If we consider them vulnerable populations, then why does our legal system fail them when it comes to sexual assault? Obviously this was what Benedet was trying to argue in her article, that no matter who you are, the legal system fails when it comes to instances of sexual violence. Yet I do not understand how a population who has continually had their sexaulity policed or has had it denied, can still receive the same injustice when it comes to sexual assault. Alberta had one of the largest eugenics movement in Canadian history, aimed at the sterilization of individuals with disabilities. Even with this, and the institutional policing of sexuality, the hypersexualization of ‘deviant’ bodies is continually the source of violence.
What I find even more heartbreaking is that while sexual assault happens because of a power imbalance the patriarch has created, but in the instance of those with disabilities, it comes from an ableist society as well. The cases we read were from individuals who had been abused by their caregivers, people who are suppose to help them manage day-to-day life, and instead abused this power dynamic in the worst way possible. Even in cases where the law is suppose to prevent this, somehow these offenders manage to still slip by.
It is becoming more apparent to me that there needs to be a desperate re-working of society. It’s easy to blame the justice system for failing, or the actions of individuals, but honestly, our society is setting everyone up to fail. As Benedet states “rape, as a relatively common practice, is rooted in, and reinforces, sex inequality” (Benedet, 136), showing that our society is built for rape to occur. Our society is built on inequalities and injustices. I am not saying that people aren’t to blame for their actions, and that they shouldn’t be held accountable, but we do need to fix the way our society is structured. I know that there is not a simple solution, as nothing about this is simple, but it does need to change.
I appreciate your point that the sexual assault of disabled women is the result of sexist and ableist power imbalances. This is why Benedet and Grant's choice to look at the sexual assault of "women with mental disabilities" though the lens of the social model of disability seems slightly odd. The social model, as they explain, separates disability from impairment and says that disability is the result of ableist attitudes and barriers in society. While the social model has been incredibly helpful in improving the lives of disabled women, it does not question impairment. The radical model of disability, on the other hand, argues that both impairment and disability are socially constructed and fights for a celebration of all variations of life. I think that approaching the issue of sexual assault of disabled women though a radical model could have been more beneficial. This would have allowed Benedet and Grant to explore the ways the constriction of "mental disabilities" impacts courts and juries. I do understand that the social model is the prevalent model used in disability activism, however I think the decision to use a radical approach may have been more effective. This would allow the impairments of the women to be thought of as constructed, rather than as biological realities, and to investigate how these constructions impact their experiences in the legal system.
ReplyDeleteI really love some of the points you have brought up here, as well as Sammy Jo's comment to these points. It is true that in the case of disabled women, they "doubly oppressed" by both a sexist and ableist society. Evidently, (as we've established in class) this stems from the fact that the dominant view comes from the white hetero able-bodied patriarchal standards that we have all internalized. A consequence of subscribing to such a restricted understanding of life is an idea of what "the norm" should look like. When thinking about the consensus model of crime, it states that laws are set up in such a way that they represent the majority or the greatest number of people in a society. Therefore, laws will be made to benefit these people first and foremost. However, as disability scholar A. J. Withers describes, the definitions of impairment and disability are contingent on various historical, socio-cultural and immediate factors. In some sense, all of us a disabled to an extent or will be at some point in our lives. If we started to subscribe to this kind of understanding of disability, then the legal system would be modelled to benefit those who are disabled. If disability was actually considered the norm, then we would have the bottom-up system that Professor Nixon talked about in class.
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