I was a Sophomore in college when I met A. He was a resident assistant in my dorm and was tall, charming, well liked. He was a star rugby player with a spot on student council and a smile that could win over even the toughest of critics. 

But there was something off about A. that no one else seemed to notice. There were nights where I heard him on the phone, his voice forcing its way under his door, down the hall and into my room. He erupted at a female on the other end, ostensibly his girlfriend from home, shouting that she was wrong, she had fucked up. One night after a hall dinner at an Indian restaurant, he began arguing with the hostess. He had asked to take her out and she told him she could not, she was engaged via an arranged marriage.  He somehow made himself twice his size. Wielding an intense and firm power over her, I saw her shrink almost to the size of the fennel seeds in the bowl in front of her. “Don’t you see how that’s wrong?” he challenged her. “Why don’t you let me take you out?” He had an underlying formidable aggression that I sensed only came out when he didn’t get what he wanted as he forcibly grabbed her arm.

Not only did she look panic-stricken, but also completely dominated and bewildered.  At this time in my life, I had no name for this behavior, this need to aggressively dominate. There was no discussion about how this was wrong or how it should change.  Only when I was in my late 20s would I come to learn of the term “toxic masculinity.”

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Nearly 10 years after that night in the Indian restaurant, I attended a film screening sponsored by UnCommon Law- a bay area-based non-profit whose mission is to provide access to justice and healing for people impacted by incarceration.  Filmed in 2018, The Feminist on Cell Block Y is a documentary that takes an eye-opening look at the pain that this behavior causes; it explores the consequences not only on the aggressors themselves but on families and society as a whole. 

The film takes us to Soledad Men’s Correctional Training Facility, located on U.S. Route 101, five miles from Soledad, California in the middle of Monterey county.  It is a sprawling, flat complex of white buildings, high-security fencing and dirt. It is monotony and violence and grief; it is humanity on lockdown. The prison made headlines in October of 2018 for riots, the second in three months among its 2,500 man population. And later, in April of 2019 for a 200-inmate riot that sent 8 individuals to the hospital for treatment for stab wounds.

“As soon as you walk into prison, you’re struck by the unapologetic display of power,” says Noel Schwerin, a filmmaker who spent 7 years documenting life inside Soledad Prison for her own film, In an Ideal World.  That power- the struggle for it, the excessive use of it- is reflected in the behaviors of both staff and inmates.  It is toxic masculinity at its finest. It is a hallmark of prison life, the “unspoken code of behavior among men in American prisons” that glorifies and necessitates domination, self-reliance, emotional repression and violence.  It is a magnification of cultural norms and the end result of years of striving to embody stereotypical masculinity. 

But The Feminist on Cell Block Y focuses on a small but steady light emanating from within the bleak obscurity of the United States prison system.  Surprisingly, Soledad Prison is home to a group program for inmate education and rehabilitation, featuring a curriculum inspired by feminist literature that challenges men to confront patriarchy as a means of rehabilitation.  Started by two inmates, Charles Berry and Richard Edmond Vargas, Success Stories meets for 12 weeks and just finished its sixth year. 

Vargas, an inmate himself (who has since been released), facilitates the sessions, along with a cast of several other men who lead discussions, share quotes and ask difficult questions.  They challenge men to first understand the hyper-masculine narrative that has run their lives thus far and then to step away from it. The writings of Bell Hooks, feminist writer and social activist, are a staple of the class. There is a stark contrast between scenes of the documentary that are shot in the room where Success Stories meets and the interspersed shots of prison life; you almost forget that every man in the room has CDCR Prisoner stamped in yellow on their backs and that they are being watched by guns as they open up and share experiences.

Prison is a concentration of all the feelings from people who have to given into that anger over time.  In prison, Vargas says, you have a choice. To go back to who you were before you committed your crime or to succumb to the madness, to the anger.  It is that choice, that moment that dictates who you are for the rest of your life, even more so than the crime itself.  A second chance is the moment you decide whether or not to change who you are and life for your “Top 5”- the people who mean the most to you in this world.

Over an hour and 15 minutes, I witnessed nearly every man who attended Success Stories untangle. Men who were locked up for armed robbery, drug trafficking and even murder share their most vulnerable moments and realizations on their childhoods and the culture that raised them.  Roy, an incredibly thoughtful inmate who reminded me how we so often unfairly demonize the incarcerated, became a strong voice throughout the hour and fifteen minutes of the film. “I started to get real clear on who I was and how I was living and how I was showing up and how I was loving and how that wasn’t really love.  How I was damaging and destroying all these relationships in my life because of these negative, distorted beliefs and views,” he reflected.

The Feminist on Cellblock Y isn’t only about addressing toxic masculinity in prisons. True, the environment in prison is ripe for cultivating this harmful behavior.  But it is about more. It is about the prisoners and the viewer examining and changing the very thing that makes us human- our relationships and the way we connect with others.  It is about waking up to these tendencies in adolescents and children, before they rape, steal and murder. It is about looking at the culture that causes these tendencies.  It is about having discussions, men holding other men accountable, and not making the same old excuses that “boys will be boys.” It is also a proposal for change.  It is an intervention and an opportunity for transformation.

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I found out many years after graduating college that A. had been arrested. He’d been charged with stealing thousands of dollars worth of student property- laptops, credit cards and more.  I don’t know if he ended up in jail but I sometimes wonder about him. I wonder if somewhere along the way he has learned to know himself.  And that maybe someone along the way has helped him realize that men who are whole can speak their fear without shame.

Richard Vargas has since been released from prison and has launched Success Stories as an official nonprofit.  The group has received partial funding from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and hopes to expand nationally.

UnCommon Law continues to host events throughout the bay area that benefit families and help further their mission to provide justice for those impacted by incarceration.