The State Will Not Save Us From Gender Violence or Why Did White Women Vote for Donald Trump?
I was at a rally in Oklahoma City to protest police officer Daniel Holtzclaw who had raped several Black women. During the protest, many had signs that said Holtzclaw should get life in prison because that would be “justice.” I was disturbed by this demand because the prison industrial complex is itself oppressive and thus cannot bring about justice. Of course Holtzclaw’s survivors should have justice, but why do we equate justice with the criminal justice system? What was also noteworthy is that only racial justice organizations supported the Black women who had been raped by Holtzclaw. White feminist and anti-violence organizations refused to become involved. I thought that was strange. But my aunt explained to me that anti-violence organizations generally do not support survivors of violence who have been criminalized because these organizations work so closely with prosecutors and police officers as their primary strategy for addressing violence.
bell hooks discusses the importance of feminist politics for everyone. She notes that is important to address the connections between race and gender. She also talks about the importance of addressing gender violence. But she does not address the intersections of race and gender. hooks argues that domestic violence is the result of male dominance. It is also important to recognize domestic violence as the result of racial dominance. Slavery, lynching, Native genocide, war, etc were all perpetuated through sexual violence.
Thus, it is problematic to use racist institutions (i.e. the prison system) to solve the problem of sexual and domestic violence, especially for women of color because doing so just normalizes the racism of these institutions. This is a contradictory strategy that does not create safety. For instance, when mandatory arrest laws were passed so that police had to arrest someone in a domestic violence case, batterers starting calling the police first. The net result of these laws that were supposed to protect survivors is that the mortality rate of Black survivors of domestic violence has INCREASED by 98%.
The problem with this strategy is further seen in Anne Elizabeth Moore’s exposé of anti-trafficking organizations. These organizations are there to “save” trafficked women. But they are essentially operating as “paramilitary” organizations that often make things worse for women. As the World Health Organization notes, sex workers are put in more danger rather than more safe from these rescue operations because they are most victimized by the police, particularly during these operations.
Jyoti Sanghera notes, this strategy presumes that law enforcement is “neutral and unproblematic.” In fact, when the state gets involved in trafficking it ends up criminalizing sex workers that are not trafficking. And states often equate migration with trafficking. Thus trafficking gets used to crackdown on immigration. Obviously, anti-immigration laws are very harmful for immigrant survivors of domestic violence who may risk deportation if they try to escape their abusers.
So the problem is that the state promises that it can use state violence to somehow solve the problem of gender violence. This promised is not questioned. As hooks notes, white women are often more invested in maintaining white privilege than stopping sexism. Thus, we can see perhaps why white women voted for Donald Trump, despite Trump being an admitted sexual predator. He promises white women safety from “terrorist” threats and his promise erases the gender violence he promotes in the minds of many white women. We accept the idea that the state can protect us from violence that we do not see the violence perpetuated by the state. Trump thus becomes someone who can stop violence rather than someone who perpetuates violence, particularly racial and gender violence. bell hooks does link domestic violence to militarism. She states that when we condone military violence, we train men to be “killers,” and the violence they perpetuate will not remain on the battleground. Given that the state is also a racial state, then anti-violence strategies that rely on the state will also perpetuate racism. Thus, for there to be true liberation, we need strategies that address gender violence and state violence at the same time.
