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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Would You Like to Share a Prison Cell with This Person? **MNHQ edit, this post contains rather graphic material**

107 replies

CKDexterHaven · 22/08/2014 17:49

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/laverne-cox-launches-media-campaign-in-support-of-transwoman-synthia-china-blast-convicted-for-the-rape-murder-and-abuse-of-the-corpse-of-thirteen-year-old-ebony-nicole-williams/#comments

I particularly like the bit about giving birth to little baby serial killers. Is this the kind of campaign feminism should be getting behind?

OP posts:
SevenZarkSeven · 22/08/2014 21:17

Oops xpost but works in response to briar as well!

CKDexterHaven · 22/08/2014 21:47

I think using Laverne Cox for this campaign is very telling. The video completely erases the horrendous crime committed by Synthia from the story. Synthia is framed as a 'minority' in prison and 'part of the LGBT community'. Cox is very much the acceptable, media-friendly face of transwomen in the USA at the moment. Having Cox speak Synthia's words makes it all seem so reasonable. Why not go into prison and let Synthia speak on camera? Is it because then we could all see the shrieking lunacy of the whole thing? Would Synthia start talking about fucking serial killers and having serial killer babies?

Also, what's with the pouty, breathy, making-a-speech-in-a-beauty-pageant delivery? Is that how Laverne thinks women speak?

OP posts:
LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett · 22/08/2014 23:58

I'm really confused as to the point of this thread. Can you break it down for me?

CKDexterHaven · 23/08/2014 00:02

Seems like the video of Laverne Cox has been pulled from YouTube. Maybe someone has realised campaigning for a paedophiliac murderer isn't a great career move.

OP posts:
lildupin · 23/08/2014 00:08

I'm really confused as to the point of this thread. Can you break it down for me?

Have you read any of it?

lildupin · 23/08/2014 00:09

I really, really hope it's been saved somewhere.

itsbetterthanabox · 23/08/2014 00:09

So the convict is pre op? Well that's reason enough. Secondly there are very very few women that commit a crime like this so where would she be housed?

CKDexterHaven · 23/08/2014 00:26

The thing is Synthia seems to enjoy life in a male prison. From an article in the New York Times -

'She claims that before she met Eddie, she’d had sex with some of the most notorious rapists and killers in the New York prison system. “It seems that my only attractions are to society’s sickest and most twisted lowlifes,” she wrote in a letter to me. “I’m actually hoping to be incarcerated with the Son of Sam so I can sleep with him while awaiting my sex-change outcome in the courts.” And that fetish suits Eddie just fine: “I liked that she was excited by my murders. It was a little plus for us. She used to put the zodiac sign all over her cell as a tribute to me. I’d see one and say, ‘Is that a new one?’ And she’d say yes. It flattered me.”

Soon after they got “married,” Synthia told him, “Go take a shower and come back here.” Eddie did as instructed. Then she says she gave him oral sex through the cell bars. It was Eddie’s first time. “He was white as a ghost,” Synthia says. “He was so scared. He did not want to get busted by the officers. It was like he was stealing candy from a store or something.” After that, they repeated this scenario about twice a week—always with Eddie receiving and Synthia giving. That was how they both wanted it.'

and -

'Still, Synthia continued to take her role as wife very seriously. Every day, she cooked for Eddie using a hot pot he’d given her. And as the husband, Eddie bought her prison-approved supplies with the savings from his $21-a-month porter job. After passing out the meal trays and taking her home cooking back to his cell to eat, Eddie says, he would be let out again to collect the trays. Eddie always completed this task quickly, and then he’d pull up a chair in front of Synthia’s bars. “We’d watch our favorite show, WWE Smackdown, unconditionally every Thursday at 8,” Synthia recalls. “He loves Brock Lesnar, and I love Kurt Angle. We’d argue about the game. We liked to watch 24, CSI, and The Simpsons, too.”

Eddie says he would also make special pieces of art just for her. “Eddie paints her these really weird paint-by-number sets, like a soaring eagle or a horse,” says Michael Alig. “I don’t think Synthia appreciates the fabulosity of it. Other than the fact that he’s this crazy psychopath, it’s kind of cute.” Still, he remains skeptical of Eddie’s infatuation with Synthia. “He talks about her like she’s all soft and feminine, but she’s not soft and feminine,” he says. “She’s hard.”'

Maybe Laverne's campaign is cruel and would deprive Synthia of living as the feminine fuckdoll of psychopaths which Synthia so clearly loves.

OP posts:
lildupin · 23/08/2014 00:59

Still, Synthia continued to take her role as wife very seriously.

So being a wife = sucking cock and cooking? Really? FFS.

FloraFox · 23/08/2014 09:44

I am offended by the use of female pronouns in this article for a man acting out a fetishised version of being a woman.

SevenZarkSeven · 23/08/2014 10:07

Is it possible that the actor was contacted and given a sob story and was not aware of the crimes or full story? The organisation certainly are concealing the crimes in their frankly bizarre petition.

