Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 45

The theories presented in this chapter either directly include victimization or have more regularly included victimization over time. Feminists often struggle with balancing sexism and misogyny—and how they intersect with racism, poverty, heterosexism, and other types of oppressions—in addressing girls and women’s agency (self-determination). On one hand, it is important to document and discuss both offending and victimization, together and separately, and in terms of structural, legal, and cultural barriers to equality (which themselves can be victimizations, such as gross travesties of justice within the criminal legal system). On the other hand, it is inconsistent with feminism to portray girls and women as having no agency or resiliency, even when they are marginalized in numerous serious and intersecting ways (e.g., see Maher, 1997, p. 1). Documenting the serious denial of individual and systemic agency many victims and/or offenders face, and how this seriously limits their choices, including in some cases, for survival, must be balanced with not portraying girls and women as weak and lacking in courage. Although it is imperative to document women and girls’ offending “within a constrained, gendered, raced, and classed environment” (Schwartz & Steffensmeier, 2017, p. 131), it is also vital to include women and girls’ strengths and resiliency.

Sterk (1999) captures this dichotomy of agency in her study of crack-addicted women: “On the one hand, they saw themselves as victims, but on the other they recognized themselves as important, independent actors” (p. 173). Garcia-Hallett’s (2019) study of maternal identity and offending reveals “how mothering under neoliberalism may introduce circumstances where some women feel pressured to offend in the name of their maternal role—protecting and providing for their children” (p. 235). Some women’s initial offending is done to provide for their children. J. Miller’s (2001) book One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender identifies girls’ paths to gang membership and both the offending and victimization included gang activities. But Miller also describes the empowerment and equality that gang membership provides these girls in gangs. Miller notes not only how gang membership increases the risk of victimization but also how the allure of gangs partially comes from an escape from sexual assaults and other abuses that are often perpetrated by their family members.

Feminist scholars and advocates must constantly address how power is taken away but also honor the resiliency of survivors, much as Indigenous and African American scholars have done in addressing the fighting back and resiliency from the victims of the most shameful parts of U.S. history: the extreme horrors of genocide, stealing land, and kidnapping and enslaving people (e.g., Du Bois, 1899; Foran, Snarr, Heyman, & Slep, 2012; Muhammad, 2010). Similarly, in Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson (2015) poignantly documents the power of hope and resiliency among some individuals currently in or recently released from U.S. prisons under the appalling prison conditions, whose incarcerations resulted from outrageously biased, unfair, and sometimes illegal, police and/or court decisions. In their study of women sex workers’ agency, aptly titled, “First and Foremost They’re Survivors,” Shdaimah and Leon (2015) powerfully conclude, “Prostitute women exhibit creative, resilient, and rational conduct. Rejecting victimhood, our respondents demonstrate moral reasoning, make choices, work systems that dominate their lives, and assert power and control when they can. Their resistance, while serving a symbolic function, also expresses their system savvy and self-advocacy that produce measurable benefits” (p. 326).