The More Prisoners, the Fewer Men. Self-perceptions and Male Relationships in a Prison in the Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Abstract

The article aims to understand and problematize the ways in which men deprived of their liberty perceive and re-construct their in light of the conditions of life in prison and their participation in a space for reflection on gender. The research is based on a participatory methodology and in the development of an educational device that not only allowed the encounter with/between men, but also challenged their masculinities in specific ways. In the first place, it was possible to reveal a need for men to reaffirm themselves as cis-heterosexuals in front of the immediate gaze of other prisoners, and to prevent that their participation in a gender workshop question their virility. Secondly, as an educational device coming from outside the prison, it meant to many of them a way of approaching the socially acceptable paradigm of “man”, and of questioning -at least circumstantially- the identity of the “prisoner” as a “broken” male. Thus, it is possible to conclude that the adaptation to the masculine parameters of the prison constitutes a strategy to be recognized by other prisoners and to survive the prison system, which, inversely, accentuates their devalued self-perceptions of “man”.