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Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality
Sex is usually assumed to be a closely guarded secret of prison life. But it has long been the subject of intense scrutiny by both prison administrators and reformers—as well as a source of fascination and anxiety for the American public. Historically, sex behind bars has evoked radically different responses from professionals and the public alike. In Criminal Intimacy, Regina Kunzel tracks these varying interpretations and reveals their foundational influence on modern thinking about sexuality and identity.
Historians have held the fusion of sexual desire and identity to be the defining marker of sexual modernity, but sex behind bars, often involving otherwise heterosexual prisoners, calls those assumptions into question. By exploring the sexual lives of prisoners and the sexual culture of prisons over the past two centuries—along with the impact of a range of issues, including race, class, and gender; sexual violence; prisoners’ rights activism; and the HIV epidemic—Kunzel discovers a world whose surprising plurality and mutability reveals the fissures and fault lines beneath modern sexuality itself.
Drawing on a wide range of sources, including physicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, correctional administrators, journalists, and prisoners themselves—as well as depictions of prison life in popular culture—Kunzel argues for the importance of the prison to the history of sexuality and for the centrality of ideas about sex and sexuality to the modern prison. In the process, she deepens and complicates our understanding of sexuality in America.
Historians have held the fusion of sexual desire and identity to be the defining marker of sexual modernity, but sex behind bars, often involving otherwise heterosexual prisoners, calls those assumptions into question. By exploring the sexual lives of prisoners and the sexual culture of prisons over the past two centuries—along with the impact of a range of issues, including race, class, and gender; sexual violence; prisoners’ rights activism; and the HIV epidemic—Kunzel discovers a world whose surprising plurality and mutability reveals the fissures and fault lines beneath modern sexuality itself.
Drawing on a wide range of sources, including physicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, correctional administrators, journalists, and prisoners themselves—as well as depictions of prison life in popular culture—Kunzel argues for the importance of the prison to the history of sexuality and for the centrality of ideas about sex and sexuality to the modern prison. In the process, she deepens and complicates our understanding of sexuality in America.
371 pages, Hardcover
First published August 30, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 3, 2023
“I hope you don’t mind tears on this letter. I am crying.” (p. 206)
A gay inmate wrote this in the 1970s after being denied parole solely because he expressed his “intention of having sexual reassignment surgery and hormonal treatment upon release” (p. 206). He later died in prison. Denial of parole for sexuality and/or gender nonconformity was a routine occurrence in American prisons throughout the 20th century. Sex is still prohibited in U.S. prisons. In fact, Americans behind bars are not even allowed to hold hands, kiss, or hug.
It is nearly impossible to imagine what American prisons have put gay inmates through. Fears of gay temptation/victimization/contagion led to the widespread segregation of gay inmates into especially harsh living conditions (e.g., cell blocks without toilets). Invalid psychological testing (e.g., the M-F test) was used to identity “latent homosexuality.” Gay inmates were formally stigmatized, being forced to do humiliating things, such as march around in front of other inmates, submit to specific haircuts (e.g., having one side of their head shaved), or dress differently—for example, “wear a large yellow D (designating them as ‘degenerate’)” (pp. 69-70). Prison officials sometimes wrote to gay inmates’ families to denounce their supposed degeneracy; many gay inmates were also sterilized and/or forced to undergo crazy “therapies” (e.g., electric shocks).
“[A] drug that produced a feeling of suffocation … was used along with nausea-inducing drugs in aversion therapy as well as the use of electroconvulsive shock treatment as punishment for homosexual patients … One Atascadero inmate described the effects of the drug Proloxin, used in punitive aversion therapy: ‘It seems like your breathing is stopped … Feels like you’re dying. The doctors tell you you’re dying … They tell you if you’re ever caught having sex in here again, you won’t get the antidote.’” (pp. 218-219)
In this heart-breaking historical analysis, Regina G. Kunzel demonstrates that from the establishment of the first American prisons to the present day, inmates have been forced to live under conditions set by the whims of the religious, the homophobic, and the racist.
