Judith Levine - The Feminist and the Sex Offender

The Feminist and the Sex Offender

The Feminist and
the Sex Offender

Confronting Sexual Harm,
Ending State Violence

Judith Levine and Erica R. Meiners

First published by Verso 2020

Judith Levine and Erica R. Meiners 2020

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

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Verso

UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG

US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201

versobooks.com

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-340-3

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-342-7 (UK EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-341-0 (US EBK)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

Library of Congress Control Number

2020932049

Typeset in Sabon LT by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK), Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

Contents

One Problem, Two Faces:
Sexual Harm and State Violence

At the January 2018 sentencing of USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar for the sexual assaults of hundreds of girls in his care, Michigan circuit court judge Rosemarie Aquilina did two extraordinary things.

First, she gave the floor to more than 150 victims, who were as young as five when Nassars abuse began. What the doctor did, visit after visit, was put his fingers into the girls vaginas and massage thema kind of physical therapy sometimes used to relieve painful intercourse or incontinence, but never to treat the problems that typically plague gymnasts. Most of the girls had remained silent for years, fearing theyd lose their hard-earned perches as elite athletes.

When I told my mom that it hurt, she thought I was referring to the pain in my back, not the pain in my vagina from the excruciating hour of assault that just took place, one woman testified. Said another: I remember laying there frozen stiff on the table I felt so powerless to control what was happening.

The women spoke of humiliation, fear, and long-lasting trauma: Now I get flashbacks when I see male hands, and it makes me feel scared and threatened. This fear changed the way I grew up and how I related to boys. I didnt want to hold hands or ever be close to my guy friends. As they testified, Aquilina praised the womens strength and courage.

Then she turned to Nassar. If the US Constitution didnt forbid cruel and unusual punishment, the judge said, I might allow what he did to all of these beautiful soulsthese young women in their childhoodI would allow someone or many people to do to him what he did to others. Imposing a 175-year sentence, she pronounced: I just signed your death warrant.second extraordinary turn. Was Aquilina giving other people in prison the nod to rape Nassar? Or kill him?

The room burst into applause. The judge became an instant star of the #MeToo movement. Tweets called her a badass and a class act; adulation circulated through the media. A few critics suggested Aquilina had overstepped her role as a supposedly unbiased adjudicator of the law. Fewer still spoke up for addressing sexual violence in ways that do not rely on punishment, and that seek accountability and healing rather than revenge.

WeErica and Judithwere also enraged at Nassar and gratified that this time, women seemed to have prevailed over the abusers, harassers, and rapists. When photos appeared in every newspaper of a handcuffed and scruffy Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood power broker and serial rapist brought down by the revelations of #MeToo, it was hard not to feel a sense of rightness, of payback.

And yet, payback also felt unsatisfyingindeed, wrong. Because we know where that retributive impulse, coupled with politically fomented, racially tinged fear of crime, has led: to the buildup of the US carceral state, which imprisons more of its population than any other nation in the world, including those with far higher murder rates. The United States incarcerates women at eight times the rate of China and more than twice that of Russia.

We also know where vengeance and punishment do not lead: to the end of sexual and gender violence.

Two Problems, Plus Feminism

The Larry Nassar story offers a glimpse into two huge, interlocking problems.

The first is sexual violence: gendered and sexual harm, including child sexual abuse, and harassment, assault, and rape of adults. On one hand, contrary to what most Americans believe, sexual assaults of both children and adults have steadily declined over the past quarter century, along with the whole of what the state identifies as violent crime, which fell by 75 percent from 1993 to 2017.reveal, harassment at work and on the street, rapey behavior on dates, assault by acquaintances and strangers, and sexual exploitation in schools, sports, and religious institutions are persistent and pervasive. They are ordinary occurrences, so seemingly inevitable and ineradicable that even as #MeToo (the phrase coined by activist Tarana Burke) began to break the silence, thousands of women and girls continued simply to shut up and endure.

The #MeToo Challenge

This moment challenges those committed to transforming our carceral systemincluding people, like us, who are committed to justice for survivors of sexual assault and who also believe that prisons are the wrong answer to violence and should be abolished. We decry the system and advocate for change that is long overdue. Yet when that system ensnares people we loathe, we may feel a sense of satisfaction. When we see defendants as symbols of what we most fear, and that which we most greatly despise, we are confronted with a true test of our belief that no justice can be done under this system.

Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba
transformative justice activists
The Appeal, 2018

The second problem is the states solution to the first problem. That is, the sex offense legal regime, an ever-expanding body of laws and practices devised to punish and manage people with sex-related convictions: draconian prison sentences for a growing list of offenses; civil commitment (indefinite post-prison preventive detention in prison-like psychiatric institutions); and the sex offender registry, which is fortified by hundreds of local, state, and federal restrictions on where, when, and with whom registrants may live, work, play, travel, or just be. So radical is the marginalization of the large and varied category of persons labeled sex offenders that their existence has been called social deatha term sociologist Orlando Patterson used to describe slavery.

We call this a regime, but it is hardly a unitary or disciplined body of statute. Rather, it is self-contradictory and confusing, differing from town to town and state to state; many states do not fully comply with the federal laws, because its cheaper to forgo the federal funds than to enforce the regulations. The regime does no good and much harm. It does not protect children or anyone else.

The laws creators and partisans include elected officials in both parties; police, prosecutors, and judges; a sensationalist and credulous press; and public and private sector leaders, from school administrators to shopping mall managers to community activistsand feminists. Feminism is not to blame for the sex offense legal regime. But feministsthose who embrace what detractors call carceral feminism, from the same root as the word incarceratehave played a large role in sketching the blueprint and supplying the parts that make the machine function.