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

["Abby Tassel" <>]

Yes, yes, yes!
But for those of us who are sitting with the victims every day, we need
options.  I can't send a woman into a system in order to help the system get
it right (without her knowing what I know, at least).
So please, keep cranking out attorneys who can work towards change.  
But, meanwhile...?
Abby

-----Original Message-----
From: 

 
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Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 7:26 PM
To: "Abby Tassel"; 

Subject: RE: SAPC Digest, Vol 575,Issue 1 - restorative justice/mediation
polilcies

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




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