“Leslie had apparently ‘always lived as a boy or a man,’ had been a member of the Boy Scouts, and ‘explained to the psychiatrists who examined her that her mother regarded her as a son.’ … On arrival at prison, Monahan insisted that Leslie ‘adhere to our rules,’ Prison staff members were ordered to use female pronouns to refer to the new prisoner, who was forced to wear dresses in the dining room and dormitory.” (p. 124)
All current U.S. correctional policies pertaining to sex and relationships have basically persisted unchanged for centuries, with virtually zero supporting evidence, because of institutional inertia abetted by traditional religious values and gender norms. Nearly 20 years after Lawrence v. Texas (2003) legalized same-sex sexual activity, all correctional institutions in the United States continue to operate under policies that are relics of past homophobic moral panics. For example, today’s punitive masturbation bans trace to this nonsense:
“[M]asturbation was understood to be a disease of the body as well as of the soul and was held accountable for a range of physical and mental ailments including epilepsy, blindness, impotency, loss of memory, rickets, consumption, and insanity … [They] tried to frighten inmates out of the practice by posting a printed notice in each cell detailing the ‘numerous’ and ‘terrible’ effects of ‘self-abuse.’ Habitual practitioners of ‘this destructive vice’ could expect to suffer ‘derangement of the digestion, respiration, circulation and absorption of the secretions,’ followed by ‘derangements of the nervous system,’ ‘destruction of the intellectual facilities,’ and eventual insanity. ‘That insidious and fatal disease, pulmonary consumption, terminating in speedy death,’ the notice read, ‘is a common result.’” (pp. 22-23)
Prison officials' fears of gay contagion and mistreatment of gay inmates intensified in the 1980s, after the emergence of HIV. Instead of providing inmates with condoms (most jails and prisons still treat condoms as contraband, and punish inmates for having them), prison officials responded punitively to inmates who had HIV, a disease which “was originally termed Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.” (pp. 228-229)
“Prisoners who were HIV-positive were often excluded from educational, vocational, and recreational activities, as well as from prerelease programs that would allow them to accrue credits necessary for early release … [they] were prohibited from participating in work-release programs, religious services, and education courses … [they] were not allowed to eat in the mess hall or use the gymnasium … In some institutions, HIV-positive prisoners were denied visitors altogether … [they] were required to wear surgical masks when outside their isolation cells ... [and] were forced to use plastic utensils or disposable wooden ice cream sticks to eat their meals.” (pp. 231-232)
A gay inmate wrote this in the 1970s after being denied parole solely because he expressed his “intention of having sexual reassignment surgery and hormonal treatment upon release” (p. 206). He later died in prison. Denial of parole for sexuality and/or gender nonconformity was a routine occurrence in American prisons throughout the 20th century. Sex is still prohibited in U.S. prisons. In fact, Americans behind bars are not even allowed to hold hands, kiss, or hug.
It is nearly impossible to imagine what American prisons have put gay inmates through. Fears of gay temptation/victimization/contagion led to the widespread segregation of gay inmates into especially harsh living conditions (e.g., cell blocks without toilets). Invalid psychological testing (e.g., the M-F test) was used to identity “latent homosexuality.” Gay inmates were formally stigmatized, being forced to do humiliating things, such as march around in front of other inmates, submit to specific haircuts (e.g., having one side of their head shaved), or dress differently—for example, “wear a large yellow D (designating them as ‘degenerate’)” (pp. 69-70). Prison officials sometimes wrote to gay inmates’ families to denounce their supposed degeneracy; many gay inmates were also sterilized and/or forced to undergo crazy “therapies” (e.g., electric shocks).
“[A] drug that produced a feeling of suffocation … was used along with nausea-inducing drugs in aversion therapy as well as the use of electroconvulsive shock treatment as punishment for homosexual patients … One Atascadero inmate described the effects of the drug Proloxin, used in punitive aversion therapy: ‘It seems like your breathing is stopped … Feels like you’re dying. The doctors tell you you’re dying … They tell you if you’re ever caught having sex in here again, you won’t get the antidote.’” (pp. 218-219)
In this heart-breaking historical analysis, Regina G. Kunzel demonstrates that from the establishment of the first American prisons to the present day, inmates have been forced to live under conditions set by the whims of the religious, the homophobic, and the racist.
