Currently many of those who are responsible for the serial victimization of marginalized women likely feel that they have identified the perfect victim pool. Whether they target people with substance abuse issues, homeless people, or sex workers, they know that the chances of those types of people getting as much attention as a cheerleader or a soccer mom are minimal. That doesn’t mean that sex workers or anyone else in a marginalized position is worth less, loved less, or missed less by those who knew them. It means that we have an appalling narrative about which victims are worthy.
It’s disturbing enough that the people who are easiest for us as a society to accept as victims are femme presenting. We expect cis women and girls to be harmed, so we focus our energy on warning them to avoid danger. We are less likely to even see them as victims if they don’t perfectly adhere to an arbitrary set of behavioral standards we assume can reduce risk. It’s maddening when you realize class and race further impact which victims are seen at all. And it’s true that we don’t know if missing-persons coverage helps resolve cases. After all, even with regular and ongoing coverage, some missing people are simply never found at all. But equitable representation in media coverage matters because that attention shapes how we perceive who has value, and often dictates to whom people will extend their sympathies.
When faced with the disappearance of a loved one, in addition to the emotional anguish of not knowing the missing person’s fate, the friends and families of the missing often have to deal with the social, economic, and legal implications of these disappearances, and they do so without any real support in the long term because of socioeconomic circumstances that are highly discriminatory. The possibility that a loved one had a criminal record, a history with drugs, or some other aspect of their life that renders them an imperfect victim can color not only what happens in the immediate aftermath but also what resources loved ones can access over time.
Families may not feel able to get involved earlier in the process of bringing attention to their missing loved ones because they don’t know how to go about engaging the media, and instead end up waiting to be contacted. Families may be reluctant to push for answers because of feelings of shame and embarrassment when circumstances around the disappearance involve crime, sex trafficking, and drugs. As a result of that lack of media and family pressure and because of implicit bias, staff at overworked and underfunded agencies may feel justified in giving more attention to cases involving white victims.
Meanwhile gender-based violence is clearly a feminist issue, yet it is a place where race and class have not only divided resources and media, but a range of -isms divide the responses to those at risk. Whether it is transphobia, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, or xenophobia, there isn’t anything approaching a unified effective response to gender-based violence that is inclusive of all.
Obviously, there is no quick and easy solution to a crisis that is global and complicated, but there has to begin to be a conversation beyond carceral solutions like the Violence Against Women Act. Punishment after the fact for a small percentage of offenders isn’t going to dissuade any predators. Instead, what is going to continue to happen is that offenders will choose those who are least likely to be protected, not unlike a lion picking off the weakest member of a herd of gazelles. In the face of this kind of violence, we have to be willing to work together; we have to be willing to stand and fight together.
Perhaps the best example of what I have in mind is found in the solutions that some women in India and Kenya who were victims of gender-based violence have found. They band together, prioritizing their safety above broader societal narratives about the need for a patriarch to protect them. True feminist solidarity across racial lines means being willing to protect each other, speaking up when the missing women are not from your community, and calling out the ways that predatory violence can span multiple communities. We must confront the dangers in our own communities, schools, and churches, in order to address this crisis. We have to invest in truly being our sister’s keeper. To take action when we see each other in trouble and step in to back those who are forced to defend themselves with violence as well.
Carceral solutions to violence are a complicated topic. It’s easy to think of arresting predators as a solution, yet laws that govern the state’s response to violence are more likely to be used against victims than against villains. And there’s the sad fact that respectability dynamics don’t just impact how the state responds to reports that someone is missing; they impact how the state responds to those who may have harmed them. But when we center on the safety of those who are most vulnerable to violence, when we make it a priority to prevent violence from occurring or escalating, then there’s a greater chance of a cultural shift toward reducing the danger to all. This is where we fall into the sticky, hard work of challenging not just the ownership narratives propagated by the patriarchy but also into the harder work of undoing the cultural messaging that privileges predators until they have done grievous harm.
We have to be willing to use violence diversion programs more liberally than we use probation, have to have a program that starts in school to unteach the normalization of violence against women.
FEAR AND FEMINISM
In college, I took a class called the Psychology of Sexual Harassment, taught by a woman by the name of Dr. Louise Fitzgerald. It was a good class filled with information that helped me later when I was sexually harassed at work. It couldn’t protect me, but it could prepare me, and for that I am grateful. What I remember most about that class was the day a white girl piped up as we were talking about Anita Hill and asked, “Why do Black women always support Black men?” She was offended that more Black women hadn’t acted in what she perceived as a feminist fashion and rallied to support Anita Hill. She ignored (or more likely didn’t know) that many Black women had rallied behind Hill. What she knew was that all the faces she saw supporting Hill were white women, and for several long, aggravating moments, she attempted to craft a narrative about male privilege and patriarchal attitudes that was completely race blind. It fell apart under the barrage of facts that followed from me, from the Black male TA, and even from one of the other white girls in the class.
In retrospect, it was probably a little upsetting for her, being challenged by so many people at once. We brought up not only the support of Black women for Anita Hill but also media narratives, racism, and the danger of assuming that her memory of a snippet of history was the whole story. At best the conversation was spirited, more likely it felt hostile, and yet the doorway to hostility wasn’t opened by the people challenging her assertions. Her question lacked nuance; her follow-up comments laid bare her belief that somehow Black women weren’t doing feminism right because it didn’t look the way she expected. And woven throughout the conversation was her own unexamined racism in assuming that white feminism held the answers for Black communities.
It was an unremarkable moment in some ways, because none of her attitudes were uncommon. She was all set to fight the patriarchy and was certain that there was only one correct way to do that. The patriarchy sounds like a monolithic entity until you consider the reality that men of color don’t have the power to oppress in the same way that white men do. I wonder if, in the wake of the confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was called into question when allegations of sexual assault surfaced against him, as well as in the aftermath of the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who has become infamous for his sexism, she asks herself the same questions about white women. Where, across the years, have white women called each other out for failing to confront the impact of white patriarchal systems? Where are the accountability measures to address the ways that white women have been complicit in the oppression of other women by those white male patriarchal people and systems?