Spaces Where Violence Cannot be Realized

For another class I recently read “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George” by Sherene H. Razack. In this article Razack explores the ways that racialized spaces are viewed as inherently criminal, violent, and non-respectable whereas spaces of whiteness are considered to be spaces of justice and control. Accoding to Razack colonization has pushed Aboriginal people into the city centre, meaning these areas are considered racialized and violent. The colonizer, as Razack argues, must go from their respectable zone of justice to the deviant area of the racialized and then return to the space of whiteness to assert their dominance and control (4). What I want to focus on is Razack’s argument that for bodies belonging to racialized spaces violence is expected to be an inherent part of their life; thus it is impossible to realize the enormity of harm done to these people (93). I want to expand Razack’s discussion of the ways bodies belonging to certain spaces cannot be understood as harmed or violated to the discussion of sexual assault against disabled women.        

In their article “Sexual Assault and the Meaning of Power and Authority for Women with Mental Disabilities” Benedet and Grant argue that “women with mental disabilities” are vulnerable and that the law does not protect or support them. Benedet and Grant discuss that the law only recognizes that positions of trust, power, and authority are abused when the victim is underage (150). For other intellectually disabled or mentally ill women “[c]ourts are very reluctant to find relationships of trust or authority with adult women” (Benedet & Grant 150). In extending Razack’s argument perhaps we can understand the court’s refusal to recognize sexual assaults as violations of trust because of the space in which disabled women are relegated to. Disabled people are barred from full access in society by a multitude of barriers. There are literal physical, economic, social, and attitudinal barriers that prevent disabled people from full integration in society. Disabled people’s exclusion from mainstream society relegates them to a space, as Benedet and Grant discuss, of sexual deviance (137) and animalization (138). Women with intellectual disabilities and mentally ill women are connected to a space that stereotypes them as “sexually inappropriate and indiscriminate in their sexual appetites” (Benedet & Grant 138).

Perhaps this connection of disabled people to a space of deviant sexuality impacts how we can think about the sexual assault of disabled people. Looking specifically at the assault of a woman by her DATS driver and the assault of an institutionalized woman by a guard we can see the court’s refusal to recognize the relationship of trust. I believe this may be because of the space of bestial and inappropriate sexuality that mentally ill and intellectually disabled women belong to. This space they belong to may be why these women are “more likely to be seen as consenting to the sexual activity” (137). Their space of deviance means they cannot be understood as “respectable victims” (Benedet & Grant 137) just as Razack argues women of colour cannot. This means the violence done to bodies in these spaces cannot be fully realized.

Razack, Sherene H. 'Gendered Racial Violence And Spatialized Justice: The Murder Pamela George.'. Canadian journal of law and society 15.02 (2000): 91-130. Web.