Whatever the reasons for the actor making the recording I can only see that the organisation will have shot themselves in the foot with this one.

CaptChaos · 23/08/2014 10:43

This article suggests that they 'didn't know' what his crimes were. I think it's bullshit. They can't possibly advocate for people effectively if they don't know their past. Even if it's to avoid complete public relations melt downs like they're having.

However, there are a few trans*activists who are neatly turning this around gaslighting and saying that this is in fact down to RFs and pesky women.

lildupin · 23/08/2014 10:56

Consequently, when SRLP asked Laverne Cox to read a letter from Synthia China Blast, we did not have, and therefore did not share details with her about Synthia’s conviction.

Really? Confused

SevenZarkSeven · 23/08/2014 11:10

Thanks capt

My read of this is

SRLP are dodgy as fuck
They gave this high-profile actor a sob story and got her to read the letter ie they hoodwinked her
It has all blown up in their faces rather. I doubt that Laverne Cox will be giving them much public support in the near future
I feel rather sorry for the actor who I am thinking here was rather naive and got used and presumably wouldn't normally strongly advocate for just the most repugnant person you can imagine quite frankly. However I don't know her so that is a guess.

SevenZarkSeven · 23/08/2014 11:13

YY as I understand it (having googled yesterday) Synthia China Blast is pretty famous amongst certain groups and I can't see that an organisation working for rights of trans people in prisons wouldn't have heard of her.

Also what kind of organisation would bring in their biggest asset to speak publicly in order to garner publicity and support about something without researching it to fuck first. None, is how many.

lildupin · 23/08/2014 11:17

I cannot believe that Cox had no information about the prisoner and didn't think to ask for any, or even just google the prisoner's name.

CaptChaos · 23/08/2014 11:22

If Cox didn't have info, and no one told her about it, then she really needs to fire the people around her. If you set yourself up as a spokesperson and put your name to a particular campaign, then you really need to understand what the campaign is really about before you endorse it.

SevenZarkSeven · 23/08/2014 11:25

I don't know, for some reason I am giving her the benefit of the doubt. I'm imagining that they got her all riled up with this terrible story of woe and got her all worked up and so she did it and quick.

Also, I can't imagine someone who is in her position ie relatively newfound huge fame (I think that is right) doing this on purpose.

The fact she has pulled it says a lot as well. If she knew all about it surely she'd have predicted the reaction and been prepared to defend her stance.

Having said that, I don't know her, so no idea.

lildupin · 23/08/2014 11:26

Yes, I agree. This had the potential to do very serious damage to Cox's career I think (and I can't see it being helpful to the cause of transgender rights, either) - it is absolute madness to foster a reputation for being on the side of murderous paedophiles. I'm still completely stunned that Cox went through with it.

SevenZarkSeven · 23/08/2014 11:26

I mean, maybe she did know exactly what she was doing and who she was reading from.

I just kind of feel like she probably didn't, but have no basis for that feeling.

CaptChaos · 23/08/2014 11:28

I agree Seven.

lildupin · 23/08/2014 11:34

It just seems so incredibly badly thought out, on everyone's part. Presumably it's really unlikely that Cox will be willing to help SRLP again in the future after they did this, so they have wasted an incredible opportunity to get a high profile, popular celebrity on board. They've shot themselves in the foot.
And by agreeing to champion this cause without doing any research, Cox took a crazy risk.

The whole thing is just bizarre.

SevenZarkSeven · 23/08/2014 11:43

It is good though as they have unwittingly highlighted the arguments that many feminists (and women generally) use when they explain why they do not want male bodied people and/or people who have been convicted of sexual offences against females housed with women in prison.

Out of interest does anyone know what they do with the (vanishingly small) number of women convicted of sex offences against women in prison?

In theory I would think that people who might be a danger to other inmates should be separated but in practice I doubt that happens.

What's needed is for prisons to be sorted out so that they aren't full of brutality, rape (male prisons), self harm, suicide and so on. Fighting to get male bodied people who have raped females in with vulnerable females in prison is simply putting your "fight" for a very small group of people against the actual safety of a much larger group of people. Which is clearly a poor approach to take to get your end goal, for a number of reasons.

CaptChaos · 23/08/2014 11:55

I would imagine that they are held under rule 43 and segregated from other prisoners. I believe women who kill children are also segregated in this way.

ArcheryAnnie · 23/08/2014 15:35

There was no question of the sex being non-consensual but women in prisons are often vulnerable, suffer from mental health conditions and don't have access to contraception.

CKDexterHaven alas, we won't ever know whether Paris Green's sexual activities in prison were really consensua - as you mention, many women in prison are already vulnerable, plus there is a strong culture of prisoners not passing information to the authorities about other prisoners, even when those other prisoners have committed crimes against them, which means anyone Green approached for sex is unlikely to rat them out, even if the sex was unwanted or an assault.