Caged Women

Incarceration, Representation, & Media

Shirley A. Jackson, Laurie L. Gordy, Shirley A. Jackson, Laurie L. Gordy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138297395
• eBook ISBN: 9781351582698
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Netflix series Orange is the New Black has drawn widespread attention to many of the dysfunctions of prisons and the impact prisons have on those who live and work behind the prison gates. This anthology deepens this public awareness through scholarship on the television program and by exploring the real-world social, psychological, and legal issues female prisoners face. Each chapter references a particular connection to the Netflix series as its starting point of analysis.

The book brings together scholars to consider both media representations as well as the social justice issues for female inmates alluded to in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. The chapters address myriad issues including cultural representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality; social justice issues for transgender inmates; racial dynamics within female prisons; gender and female prison structures/policies; treatment of women in prison; re-incarcerated and previously incarcerated women; self and identity; gender, race, and sentencing; and reproduction and parenting for female inmates.

PART 1

Identity Construction and Prison

Shirley A. Jackson

Are identities in prison constructed the same as those outside of prison? Are prisoners able to maintain the outside prison walls identities with their inside prison walls identities? How does treatment of other prisoners and prison staff impact the ability of prisoners to maintain and challenge identities? These are important considerations as we enter the world of women in prison. The forces that shape their experiences are both internal and external. The past that was left on the outside must often be rebuilt or reshaped in ways that prevent disorder in the lives of imprisoned women, yet, these can also be at odds with prison life based on availability of resources, the acceptance of fellow inmates, responses of staff, and prison policies. In this chapter, these questions are addressed as authors aim to explore the ways in which identities are constructed and reconstructed, challenged, accepted, and maintained.

Erving Goffman’s work on identity construction is especially instructive as we delve into the essays in this section (1959; 1967). Goffman’s “dramaturgical approach” (1959) describes how we, as social actors, live our lives as though we are performing a role. We perform roles on a stage, so to speak. A case in point is the commonly held understanding of how one must act once entering prison – the persona of the prison tough. This individual rarely smiles, shares little eye contact with others, and most of all, does not take crap from anyone. This is understood to be a survival technique whereby those who adopt this role successfully will survive. Unfortunately, those less capable of adopting the role or maintaining it whereby others believe it, will find themselves victimized. Fictional prison life as depicted in the media often shows the weak prisoner – man or woman – who is considered bait by the stronger prisoners. They are shaped into something different as their sense of agency, well-being, and even safety, are oftentimes seriously compromised.

Within the walls of the prison, a total institution, are rules and expectations for behavior and treatment. For those who are veering from the path of normative social behavior, prisons can be especially difficult to navigate as the chapters in this section demonstrate. We first see this through the chapters that follow which discuss the lives of female prisoners in reality and those in the fictional Netflix series, Orange is the New Black. The “dramedy” series connects the poignant lives of prisoners in dramatic ways interspersed with humor. The viewer is introduced to myriad characters whose life histories and explanations of how they landed in prison are disclosed as the series unfolds. As women who are depicted wear the stigma of prisoner, they must conform in ways that contradict their lives beyond the prison walls.

Goffman’s work Stigma (1963) argues that individuals may attempt to ward off the stigma attached to them. Attempts to normalize their appearance and interactions with others are important in maintaining a sense of agency and normality. For transgender female prisoners, this can include maintaining their appearance on the inside as they did outside the prison through the use of available beauty products – some purchased, others homemade. For mothers, this can be fomented in their identification as mothers who reside within the prison without access to or contact with their children. Thus, motherhood as an identity may be adhered to even while others engage in the actual care of their children.

In “Who Are You Really? Identity, Authenticity, and Narrative in Orange Is the New Black” Carolyn Chernoff and Kimberly Tauches explore the ways in which authentic identities are challenged using an example not uncommon to transgender prisoners – that of having to not only explain but “validate” their identity. In drawing from an example in the series, Orange is the New Black, the desire to know of prisoners becomes a need to know who this interloper is who shares their space. As a result, well-liked character Sophia Burset becomes a victim of violence – in essence, a hate crime. Yet, her identity as a woman who has been beaten is not taken seriously by those who attack her and those who respond. When she attempts to clarify the situation to the prison staff, it is she, the victim, who is sent to solitary confinement for her own safety. Her identity is unaccepted, her authenticity challenged, and her narrative ignored.

The concepts of identity and representation of self are inextricably linked in the work of Chernoff and Tauches, particularly when they explore the ways in which prisoners must negotiate their day-to-day lives while also remaining safe. The matter of safety is foremost in the minds of those whose very lifestyles led to their imprisonment; but also for those for whom just “being” has made the target of other prisoners and staff. Although it is possible to escape some of the complexities while navigating through the system; not everyone does so easily. Impediments, whether, structural, personal, or situational, exist and one must find ways to maneuver through or manipulate them.

