The Feminist and the Sex Offender Quotes

“Similarly, there is a limit to how far you can go in anti-violence work without rejecting the principal institutions of masculine domination. In reaction to spates of accusations from enlisted women of sexual assault and harassment perpetrated by their male peers and officers, the US military has engaged trainers, including Katz, to conduct gender violence prevention and bystander intervention. Like the prevention of child abuse through the promotion of authoritarian fatherhood, anti-violence training with men whose job is to kill people - the epitome of toxic masculinity - is any oxymoron. These military projects also carry a strong whiff of Othering: soldiers should be respectful of "our" women, and even refrain from raping "enemy" women and girls, but it's okay to kill their fathers, brothers, or husbands and, if necessary, to blow up their homes and cities. These efforts are not working. Biannual Pentagon surveys show a stead increase in sexual assaults and harassment in military academies. "This isn't a blip, a #MeToo bump, or some accident," averred California Democrat Jackie Spier at a February 2019 House subcommittee hearing. "It's a clear illustration of a destructive trend and systemic problem.”
― Judith Levine, The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Harm, Ending State Violence

“The other faction, far less visible or influential, arose in the marginalized communities, among women - Black, brown, queer, trans, poor, disabled - whom the state has never protected. These abolition feminists have learned from experience that prisons do not end violence, but rather perpetrate and perpetuate it, while destroying individual lives, families, and communities. Like a lot of their compatriots in the carceral feminist movement, many are themselves survivors of sexual harm. But, unlike the other contingent, their politics join the struggle against sexual and gender violence with that against the "white supremacist prison nation," to use the term coined by abolitionist scholar Beth E. Richie.”
― Judith Levine, The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Harm, Ending State Violence