Note: Many writings and discourses on rape culture operate within a firm gender binary, and do a lot of work to uphold the gender binary myth. We believe that the cultural myth that there is a gender binary (there are two genders, man or woman, and you can be only one of those two things), is violent; it works to make trans people invisible, upholds patriarchy, and is in fact one of the cultural stories that builds and supports rape culture. We have tried hard here to move the conversation of rape culture away from this binary.
BELIEFS, STORIES, AND VALUES OF RAPE CULTURE • “Sexual violence and sexual coercion are normal.” • “Rape is just the way things are.” • Stranger rape myth: Most survivors are actually raped by friends and family • “Women shouldn't ____ because they will get raped.” • “Rapists are monsters.” • “Rape is clear and obvious.” • “Rape is about sex.” (rather than it being about control) • Valuing virginity • Virgin/whore dichotomy“ • “Only (cisgender) women are raped.” • Violence is seen as sexy, and sexuality as violent (from Transforming a Rape Culture) • “Sex workers can't be raped.” • “There is one “right” or “normal” way to act after experiencing rape or sexual violence, and if you are not acting that way, then it can't have happened.” • “Actual rape is rare.” • “It was a mistake.” • Entitlement: to bodies, to sex, to status, to power, to minds • “(Cisgender) men have uncontrollable urges.”
ACTIONS OF RAPE CULTURE • “Victim blaming”-- blaming people who have experienced sexual violence for the violence they experienced • Protecting the social position, job, athletic career, etc of someone who has committed sexual violence. • Focusing an enormous amount of energy and time teaching people (mostly girls and women) to avoid getting raped (be careful what you wear, how much you drink, how you walk, where you walk, who you are with, etc) rather than teaching people not to rape, and how to communicate about sexy times • Treating/teaching survivors of sexual violence that they should be ashamed • Trivializing rape, sexual assault, and sexual violence • Using the word rape to refer to anything but rape (“that test raped me”) • Treating rape as compliment or flattery
ANTI-OPPRESSION RESOURCE AND TRAINING ALLIANCE www.aorta.coop • Using rage as a weapon, threat, tool of coercion and manipulation, tool of war • Sexual objectification • Assuming straightness as the norm • Cultural silence: Not talking about sexual violence, assault, and rape. • Street harassment, cat calling • Avoiding getting consent, talking about consent, etc.
WAYS RAPE CULTURE IS INSTITUTIONALIZED • Unwillingness of police and DAs to prosecute rapes that do not involve force or where the person raped has a relationship to the person who caused harm. • The understood reality that people in prisons face homosexual rape. It's uninterrupted, and often considered part of the “punishment.” • Racial disparities in prosecution • Survivors of sexual violence have to prove they have been raped, experience violence. • Institutional lack of infrastructure to address sexual violence: Most colleges don't have specific protocol for addressing sexual assault different from other incidences of conflict or violence. • The phrase he said/she said used by courts, police officers. • The only readily available institutional option for someone who has experienced sexual violence to have it addressed is to report it through the punitive justice system. This can be a traumatizing experience. Furthermore, most acts of sexual violence are committed by people we know, and many people do not want to imprison the person who harmed them.
ANTI-OPPRESSION RESOURCE AND TRAINING ALLIANCE www.aorta.coop PUNITIVE, RESTORATIVE, AND TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE THE BASICS
PUNITIVE JUSTICE intervenes when someone has broken a rule rather than caused harm is based in punishments that are pre-determined the offended party is the state (cops, courts, prisons)
The effects of punitive justice on people who've caused harm: pathologizes people defines people by their actions assumes punishment and incarceration rehabilitates blame is on an individual person and not a systemic problem removal of one person solves the problem isolates sex offender registration
The effects of punitive justice on survivors strips survivors of agency places the burden of proof on survivors memory ---> re-traumatizes forces survivors to establish linear narrative blaming the survivor low success rate of conviction
The effects of punitive justice on the community alienated by process of legal defense illusion of safety ---> defined from the outside low success rate builds the illusion that sexual assault does not exist (very few cases) enforcement mechanism that operates on oppression (causing harm) disproportionate regulation targets marginalized communities media fear mongering disempowers communities and forces a reliance on the state divides communities no accountability violence on the community
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE Process presented as a choice (limited in reality). Person who created harm needs to “give back/restore.” Alternative to incarceration (at times). Holds individuals (not systems) responsible, does not take into account systems of oppression.
ANTI-OPPRESSION RESOURCE AND TRAINING ALLIANCE www.aorta.coop Gives survivors more opportunities to participate in process to a limited level. Incorporates survivors without basing approach on their voice/perspective.
Asks: What was the harm to community? How can a person who created harm give back? Mediation, classes, community service, resources to person(s) harmed.
People are less likely to be removed from community. “Justice” is restored. Breaks judicial systems monopoly on responses and/or extends the state further. Acts as community based but is not.
TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE Asks why the harm was committed and what the root causes are.
Looks at the behavior → doesn’t mean the person is a bad person. the person who caused harm has healing to do person is not reduced to their actions
Believes that someone can be both someone who has caused harm and has been harmed.
Offers choices and many options and moves toward liberatory values, understanding status quo is not enough.
Involves a willingness to deeply question the status quo, and asks for imagination beyond current system.
Tries to secure safety and healing.
Asks what do you need to have justice.
Assumes each process is organic and particular to each situation/community. What does that community need to make this process accountable?
Works to address power and privilege, in community and larger systems.
Transformative justice is hard! People burn out. It brings up questions of capacity, as individuals and as communities. It requires skills we don’t learn “culturally” and within current institutions (open communities, conflict resolution, etc.) Mistakes can have a real and huge impact on people’s lives.
The story for transformative justice is still being written....
ANTI-OPPRESSION RESOURCE AND TRAINING ALLIANCE www.aorta.coop