L. Sue Williams, Edward Green, and Kimberly Williams share their research on 32 women who poignantly tell their stories of how they have transitioned from civilian to felon. The authors connect their experiences to characters in the series Orange is the New Black providing insight into how women develop survival strategies and make sense of the world around them. The authors refer to the “identity vertigo” experienced by the series’ main character Piper Chapman which is a suitable characterization of women who find that their lives as they knew them no longer exist.

While the authors discuss the physical and social changes incarcerated women experience, they broach the masculine structure of prisons. Prisons were made with men in mind, and thus, imprisonment is a gendered one for women who are otherized as women who are in prison. It is within these walls that women struggle to maintain their identities. In reflecting on several characters in the show, we see them impart beauty tips, focus on their looks even in the absence of the male partners they want to attract, and engage in gendered activities to which they have been socialized to accept as the rule. Williams, Green, and Williams contend that women find themselves emphasizing femininity. Their respondents recognize the importance of looking like you belong in prison or not looking like you belong. The latter receive far better treatment from the correctional officers compared to their counterparts who, by virtue of their less feminine appearance, look like they belong. For some of these women, acts of resistance can include challenging notions of gender by refusing to look feminine, choosing to continue to look feminine using products such as make-up or hair styling tools. Yet, for others, resistance comes in the form of behaving like women in men’s prisons.

Emily Lenning and Carrie L. Buist focus on the stigmatized transgender woman prisoner. They shift the discussion forward as they discuss the severity of incarceration of transgender women prisoners in men’s prisons. In the U.S., prison assignment is based on genitalia and not gender presentation. This can result in increased incidents of violence – sexual and physical – against transgender prisoners. As discussed in the work of Jenness & Fenstermaker (2013) and Sumner, Sexton, Jenness, and Maxson (2014), prison life can be problematic and traumatic if one is placed in a prison that contradicts one’s gender presentation. With Lenning and Buist, they incorporate voices of those who often are unheard and the most victimized.

Lenning and Buist visit the attack on one of the most popular characters in OITNB, transgender prisoner, Sophia Burset. They underscore the vicious attack as a social justice issue because she is not only a victimized prisoner but the victim of a hate crime. Sophia’s plight is not uncommon. She is victim in myriad ways due to being transgender. She is segregated from the other prisoners after they beat her mercilessly, for her own good, according to the correctional officers. She has to fight for the hormones to maintain her appearance as a woman; something that is a threat to not only how she identifies but how she presents to others. A transgender woman in a woman’s prison has her safety and identity jeopardized in multiple ways.

Throughout this book, the reader will find several examples of socialization, deviance, and conformity. The selections in this first section of the book give readers an opportunity to gain understanding of the ways in which identities are malleable, while also remaining unvarying in important aspects. When prisoners attempt to maintain their outside personas they attempt to do so in settings that are designed to keep them from expressing themselves in ways that conflict with the prison as an institution that enforces conformity. All the while, in order to feel like “themselves” prisoners find it necessary to challenge concepts of not only who they are but who they should be.

References

Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual. New York: Pantheon.

Jenness, V., & Fenstermaker, S. (2013). Agnes goes to prison: Gender authenticity, transgender inmates in prisons for men, and pursuit of “the real deal”. Gender & Society, 28(1), 5–31.

Sumner, J., Sexton, L., Jenness, V., & Maxson, C. (2014). The (pink) elephant in the room: The structure and experience of race and violence in the lives of transgender inmates in California Prison. In S. Jackson (Ed.), Routledge International Handbook of Race, Class, and Gender (pp. 128–143). London: Routledge.

1

Who Are You Really?

Identity, Authenticity, and Narrative in Orange is the New Black

Carolyn Chernoff and Kimberly Tauches

Introduction

While Season 3 of the Netflix series Orange is the New Black (OITNB) makes the question of true or authentic identity transparent, from its start this show has troubled the notion of who an incarcerated woman “really” is. In many ways, OITNB presents nuanced representations of women, some of whom may have committed heinous crimes, outside the standard script of prison lesbian, victim, or sociopath. At the same time, the narrative frame as well as the details of various stories reduce some character’s identities to single stories. Focusing on the tension between prurience and empathy, this chapter will analyze the way OITNB simultaneously fixes individual identities at a single point while complexifying other aspects of the “woman in prison.” We draw on feminist, postmodern, and queer theory to argue that identity is never single or simple, and yet the frameworks of the TV show necessarily limit and shape the audience’s understandings of who these women really are. This framework disrupts conventional narratives, but not unproblematically. For women in Litchfield, the audience presumes that the moment of truth is whatever event led to their arrest – and yet OITNB as a show uses flashbacks, moments of redemption and revulsion, and other on-screen relationships to show the unstable narrative of the modern self. We argue that the way the show constructs authentic identity impacts viewers’ understanding of women in the prison-industrial complex in three ways: (1) the “true” identity as criminal; (2) the “true” identity as human being; and (3) the way the show itself constructs “truth” through poignant and prurient uses of the flashback.

