Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

Thanks for this important discussion - 

Mary Koss has an awful lot of experience but when I saw her at Harvard a 
couple of years back -- I asked her why she had taken so much interest in the 
decriminalziation model of restorative justice -- and she basically said 
about the system "I give up" -- and I shook my head - not out of disagreement 
but out of sadness - 

it is unacceptable in my opinion to invest in alternatives to the system that 
works for others because it "just doesn't work" for women -- when we haven't 
even begun to take responsible steps toward real reform - 

much of the reform efforts of the 70s were band-aids that not only made no 
real difference but served to cover up some of the most serious problems -- 

now -- 30 years later -- the failure of those well-intentioned efforts is 
apparent but to suggest that the only proper response is wholesale 
abandonment of the system is, i think -- wrong and worse, will set women back 
to a time when intimate violence was accepted as a private, not public, 
problem - 

I teach a fairly moderate to radical reform approach that literally forces 
the system to do better -- it is a rights-based model I call "not your 
mother's law reform movement" -- and it truly does offer new and meaningful 
solutions to a badly broken system 

Unlike Mary Koss -- I cant give up -- because we haven't tried anything 
remotely likely to make a real difference -- and frankly -- I think it's time 
we rallied again with energy aimed not at creating a "separate but equal" 
justice system in the idea of restorative justice (as if justice can ever be 
defined in such an unjust way) but one that will kick the system in the butt 
- forcing no choice but paradigmatic shifts in the way we think about 
violence against women as a human and civil rights issue -- rather than an 
unavoidable result of a patriarchal culture - 

i teach both theoretical and practical ideas for change 

for example -- one idea I've been teaching for years - (im not the only one 
but it is rare) is that rape law must be rebuilt along lines of autonomy -- 
not sexual regulation -- 

if autonomy were the goal, the element of force would not be required --as it 
is in nearly every state -- because the absence of consent would be 
sufficient to prove that an offense occurred - 

autonomjy theory is not being taught except in the most progressive of legal 
spaces -- and let's face it -- most law schools have little feminist energy 
aimed at rape law reform given that traditional liberal philosophy is 
fundamentally anti-state which means any feminist energy is being directed at 
the rights of the accused and/or civil litigation issues -- 

but in my work, wanting the state to do its work fairly by women is not 
fascism or "pro-state" -- it is egalitarian -- and even though many many 
victim advocacy organizations around the country will never support 
pro-prosecution policies -- there is a growing sense of frustration that such 
voices tend to work agains the anti-violenc e movement that is aimed at 
making the state use the power it already has FAIRLY -- rather than in the 
manner to which we have become accustomed -- disproportionately ineffective 
for crimes against women - 

in short -- restorative justice gives the state a pass at exactly a time in 
our cultural history when we should be having a new revolution -- 

I don't give up -- not at all -- i've only begun to fight because most of 
what i think could make a real difference has never even been tried -- 

wendy