Consent and Violence

Today in class we discussed Sherene Razack’s piece, “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George”, before watching a portion of “Finding Dawn”, a documentary which followed Janice Asooc as she recounts her past and present as an Indigenous woman in Saskatchewan. Throughout both of these pieces, the prevalent theme is violence; where does it come from and who does it impact? In both cases, who the violence was perpetrated against is significant in determining the severity of the violence. In the case of Pamela George’s murder, “both the Crown and the Defense maintained that the fact that Pamela George was a prostitute was something to be considered in the case” (page 92). In the case of Janice Asooc, she didn’t recognize her multiple rapes as violence because "that's the way you treat [Indigenous] women". These two cases parallel each other in their exemplification of how a justice system is severely limited when it operates under the notion that spatialized and racial violence are in any way different from… violence. In dealing with violence toward Indigenous women, the justice system personifies irony; violence is a serious topic, except when someone isn’t white, and except when someone lives anything other than a perfectly ‘conventional’ lifestyle. It’s this irony that I can’t get my mind around. That certain conditions above and beyond death have to be met by the victim of murder before their murder is recognized as such has no merit. There are no dots to connect. If an individual is murdered, or raped, that fact cannot be reputed on the basis of their occupation or skin colour not only because the thought of such is horrendous, but also because it is impossible to consent to violence. Regardless of how ‘risky’ a lifestyle an individual lives, their right to not have violence done to them is inherent in their existence. No other criteria need to be considered.

Concerning the case of Pamela George, Razack writes that “because Pamela George was considered to belong to a space in which violence routinely occurs, and to have a body that is routinely violated, while her killers were presumed to be far removed from this zone, the enormity of what was done to her remained largely unacknowledged” (page 93). According to those deciding the fate of George’s murderers, the lifestyle she led meant that she deserved to be violated. I just don’t have any words for it. I feel it is pertinent that something be done to stop trials from proceeding in this manner.