Found this on gaynz.com

Interesting that the history of lesbians in prison is tied up with attitudes towards African Americans and working class women - at least in the US. In BG the focus is more on working class women in prison, and lesbians who may or may not be working class. But then the research is more about perceptions and demonistion rather than about the reality.

http://www.gaynz.com/aarticles/templates/f...=1429&zoneid=16

History: The Original "Bad Girls?"
25JUL07 - Craig Young

In a recent book on US feminist history, Estelle Freedman wrote two intriguing chapters about the herstory of debate about lesbians within US womens prisons. And here?

If you're a dyke queen, you'll know better than to stand in the way of a squadron of stampeding sapphists when ITV's Bad Girls is airing. However, it wasn't a subject for entertainment for most of last century.

"Prison lesbianism" apparently arose in the original context of interracial lesbian prison romances in the United States. This 'moral panic' encompassed
condemnation from psychologists, criminologists and state officials. These professional sources used racist and homophobic language to describe alleged African American prison lesbian 'sexual aggression' that captivated vulnerable white inmates on the inside. It led to calls for prison segregation, even outside the Deep South, which didn't eventuate, as these conservative professionals didn't have things their own way.

Samuel Kahn wrote the first 'study' of prison lesbianism in 1937, although a female prison warden and male chaplains tried to evade the issue. It might have been an official discourse of invisibility, though, although the Second World War led to emergence of anxieties about white working-class lesbianism, as urban lesbian bars began to emerge in coastal American cities.

As ethnicity faded from official antilesbian social scientific research, an equally shrill demonisation of working-class lesbians replaced it. According to this sociological and psychological research, working class lesbians were sexually voracious, polyamorous and physically aggressive, and also allegedly composed a 'majority' of violent female criminals. According to one conservative Massachusetts parole board member, Katherine Sullivan, impressionable young women were exposed to the spectacle of tall, sloppily dressed women with short-cropped hair, t-shirts and jeans and decided to emulate them! At other times, recurrent lesbian prison romances were used for parole discrimination against lesbian inmates, although not all prison governors were that homophobic.

Indeed, some were lesbian themselves. For example, Miriam Van Waters was a prominent professional social worker and became superintendant at the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at Franingham, holding her position for twenty two years and sucessfully fighting off an antilesbian moral panic at her institution against inmate lesbian relationships through formidable reformist women's networking in 1949.

And in New Zealand? Again, we don't know if this whole official series of controversies about prison lesbianism was reflected in other contexts, if official New Zealand correctional ministers and personnel took notice of overseas controversies of this nature, or if New Zealand lesbian inmates had contact with counterparts from the United States. Again, I'd like to suggest this area as an ideal topic for women's studies or LGBT history post-graduate thesis research.

Recommended Reading:

Estelle Freedman: Their Sisters Keepers: Female Prison Reform in America: 1830-1930: Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: 1981: ISBN: 0472100084

Estelle Freedman: Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition: Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1996: ISBN: 0226261492

Estelle Freedman: "Seperatism Revisited: Women's Institutions, Social Reform and the Case of Miriam Van Waters", "The Prison Lesbian: Race, Class and the Construction of the Aggressive Female Homosexual (1915-1965)" and "The Burning of Letters Continues: Elusive Identities and the Historical Construction of Sexuality" in Estelle Freedman: Feminism, Sexuality and Politics: Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press: 2006: ISBN: 0807856940

ENDS

Thanks for posting this article, campgrrls. This is such an interesting issue, particularly the way homophobia led the prison authorities and parole boards to use lesbian behavior as a reason to keep a woman locked up for as long as possible. Jenni Millbank's article ("Its About This: Lesbians, Prison, Desire") provides a really compelling perspective on why pop-culture depictions of lesbians in prison are important--because they do impact official and unofficial policies regarding the treatment of real life lesbians in real life prisons. For those who haven't read the Millbank article yet, here's a link to download it:
http://rapidshare.de/files/27695820/ItsAboutThis.pdf.html

And if you're interested, take a look at the bibliography at the end of the article. It's pretty comprehensive in terms of resources on lesbians in prison.

Thanks for the link abzug. I hadn't read the article before but Jenni told me about it as she was planning it. It's a very powerful and extremely well-researched piece. I particularly like the way she links the reprsentations of prison with research on lesbians and prisons.

I agree with a lot of what Jenni says in the article but not everything. I agree on the main thesis about how the depictions of lesbians are treated by the sytem and about the transgressive parts of the 3 texts she examines. I also agree with her on the "domestication" and neutralising of Nikki & the H & N relationship in series 3 & in the reception of BG. Gee it brought back so much of what happened with LI. I have a whole thread saved called "Moderator" (of LI) which I haven't re-looked at yet. But I think it was when the LI moderator made herself available to answer questions from memebers - probably deals with some of the angst.

Anyway.... places where I differ from Jenni - note she focuses mainly on Nikki as the lesbian hero. I think it's kind of like the line where Helen is a bit of a control freak. I seem to recall there was quite a bit of discussion about the Sarah Waters novel on LI. Someone there was also criticising the gaolers behaviour in similar terms to the criticism of Helen. Hah!!! I also remember some discussion about the SCUM manifesto - Vixy was well into it!!!... memories..... still in spite of differences of opinion, I think that's a great article.

Very interesting report on the treatment of transexuals in UK prisons:

http://www.pfc.org.uk/legal/tsprison.htm

In particular, there's a section which talks about both trans people and lesbians, and how they receive longer sentences and are rarely granted early release, because a trans or lesbian identity is taken as evidence that the prisoner has not been rehabilitated--the same point Millbank makes in her article.