"Safety Conscious Victims in Waiting"

Risk Management is an interesting concept when it comes to sexual assault. During Dr. Gotell's talk, she brought up this idea of those who take responsible measures, in the situations of those who are HIV positive. Yet when taking that further, as she does within her article, this idea of the 'responsible victim' or risk management is a problematic one. Well she does examine this, I can't help but think back to Campbell's piece, in looking at the rules society tells us to ensure our safety from sexual assault. Yet, as we know, these ideas fail us time and time again, especially when looking at it through the context of risk management. When putting this together with the Kindred House presentation, I kept thinking back to how these women can never been seen within this realm of the 'responsible victim', because as Shawna said, they are told that sexual assault is part of their job. Structural violence will never allow for responsible victims, especially within the institution of sex work. How is one suppose to become a 'responsible victim' when the system will always be continually working against them?

Just as when Dr. Gotell was speaking to the situations of criminalization in instances of HIV positive individuals and sexual interactions, how is one to be responsible when they system marginalizes them as soon as they are diagnosed? During Gotell's discussion, I was having a hard time during the conversation battling back and forth between what I thought was right, until I realized that it was the stigma surrounding HIV that was clouding my thoughts. The socialization I have received hadn't made me question this criminalization, as being an active member in a society that marginalizes HIV.

More and more I am getting confused about why our society creates narratives about victims/survivors. I understand that its because our society used sexual assault to silence individuals and to reinforce power dynamics within our society, but if a majority of us understand these narratives to be untrue, I struggle to understand how so many of us cling to them - I know I still do. This is entirely what Gotell is asking us to resist in the final sentence of her article as she wants us to move away from the "assigned role of safety-conscious victims-in-waiting" (Gotell, 221) because these narratives help no one, and need to be thrown away.