Recently I took a uni course called Gender and Crime. It was a very eye-opening and informative course, with lots cutting edge humane gender and sociological theory.
I was exposed to anti-carceral feminism, which proposes the abolition of prisons. It – anti-carceral feminism (and the prison abolition movement in general) – seeks replace the practice of imprisonment with its ensuing restorative and rehabilitative (as opposed to retributive) model of justice: it seeks to replace the ‘prison industrial complex’ with a restorative model of justice, tied to localized community resolution and restorative approaches to dealing with crime and socially aberrant behaviour(s). The ‘prison industrial complex’ is in fact a direct outgrowth of capitalism (and its colonialist predecessors), where not only do private corporate contracted interests profit from incarcerating and imprisoning people, but the large proportion of crime we see today is a result of socio-economic exploitation inherent to the capitalist mode of production itself: incarceration of peoples is ‘needed’ to perpetuate socio-economic inequality.
The difference between a saint and a serial killer is environment (as Fresco has found/postulated). Here we see the retributive model of crime and socially aberrant behaviour(s), as an extension of the primitive urge to punish rather than to rehabilitate, unless the threat of legally sanctioned punishment acts as a successful to crime. In retribution we seek not to understand the complexity of social behaviours (the environmental causative factors of crime) but instead deploy a reductionist and reactionary view of ‘an eye for an eye’. Thus ‘retributive ‘justice’’ is, largely I argue, not taking responsibility for the nuanced socially deterministic causes of crime itself.
The resource based economy (‘RBE’), with high technical efficiency and a collaborative technical approach to problem-solving, would see humanity into a humane and truly civilized future. Relative abundance of goods and services, and automation of rote and dangerous labour (as a guiding economic principle), would allow for the Marxist mantra “from each according to her/his ability, to each according to her/his needs” to be built into the social design itself. The weakness of Marx’s approach is in not sufficiently outlaying nor (sufficiently) scaffolding in enough detail just how a post-capitalist society would work and develop, and, importantly, how to transition (in detail) from the (now current neoliberal) capitalist economic model. We need both a detailed and comprehensive approach to how a post-capitalist social order would operate and how to transition to this socially sophisticated and humane order (in human affairs and how we relate to other sentient species, and the environment at large).
I propose a political transition to a certain kind of RBE, which would structurally dissolve crime: from regulated capitalism, to social democracy (‘third way approach’), dissolving big business by capping businesses’ employees to a maximum of 50 employees (‘fourth way approach’), introducing income capping (on individuals) to put an upper ceiling on greed, the implementation of market socialism, the instituting of participatory economics (in the vein of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel’s theories of political design and direct political participation), and finally – a RBE. A RBE surpasses the need for money, entailing the freeing up of socially constructive and socially beneficial incentives to contribute without profit or monetary exchange. All monetary systems elicit social corruption or social sub-optimality.
The late Jacque Fresco, the philosophic founder of a RBE held: “the smarter a person’s children are, the richer my life” (2020, p. 53). Fresco was self-taught and was incredibly insightful for a person without academic qualification. His circular (efficient) city design has won a sustainability award from the U.N. See my blog post on the social reflexivity in meeting the social demand for goods and services with the monitoring of needed specialised skills and labour wherein people cooperatively elect to perform these skills and labour as needed, to meet human need and the needs of other sentient species: gaps to be filled according to reflexive information generation about what skills need to be developed and deployed in the economy.
To a large extent, Fresco’s approach truly surpasses the need for imprisonment and incarceration. He wrote:
“If we want to reduce the crime rate, we must alter the environmental factors responsible for it…Today, our efforts to deal with socially offensive behavior are both inadequate and inappropriate. Eventually it will be realized and understood that most forms of so-called criminal behavior, which will fill jails well into the twenty-first century, have been generated by the scramble for money and property in an age of often-contrived scarcity…Four out of five of the prison population in New York come from seven of the lowest income areas in that state” (Fresco 2018, p. 105)
It is this mandate which propels us into the social responsibilitation for people’s behaviours at the socializing macro level of social structure, institutions, and system dynamics. A core tenet of a RBE is the deliberate reproduction of relative abundance so as to deliver social inclusion and not social stratification and not artificial scarcity.
