Dickens
RosesandLilac
I’m sure I am not the only person who’s read this and been shocked 😳
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/09/oxfam-training-guide-blames-privileged-white-women-root-causes
Thankfully I stopped supporting Oxfam years ago after the Haiti abuse broke. As they probably rely on my generation to volunteer in their shops perhaps this might make some people think again.
'Mainstream feminism centres privileged white women and demands that ''bad men'' be fired or imprisoned.'
Next to the cartoon of a sobbing white woman is a caption saying that this attitude 'legitimises criminal punishment, harming black and other marginalised people'.
'White feminist tears deploy white woundedness, and the sympathy it generates, to hide the harms we perpetuate through white supremacy.'
'I would never tell a survivor of sexual violence what to do, but I would like us to have better choices than criminal punishment, media exposure, or silence.'
Alison Phipps told MailOnline today: 'I can't comment on the Oxfam training materials as I haven't seen them, but my book is grounded in a long tradition of feminist thought and politics that sees criminal punishment as part of the problem and not the solution.
What do GNetters make of this? I'm somewhat stunned by what I've read...
The discussion about criminal punishment, prisons, and state sponsored violence is one feminists have been discussing for a long time. Angela Davis first proposed the abolition of prisons.
If you are interested there's a long article here
blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2021/02/15/dismantling-prisons-abolitionist-feminism-women-incarceration-and-metoo/
The basic idea is that the criminal justice system and incarceration have massively failed to deal with the problems of violence and abuse, and the prison system not only perpetuates but aggravates the problem. In fact it fails both the abuser and the abused
In a world without prisons, the way to address sexual and gender-based violence without relying on state violence is through transformative justice and community-based responses rooted in care, which are not dismissive of conditions of poverty, race, and exploitation. As advocated by Angela Harris, the restorative justice lens focuses on healing, repair, and accountability. With respect to healing, this includes investing in resources to assist survivors to leave abusive environments, mental health and trauma counselling, and inclusive sexual assault centres that are accessible to all survivors. With respect to repair and accountability, this must include counselling for the person who caused harm, as well as a number of restorative justice efforts such as victim-offender mediation, community justice conferencing, workshops and trainings, removal from leadership positions, admission of guilt, public or private apologies, and specific behavioural changes.
I think in view of the recent problems with the police, the inability of the system to deal with rape, the number of accusations of assault and the continuing problem of domestic violence some other solution should be attempted. I suspect there will still be people who need to be kept away from the public. But some sort of restorative justice and monitoring with counselling might be one way to go.