This is a post I have been hesitating to write. Try as I may I know that it is part of my experience I need to be honest about. It will be difficult to write it as I have drawn up many roughs but in the end I just have to wing it. Three weeks ago I was ‘asked out’ on a ‘date’ by a prisoner whom I’ve suspected to have feelings for me for over a month now. I cannot relay how difficult a situation this is to broach but how can I be true to my work otherwise?
I have found that being a woman in an all male prison is a position of vulnerability, power, distinction, and makes me a greater emphasis in the eyes of men than I ever thought I could be. As a tutor I already opened myself up on a more personal and academic level, an interaction they don’t experience every day. The winks, stares and side comments leave me feeling uneasy, like a girl who keeps getting accosted at work or on her way to get coffee. I know that for most of them it is the situation, the prison-life that leaves them aching to see the opposite sex. Before this incident I tried to distance myself, creating a firm line between them and me. But it wasn’t long before I saw that I was a class onto myself and that as long as I attended each Thursday I could not distance myself away from them completely.
(More to come)
Right, and this is worth exploring as a facet of being a prison educator. The sexual politics of that....
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