“Leslie had apparently ‘always lived as a boy or a man,’ had been a member of the Boy Scouts, and ‘explained to the psychiatrists who examined her that her mother regarded her as a son.’ … On arrival at prison, Monahan insisted that Leslie ‘adhere to our rules,’ Prison staff members were ordered to use female pronouns to refer to the new prisoner, who was forced to wear dresses in the dining room and dormitory.” (p. 124)
All current U.S. correctional policies pertaining to sex and relationships have basically persisted unchanged for centuries, with virtually zero supporting evidence, because of institutional inertia abetted by traditional religious values and gender norms. Nearly 20 years after Lawrence v. Texas (2003) legalized same-sex sexual activity, all correctional institutions in the United States continue to operate under policies that are relics of past homophobic moral panics. For example, today’s punitive masturbation bans trace to this nonsense:
“[M]asturbation was understood to be a disease of the body as well as of the soul and was held accountable for a range of physical and mental ailments including epilepsy, blindness, impotency, loss of memory, rickets, consumption, and insanity … [They] tried to frighten inmates out of the practice by posting a printed notice in each cell detailing the ‘numerous’ and ‘terrible’ effects of ‘self-abuse.’ Habitual practitioners of ‘this destructive vice’ could expect to suffer ‘derangement of the digestion, respiration, circulation and absorption of the secretions,’ followed by ‘derangements of the nervous system,’ ‘destruction of the intellectual facilities,’ and eventual insanity. ‘That insidious and fatal disease, pulmonary consumption, terminating in speedy death,’ the notice read, ‘is a common result.’” (pp. 22-23)
Prison officials' fears of gay contagion and mistreatment of gay inmates intensified in the 1980s, after the emergence of HIV. Instead of providing inmates with condoms (most jails and prisons still treat condoms as contraband, and punish inmates for having them), prison officials responded punitively to inmates who had HIV, a disease which “was originally termed Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.” (pp. 228-229)
“Prisoners who were HIV-positive were often excluded from educational, vocational, and recreational activities, as well as from prerelease programs that would allow them to accrue credits necessary for early release … [they] were prohibited from participating in work-release programs, religious services, and education courses … [they] were not allowed to eat in the mess hall or use the gymnasium … In some institutions, HIV-positive prisoners were denied visitors altogether … [they] were required to wear surgical masks when outside their isolation cells ... [and] were forced to use plastic utensils or disposable wooden ice cream sticks to eat their meals.” (pp. 231-232)
June 30, 2015
So amazing! Tracking how sex in prison has confounded sociological explanations of modern homo- and hetero-sexuality for decades; how discourses/panics about sexual violence in prisons are deeply homophobic and racist; and how imprisoned people have resisted gender/sex policing (from both prison authorities and emergent gay political movements). Also loved the chapter on 'lessons in being gay' about lesbian and gay prisoner solidarity activism in the 1970s and its minimisation in conjunction with the rise of politics of respectability.
July 2, 2016
quite possibly the best and most fully-rendered history of sexuality i've ever read. there's an over-reliance on published sources, reports, etc. (how could there not be, for the late 1800s/early 1900s/mid 1900s) but anything beyond that is splitting hairs (well, that and the last chapter, "lessons in being gay," which feels like it belongs in different but no less important book). one thing, however: kunzel does what lots of brilliant historians do, which is hammer home thematic chapter ideas at the expense of chronology and source inconsistency (i didn't, so my dissertation is a fucking mess of footnoted concessions and admissions that i have no idea how everything fits together, how could i, i'm just one person!), yet sometimes those VERY SAME SOURCES appear in later chapters, cited for this or that reason, and it maybe gives the sense that the overall narrative is much smoother than it is, even when the extremely intelligent author is of course admitting the same. mind you, the worst offender here is foucault, whose "histories" are just idiosyncratic claims that "here's a break, shit changed, check out these two sources i used to demonstrate this!", and that hardly undermines his accomplishment. i mean, after all, what we're doing is creative work, giving order to the chaos in one way or another, and kunzel accomplishes all that and more. it's a valuable book, even if other, denser, more situation-specific works will likely claim to have "complicated the paradigm" or whatever people do to perpetuate their own petit-academic careers.