You can learn more about the Venus Project, which advocates a RBE with high technical efficiency, at https://www.thevenusproject.com/
The Venus Project (or ‘socio-cyberneering’) is essentially a highly technical form of anarcho lib-com, with high environmental concern – not just human well-being. Its founders – Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows, have gone very far to distance themselves from regimes identifying as ‘communist’. I agree with them and with Michael Albert, that these regimes have reproduced class (workers versus planners), have been or are mired by political corruption, and these ‘communist’ regimes are really state capitalism not (libertarian) communism.
Fresco failed to account for one thing: gender competition. Just like there may be ‘class war’ based on shared circumstances of groups of people, there is ‘sex war’ based on shared biological and social conditions. The triad of sex class is female, trans (non-binary through hormones and/or surgery), and male. These sex classes have differing gendered strategies of power consolidation, and, overall, are finding they have more in common with fellow members of their sex class than in forging deep alliance(s) with members of the differing sex classes. Gender competition is here whether we like it or not and will only become more acute over time, as men and women organize to their conflicting interests. Intra-gender alliance in gender commonality and consciousness raising on this commonality phenomena will increase, particularly as reproduction and/or cloning surpasses the need for biological pregnancy, where women will not need a sexual encounter or a visit to a sperm-bank to become pregnant in order to reproduce. The myth that men and women are more similar than different, and that sex is merely a free-field of renegotiation against a rigid so-called ‘biological determinism / essentialism’ was and is exploded by the gendered experiment on chimpanzees:
“[Y]oung female monkeys in captivity have been known to favor dolls as playthings, while their male counterparts prefer “boy” toys like trucks” (Handwerk 2010)
A gendered individual may therefore find that they have far more in common with fellow members of their own sex class, and thus forge deep and sometimes subconscious intra-sex class solidarity, alliance and extensionality.
Thus, from this angle (and other angles), we arrive at the truism that all women are indeed feminists in one way or another. Furthermore, for all the contradictions of feminism, women are entitled to a collective identity. This is legitimating feminism as a form of gendered belonging and assertion of their interests as individuals and as a collective. It follows, then, that men (and trans!) have this same right!
Consequently, gender equity is the middle-ground in the gender competition impasse, and we should work very hard at this worthy endeavour to prevent the otherwise fall-out from unabated gender competition.
So, let us canvas some potential real dangers emanating from ‘sex war’ without setting up humanizing deterrents to crime emanating from this ‘battle’ (of the sexes):
Some women, in a pledged will to power to themselves, have gender competition incentives to really kill off the alpha males who are best at reasoning, to assert dominance of their gender. As a contingency, the women who make it their mission to be with an alpha male, may, upon the frustration in their mission, default and attempt to enslave masculinity in cooperation with other women. This spurs a legitimate fear of, at least, some women – even if only acknowledged in the subconscious minds of men. If women or a woman cannot emotionally neutralize an alpha male, they may resort to violence, which is a reason for setting up a deterrent to violence – i.e. penalties for violent transgression(s). Thus, we should very reluctantly set up a system of legal rules for which their breach would sanction penalties to act as a deterrent to violent behaviour(s).
And, then there are those trans people (some trans people) who want to universalise transgenderism and abolish the cisgender-hetero binary majority. In this some try to brainwash young children into choosing underage transitioning to trans in the education system(s), which should be outlawed. In addition to these kinds of tactics they may resort to violence against cisgender people who exclude them in the realm of legitimate choice and discretion in sexuality – merely exercising their innate right to choose their sexual orientation (when that sexually excludes trans people). Whilst I am pro the right of adult individuals to transition to transgenderism through hormones and/or surgery, choosing to adopt a gendered embodiment outside the cisgender binary majority is something which should need mature-age consent – i.e., the prerogative of adulthood. This is because these courses of action elicit such a dramatic change to the body, which, in turn, affects, drastically, identity. Remember, the human body and brain is born very altricial, meaning it takes persons a long time to biologically and socially mature. Whilst I am tentative to support adolescent hormonal intervention and/or gender re-assignment surgery/surgeries – for approval thereof – multidisciplinary boards could be constructed to facilitate and authorize certain kinds of these adolescent transgender interventions. Appointed to these multidisciplinary boards in socially sanctioning these gender and/or sex interventions could be neuroscientists1, geneticists (particularly cytogeneticists who study chromosomes), epi-geneticists, medical scientists, medical doctors, behavioural and developmental psychologists, and social scientists who are well versed in gender theory. As a gendered principle, we should teach love of one’s body.
So, the undisputed goal is to have no-one in prison – no-one at all. And, in the face of potentially extreme gender competition, we must setup some legally sanctioned deterrents to aberrant behaviour(s). In being successful, all prisons would be empty, and this could be sustained with careful and sophisticated social engineering and socialisations. We will need a punitive justice system to act as a deterrent for particularly inter-gender violence. Let us look at the core penalties for socially aberrant transgressions.
A necessary finding of criminality and thus penal deterrent justice for murder, manslaughter, grievous bodily harm, rape, cuckolding, property damage, and theft. Murder, manslaughter, and causing grievous bodily harm, should attract at least a 40-year sentence. Rape and sexual cuckolding should attract a sentence of 5-20 years depending on severity of these criminal acts, with a threshold of objective tests for a finding thereof. For a fair and reconciled objective threshold test for rape see https://www.henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2021/01/02/on-rape-culture-allegation/
Sexual cuckolding is an extreme form of emotio-sexual humiliation even though it is usually done with consent of the victim(s). It is often framed, by liberal hedonist ideology, as a part of ‘kink’. Against over-moralising the liberal conception of consent, we should focus on the harm done to the victim, which can be extreme, and thus needs social redress and accountability. An objective test for criminal sexual cuckolding would be the wearing, by a victim, of a penis-clamp or device designed to prevent a man or woman from being able to participate in sexual activity as a part of a humiliation; forced or coerced bi-sexuality intended to be humiliating within sexual power-dynamics between participants in sexual activities; penis size shaming a victim; psychological abuse along with sexual subordination and/or humiliation where the victim is not allowed to be an equal participant in sexual acts. Sexual cuckolding becomes most severe when it is technologically recorded and published on porn-sites for the reverse-‘panoptic’ sexual surveillance of anonymous viewers for a socially perverse and predatory sexual pleasure.
There should be non-criminal penalties for BDSM, physical assault without causing severe physical injury which should engender mandated sincere apology and community service. BDSM is the fetishization of removal of sexual agency of a person or persons. Furthermore, providing drugs to a minor should attract non-criminal penalties.
Some important defences to crimes should extreme provocation and self-defence. As Nietzsche formulated, we may take another’s life if there is due cause: i.e. extreme provocation:
“Prevention of suicide. – There exists a right by which we take a man’s life but none by which we take from him his death: this is mere cruelty.” (Nietzsche 2012, p. 48)
This should constitute an exemption to criminality.
In the not-so-distant future, there will be developments in nano-technology allowing for nano-tech cameras and microphones which could record a person’s sensory information relaying this to a private off-site clouds, which could be used in legal proceedings as admitted potentially incontrovertible proof of innocence, unless these video evidences are in fact deep-fakes presented to courts. This kind of evidence may be redacted, and there should be no ability for prosecution nor defence to injunct this information as evidence for nor against a crime.
Bibliography
Fresco, J 2020, Do You Speak Future? Book of Insights, The Venus Project, Florida, p.53.
Fresco, J 2018, The Best That Money Can’t Buy. Beyond Politics, Poverty and War, The Venus Project, Florida, p. 105.
Handwerk, B 22 December 2010, ‘Chimp “Girls” Play With “Dolls” Too – First Wild Evidence, National Geographic, <https://nationalgeographics.com/travel/article/101220-chimapnzees-play-nature-nurture-science-animals-evolution>
Nietzsche, F 2012, Human, All Too Human, Cambridge University Texts, New York, p. 48.
- Neuroscientists are integrally needed to determine, particularly, the size of the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis (‘BNST’), and the size and activity of other brain regions, as they related to subjective gender identity. ↩︎
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