Identity and Authenticity in OITNB

Orange is the New Black (OITNB) produces a narrative of a group of women in Litchfield prison – one that complexifies issues of identity and authenticity, while also creating questions about representation and the blanket instability inherent in knowledge production around identity and identity politics. The questions around identity include who a person is, who a person was, and who a person will become. According to gender theorist Judith Butler, theories of identity from feminist, postmodern, and queer perspectives question the stability of identity, based on issues of definition, and well as social and contextual circumstances. Moving beyond the stereotypical women in prison sexploitation genre which reinforces criminal/authentic lesbian or queer identities with exploited/innocent sex objects as noted in the work of historian Estelle Freedman and several other scholars, OITNB allows for a multiplicity of identity narratives based on race, class, gender, and sexuality.

And yet the show does not (and perhaps cannot) escape the women in prison stereotypes. In the show, questions of representation and authenticity come to the forefront. Who is represented, in what ways, and to what effect are questions that might be asked about the characters, narratives, and identities portrayed onscreen. As a work of fiction, the series depicts a much more racially diverse group of women than the current US incarceration statistics suggest, or at least a whiter group, with more relative class privilege and education, and more multiracial interaction than most contemporary prisons and jails. On one hand, The Sentencing Project finds the show has been lauded for its efforts to educate the general viewing public about the impact of race and class inequality on US rates of incarceration, but again, the show certainly paints a rosier picture of the experience of incarceration than real life. The series both highlights and downplays the impact of racialized and class-based social inequality on incarcerated women.

The show is framed in a way that encourages the audience to see race and class as markers of authentic identity and belonging in complicated ways across the seasons. From the show’s first season, its ostensible protagonist, Piper Chapman, is portrayed as someone who does not belong in Litchfield. Her whiteness and class privilege are a part of that sense of misfit – but her performance of identity also marks her as someone out of context, and perhaps inauthentic within the frame of the prison. We see this sense of misfit or inauthenticity in her earliest interactions with fellow inmate “Nicky” Nichols. Nichols is White and class-privileged, like Chapman, but her queer identity, rough edges, and swagger, whether ascribed to her lesbianism or the drug addiction that landed her behind bars, makes her an “authentic,” if unlikely, inmate.

Nichols and Chapman may share the many identity markers, but Nichols immediately sizes Chapman up as inauthentic, as someone who does not, and perhaps cannot, belong:

NICHOLS: Look at you, blondie. What’d you do?

CHAPMAN: Aren’t you not supposed to ask that question? I read that you’re not supposed to ask that.

NICHOLS: You read that? What, you studied for prison?

The notion of authentic truth that underlies the question of identity – who are you really – is the primary question that is faced by the characters on this show. This particular question is answered in two ways: first through the behaviors of individuals while in prison, and second through the use of flashbacks. The use of flashback offers us a glimpse of not only how these characters landed in prison, but also the motivations of their behaviors while incarcerated. Ongoing behavior and flashbacks tell us, the viewers, who these women are and who they were, in ways that are not possible based solely on their daily lives within the walls of the prison. As viewers, we read authenticity and continuity into this mix of past and present. Occasionally, the difference between past and present disrupts who we think a character really is, most notably in the case of White characters Lorna Morello and Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett, but usually the story told reinforces common narratives of what historian Estelle Freedman refers to as “real criminals” and “innocent victims.”

In order to make sense of the layered representations of the women in Litchfield, we employ a queer, feminist, postmodern framework through which we analyze depictions of women in the prison-industrial complex: (1) the “true” identity as criminal; (2) the “true” identity as human being; and (3) the way the show itself constructs “truth” through poignant and prurient uses of the flashback.

Identity, Feminism, and the Queer Turn: Incarcerated Bodies That Matter

Identity politics became popular in the 1960s when marginalized groups came together to build a movement based on their marginalized identity. The ideology of one single marginalized identity quickly came under attack by those like the Combahee River Collective Statement, sociologist Patricia Hill Collins and critical race scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw who addressed oppression based on multiple target identities. The women’s movement was no different, and the focus became one of women and women’s issues. Identity as a woman became a focal point of the movement, and the narrative of who counts as a woman and the marginalization that was faced became a contentious issue within the movement, particularly in terms of the ways in which intersecting oppressions operate. This theoretical model allowed us to consider how multiple identities intersect to create particular subject positions based on race, class, gender, and sexuality – ones that differ greatly from the issues of straight middle-class, White feminists.

Postmodern, queer feminist theory adds to the ways in which identity can be questioned. In “Imitation and Insubordination” Butler (2004) questions identity politics and the problematics of stating a part...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Note from the Series Editors
• Author page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART 1: Identity Construction and Prison
• PART 2: Racial Inequality and Prisons
• PART 3: Pregnancy and Parenting for Female Inmates
• PART 4: Prisons, Hegemony, and Patriarchy
• PART 5: Prisoners and Policies
• PART 6: Prisons and Culture
• Index