuality coming out of South Africa’s history have often been intertwined with violence – connected, for example, to numerous young men’s fights for or against apartheid. Today powerful notions of manhood remain ensnared by violence as men negotiate their identities in a ‘new’ South Africa characterised both by humane and peaceful ambitions (in strong contrast to the country’s past) and by exceptionally high levels of interpersonal violence. With the dramatic increases in incarceration that democracy has paradoxically ushered in, growing numbers of young men especially, are experiencing the socialising force of the prison (Gear 2007b). Drawing on research with (ex) prisoners and analyses from a project focused on sexual violence in prison, this chapter examines the ways in which prison experiences legitimate and add momentum to brutal notions of masculinity and sexuality. These notions make no space for vulnerability in ‘manhood’, non-violent ‘men’ or same-sex desire. And while they do not go unopposed, emerging well-intentioned contestations that seek to address the damage, have apparently left sinister elements of the supporting discourses intact.