December 1, 2009
An interesting look at the interactions of our understanding of sex in prison, as compared to our understanding of sex in general, as they have evolved and mutually effected one another over the past century. Show that prisons and prisoners are not on the periphery, but rather are at the heart of sexual discussions.
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December 16, 2008this b00k rulez!
March 3, 2011
a review of how sexologists have analyzed sex in prison and what is says about sex outside of prison
December 27, 2015
Good academic work on intimacy in prison.
September 14, 2016
most study's were before 1960 and so it did not tell me anything about the here and now. Just how it evolved from the 1800's.
May 28, 2022
In her second monograph, Kunzel uses research on prison same-sex relationships to challenge the universalizing narrative around the emergence of the modern sexual binary. She does this through six chapters. The first chapter looked at the emergency of the prison, largely as an isolated space for self-reflection, which kept prisoners separate in part due to concerns over sex within sex-segregated institutions. With concerns over isolated prisoners’ engagement with masturbation, same-sex-segregated prisons conceptualized same-sex sex as simply a natural consequence of the overcrowded, destitute conditions of the under-funded prisons. As chapter three highlights, the increased interest in studying prison populations by sexologists, psychologists, and other professionals led to same-sex relations in prisons being understood as not arising from prisons themselves but the psychological and biological factors of individuals. Yet, these professionals failed to easily identify and categorize these individuals and their relationships leading to prison sex being labelled as an unstable and of little consequence for the outside world in order to maintain the outsider world’s “stable” sexual identities (p. 103). Chapter four moves to focus exclusively on women’s prisons and relationships in which women’s same-sex relationships were diminished as passive and an attempt to re-create the domestic hierarchy (p. 126). Film and popular media depicted lesbianism less as a threat, rather exploiting such relationships as pornographic for heterosexual men’s appeal. Race also factored into women’s same-sex relationships, in the early years, Black women were understood to substitute the man and in later years were increasingly ignored in sociological studies. Men’s same-sex relationships in the post-1950s period were reconstructed through a racial lens, arguing that Black men committed more violent acts and raped white men in prison. The final chapter looks at gay liberationists partnering with prisons and emerging out of prisons, with prisoners’ fluid sexual categorizations often posing as a struggle to “outside-prison” liberationists. In all, Kunzel demonstrates how discourses on prison same-sex sex attempted to reinforce the deviancy of prison populations and the “normalcy” of heterosexuality only to often reveal the cracks in the heteronormative hegemony.
February 6, 2020
This is an impressively thorough study of a number of arcs of change over the last two centuries, particularly of the shifts in architecture of prison (both in physical space and in the criminal-legal philosophies behind them), as well of the location of same-sex sex in prisons and the attendant anxieties of society regarding the phenomenon. Kunzel makes careful mention of the impacts of race and class in both the construction of sexuality and reading of behavior in prisons over this time - I read this text fairly quickly for class, but I think it is worthwhile for a more careful and studied read. I would say the biggest drawback from reading this in 2020 is that it does feel not necessarily outdated, but rushed or lacking in the last chapter or two - it's been more than a decade since publication, and the last chapter is rushing through the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. I think there is plenty of room for fruitful expansion on this work now.
February 19, 2025
4.25 stars - This is a brilliant intervention linking the entanglements of carcerality, sexuality, and queerness in contemporary America. I personally am not a huge fan of histories of medicine and am more interested in the earlier periods that this book touches on, so there were portions in which I found myself faltering. Nonetheless, the book is written with such clarity and incision that it's hard to believe we ever might have conceptualized prisons, sexuality, and queerness any other way.
February 13, 2018
Kunzel uses the prison as a window onto the anxieties and changing frames about same-sex sexual behavior and identity. Drawing on social science, autobiography, films, pulp novels, and social movement newsletters, Kunzel exposes the contradictions sex in prison poses for established categories.
January 23, 2023
Phenomenal tbh
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews