Despite the anger seeping through my comments in class regarding Durazo’s text, I hope that community accountability works. I really do. I’m just not ready to embrace it yet.
In theory, I don’t believe that incarceration is the answer. I’m down for Angela Davis’ model of prison abolition. I smiled when I read Durazo’s line: “reliance upon criminal justice response seizes our creativity and the possibility of achieving profound social transformation at the roots of violence” (78). Totally. To large extents, we are products of our cultural, social and political contexts, and the “choice” to commit a crime, I believe, is heavily influenced by these factors. In as much capacity as I can say I “get it” as a white university student, I get it.
My social sciences-trained brain started to collapse in the next paragraph where Durazo outlines the Coalitions Against Rape and Abuse (CARA) model. Those using the model, she writes, must “humanize everyone” — rapists and non-rapists alike — “involved” (78). If this accountability model is not followed, she warns that separating the two groups by “stigmatizing” offenders, the group will “fail to see how we contributed to conditions that allow violence to happen” (78). Violence, this passage suggests, is all of our responsibility, for we all participate in systems of privilege and power.
I have to admit, (this post is going to have a lot of admittances) I deeply struggle with looking at sexual assault perpetration from a structural level as Durazo’s class attempts to do by considering (and, at times, rejecting) the admitted offender’s associations with colonialization, displacement and alcohol abuse. I’m not suggesting that I don’t believe some aspect of structural conditions influence one’s likelihood to perpetrate sexual assault — I certainly do. But it’s so difficult to conceive someone’s act of violence on another person coming from any place other than choice — no matter how critical of neoliberalism I try to be.
For a lack of better phrasing, that scares me. It’s so hard to see someone as a social product when their actions created such devastating personal outcomes. Questioning the concept of "choice" in sexual assault is radically disruptive to my sense of security.
When Googling articles to try and find some resources to help me think through this, I stumbled upon the Jezebel article: Rapists Explain Themselves on Reddit, and We Should Listen. (This article contains excerpts of men depicting sexual assaults they perpetrated, so please do what you need to do to take care of yourself if you choose to read it. The article is, however, much more balanced than the headline would suggest). The examples of men’s internalizations of rape myths reaffirms my fears mentioned above — men struggle to identify as rapists because they aren’t the scary stranger preying on women in alleys. I agreed with the author, who concluded “the most disturbing takeaway from the thread: these guys are so disconnected from reality that they don't even feel the need to look women in the face to be sure they're interested.”
With that being said, I do think there is a need for community accountability. But I'm not ready to participate in it, and I don't know when I will be. I am self-conscious of how this reflects on me as a feminist who is critical of neoliberalism. I don't want to just be a feminist killjoy who gets upset without acting.
When I’m feeling cynical and afraid and hyper-aware of the rape culture that surrounds me, I find reading Sara Ahmed therapeutic, particularly in confronting “the hurt of some gets in the way of the happiness of others.” That is, embracing the title of being a “feminist killjoy” and resisting the need to gage our capacity for hurt and hurting in relation to other people’s happiness. I read her “Becoming Unsympathetic” blog post today, which reminded me that deepening our feminist practice involves discomfort with others: “We have to shatter some possibilities. Happiness, even. Break a thread, even.”
Is this the most “productive” option? I’m not sure, but it’s the way I need to think to get through some days. Someday I hope to change that. But today, I think, I’m going to stay mad.
Going through the readings this week and further discussing them in class, I felt the anger you describe here too. It’s hard to even come close to intrinsically considering the structural levels of sexual assault that Durazo talks about, shifting the responsibility from the one person it should be on to the entire system. There were times when I felt myself nodding my head as I read some of the statements Durazo put forward, but nearly coming to tears of frustration at other moments. I personally cannot conceive the idea of humanizing rapists, nor can I acknowledge any truth within *some* of Durazo’s proclamations. I just can’t. Yes, there are more productive ways of rehabilitating “criminals” than just throwing them into a prison cell for x amount of time, but are accountability models the answer? As you said, accountability is necessary, but it may take a while before there is a truly productive method of going through these models perfectly. For the meantime, the survivors deserve all of my attention.
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"The survivors deserve all the attention", I absolutely agree with you. How sympathetic are we supposed to be to the perpetrators? In the imagination the rapists is still the scary stranger lurking in the bushes. Unfortunately from some of the conversations I've had with friends this belief is still held. A rapist as someone we know is a truth that many people don't understand. And for rapists if they know the person they are abusing, an aquaintaince, a friends friend, a classmate then they probably do not consider what they've done to be so bad. Because that myth still perpetuates, of the scary rapist; and if they are not the scary rapist then what happened could not be that bad and becomes excusable. Then their can be sympathy and understanding for the rapist because we have humanized them. I agree with most of Daruzo, when I read her, but it is harder to agree with her when you hear first hand accounts from actual survivors. This is why the survivor should always come first, always. And if the CARA model is being applied, it must be applied very carefully. It is a slippery slope when you humanize a perpetrator, what they've done can make sense in a twisted way. It may be twisted, but it can lead to as much sympathy to the abuser as the survivor and that scares me.
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