Why prisoners identify with #MeToo

My friend Jerry has an interesting perspective on the #MeToo Movement. Jerry Metcalf resides in a Michigan prison, and he points out that it’s not just female prisoners who support this protest movement. The subject strikes home for guys.

“That's because,” he says, “many prisoners have experienced it, too. Everything the system does to us is designed to tear us down, to degrade us. I imagined a woman with a couple of kids. She has to keep a job to take care of her kids, to feed them and whatnot. So, when she’s at work and her boss sexually harasses her or grabs her, she just grins and bears it. That’s us, I thought.”

For example…

“A guard once made me eat off the floor (literally)! Others degrade us and don’t even know they’re doing it. I remember a guard who used to stand in the chow hall and constantly belittle our food. She’d scrunch up her face and say things like: ‘That looks disgusting,’ or ‘I wouldn’t feed that crap to my dogs.’ It wasn’t like we could go down the road to a different cafeteria. She made me feel less than human.”

Prisoners will tell you, says Jerry, that many times they have needed toilet paper to go to the bathroom, but when they asked for it the guard made them wait an hour or two! "Like getting up out of their chair in front of the fan was too taxing. Screw you, you’re just a scumbag prisoner."

“I thought of all of the stories over the years of guards and other staff sexually harassing inmates or pressuring them to have sex—I’ve even had to deal with those things myself. Like many of those from the #MeToo movement, we prisoners have for years remained quiet about such abuses. Some out of shame, others out of fear of retaliation, but most because that’s just the way it’s always been. The guards make it a point to label you a ‘rat’ and destroy your peace of mind and what little you may own in a thousand different ways if you tell on them or one of their coworkers. Yet, when they tell on you by writing you a ticket, they’re ‘just doing their job.’”

Jerry’s contention: “Just like with the #MeToo women, it’s a system-wide cover-up.”

American actress Alyssa Milano last year encouraged #MeToo victims to tweet about it so that people could get a sense of the “magnitude of the problem.”

Jerry couldn’t tweet from his cell, but we can help pass along the word.

Getting “a sense of the magnitude” isn’t enough. Shabby treatment must come to a halt for women.

For prisoners, too.

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