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From: mario@astrovax.UUCP (Mario Vietri)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: San Quentin strip searches -- a new twist
Message-ID: <546@astrovax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-Feb-85 17:20:41 EST
Article-I.D.: astrovax.546
Posted: Wed Feb 13 17:20:41 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Feb-85 02:12:31 EST
References: <802@druxo.UUCP>
Organization: Princeton Univ. Astrophysics
Lines: 64


Nancy Parsons uses a faulty argument when she tries to explain why she feels
differently depending on whether it is male guards searching female prisoners, 
or viceversa, at S.Quentin state prison.

	First, she claims that security, not privacy, should be the overriding
concern on the issue. Then, she says that women are more threatened by men than
the viceversa. 

> First, I think that felons *should* lose many of their rights, including
> the right of privacy, when it interferes with security.

> However, it seems worth noting that female prisoners searched by male
> guards are likely to experience a greater sense of being threatened than
> when the roles are reversed.

	Obviously, the two things are contradictory. Either security prevails,
in which case body searches by guards of any sex are permitted on prisoners
of any sex, or the dignity of the prisoners should be protected even within
the relatively secure confines of the prison. Even if she prefers security,
one may notice that the prisoners were NOT objecting to body searches per se,
but only to who was performing such body searches. 

	I of course side with the preservation of dignity even in these 
confines, which is in line, of course, with what is explicitly stated in the
constitution. In this case, though, NP still makes a strange claim 
when she says...

> ... female prisoners searched by male
> guards are likely to experience a greater sense of being threatened than
> when the roles are reversed.

	This is certainly true, but why should YOU decide how really
threatened and humiliated men feel in these situation? Why should
the fact that women feel humiliated under these (or different) conditions ...

> Women experience different levels of anxiety and self-doubt than men do
> when they receive promotions, get married or divorced, are searched by
> members of the opposite sex...

imply that men do not, or should not? In general, I believe whoever 
tells that s/he feels humiliated, because it is their feelings, their freedoms,
their personal dignity that are being humiliated, not mine.
The simple statement that somebody feels humiliated is sufficient ground,
for me, to take that person seriously. 

	At the same time, I do expect everybody else to feel the same the way,
and it is exactly this that is disturbing in Nancy Parsons' letter: the 
presumption that she has a right to say whose claims to privacy are
justified and whose are not. The episode per se is slightly irrelevant, 
given also that we have neglected the conflict between prisoners'
rights and affirmative action. 

> Women experience different levels of anxiety and self-doubt than men do
> when they receive promotions, get married or divorced, are searched by
> members of the opposite sex...
 
	Quite true, but what does this have to do with my feelings when it
is me who is being body-searched? Unfortunately for us men, and as every
black, chicano, mexican man can easily attest, women do not have
the monopoly on humiliation.

					Mario Vietri
				{most majors}!astrovax!mario