In recent years there have been all too many prominent cases demonstrating the prevalence of extreme misogyny in American society. For example, you have the collection of blogs, web sites and online message boards known as the “manosphere” whose promotion of psychopathic misogyny has led to many cases of violence against women, including murder. You have–within the last decade in the US–rape charges being dismissed by judges on the ground that the male perpetrator “comes from a good family” or that the parents of a teenage female victim were the ones really at fault because they allowed their daughter to attend a party with underage drinking. You have the passionate defense of Johnny Depp in 2022 against domestic violence accusations and the widespread misogynistic venom directed against his accuser, Amber Heard, in online forums and in mass media generally. Also, in 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, allowing many states to completely outlaw abortion. Since Roe’s demise there have been many cases of women denied treatment for pregnancy complications and forced to undergo physically and psychologically shattering childbirth–some have even died because doctors are afraid to give proper care for pregnancy complications under fear of potentially being charged with fetal homicide (or being sued by anti-abortion wack jobs). Lacking even the meager abortion protections that existed prior to Roe’s overturning, many women will now be forced to give birth and as a result endure a lifetime of poverty or financial dependency on an abusive partner in order to raise the child.
Indeed, as anti-abortion fanatics preen about their “pro-life” virtues, they ignore the fact that the United States has the highest rate of maternal mortality (pregnancy related death of expectant mothers) in the western world. It is also worth repeating that the US also has the highest infant mortality rate in the western world and it is highest in states like Alabama which have implemented the harshest laws against abortion on “pro-life” grounds. Although they accept as complete truth utterly baseless and idiotic lies–repeated by Donald Trump–that doctors are arbitrarily murdering newborn infants after they leave the womb–”pro-life” activists are remarkably unconcerned about ensuring optimal life conditions for fetuses once they become newborn babies.
A leading fount of sexism and misogyny in the United States is MAGA and the religious right in general. However, it must be stated that perpetrators of sexual assault and other gender-based violence span the entire political spectrum. In recent decades, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden faced credible accusations of sexual assault. Among serious revolutionary left organizations, the British Socialist Workers Party was rocked by a scandal in the early 2010s when it was revealed that its leadership covered up multiple sexual assaults by a leading male member. Meanwhile, in 2019, members of the US International Socialist Organization (ISO)–which at one point in the 2000s was the largest socialist organization in the US–voted to dissolve itself after revelations that some in its leadership had covered up a report of a sexual assault committed by a male member back in 2013.
One of the leading points of Jezebel staff writer Kylie Cheung’s 2023 book Survivor Injustice is that sexism and misogyny exist across all political persuasions. Portions of the left, in particular, have shown a striking unwillingness to seriously grapple with these issues. For Cheung, one such case was the reaction among some progressives to the 2020 candidacy for a Kansas state house seat of 20 year old Aaron Coleman, a self-identified democratic socialist. Coleman had pleaded guilty as a 14 year old to harassment and circulating “revenge porn” against a 12 year old girl and faced charges of choking and assaulting an ex-girlfriend in 2019. Cheung notes that some leftist men sought to downplay Coleman’s crimes and instead were indignant that such a dynamic young man was having his career derailed by a witch hunt caused by crimes committed as a teenager for which–they claimed–he was sincerely remorseful. Coleman was arrested again on domestic violence charges in 2021 (after he assumed the state house seat for which he only served one term).
Cheung also notes the case of a 2020 letter that several dozen former Bernie Sanders campaign staffers–male and female–sent him regarding conditions among campaign staffers during Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. The letter reported relatively widespread sexual harassment among the campaign staffers with multiple reports of women being groped and treated with hostility when they refused to share hotel rooms with campaign supervisors. Instead of offering serious concern to the victims of sexual harassment under his employ, Sanders disclaimed any knowledge of the problem–he said he was too busy travelling the country mobilizing voters with his populist economic message to notice day to day sexual harassment among his campaign staffers. The best response he offered in response to the revelations was a lame apology “to any woman who felt that she was not treated appropriately.”
Patriarchy Ascendant
Cheung’s book paints a frightening picture not only of the patriarchal beliefs widespread in American culture but the utter hollowness of mainstream institutions and laws that are supposed to advance feminist principles.
For example there is the Democratic Party which–for fundraising during campaign seasons–grandstands as the abortion rights party but which has done virtually nothing of substance in recent decades to fight the right wing’s steady erosion of abortion rights that was occuring long before Roe was overturned in 2022. Cheung observes that even before Roe was eviscerated, 90 percent of US counties lacked a single abortion clinic, with such clinics usually finding it difficult to operate under constant harassment and abortion practitioners facing the threat of violence, even murder, from religious rights activists.
Democrats have wasted every opportunity to codify abortion rights into law. Cheung observes that when Barack Obama assumed the presidency in 2009 with large majorities in both houses of congress he publicly stated that abortion would not be a priority for his administration. Similarly, Joe Biden, as president, refused to consider abolishing the filibuster to make it less difficult to pass federal pro-abortion legislation. The Democrats have also done nothing to reverse the annual passage of the Hyde Amendment which, since 1976, has barred federal government services like Medicaid from funding most abortions.
Democrats have also come up severely short in areas like domestic violence. They have pointed to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which congress has periodically renewed since it was first passed by the US Senate under Joe Biden’s stewardship in 1994, as proof of their commitment to women. For Cheung, the VAWA is incredibly wrong-headed. It contains some funding for domestic violence shelters and housing subsidies for domestic violence survivors; but two-thirds of its annual appropriations have gone to law enforcement. Cheung views law enforcement and incarceration as the worst possible priorities in seeking solutions to domestic violence.
She shows that deeply patriarchal attitudes among law enforcement and judicial officials have led to frequent abuse of domestic violence and sexual assault survivors by the justice system. Women have been criminally charged and received prison sentences for fighting back against their abusers–there was the case of Marissa Alexander, the Tennessee woman who discharged a firearm in the air in order to deter her abusive husband but as a result was sentenced in 2010 to a long prison term. Women have been charged for exposing their children to their husband’s abuse–even if they lacked the resources to escape the relationship–and been forced to co-parent with the rapist that impregnated them–or even lost custody to the rapist all together. Women have also been criminally charged for refusing to testify–on the ground it would be too traumatizing–against the person they accused of sexual assault.
Cheung notes surveys indicate that police tend to greatly overestimate the prevalence of false rape accusations. The latest FBI data suggests that 8 percent of sexual assault allegations are false–but Cheung notes that this data classifies assaults which did not involve a weapon or where the victim had a previous relationship with the perpetrator as a “false” report. As among the general public, the belief appears highly prevalent among police that sexual assaults are commonly perpetrated by men hiding in bushes who do not know their victims. While such assaults by strangers do occur, for the most part, sexual assault is perpetrated by someone the victim knows: a present or former intimate partner, a (supposed) friend, a family member. Meanwhile, Cheung writes that there is yet more evidence that many police have patriarchal and idiotic views about rape: a 2010 survey indicated that half of police officers did not believe it possible for a husband to commit rape against his wife. All too many police officers have records of domestic violence themselves.
With such meager resources available, it is unsurprising that most sexual assaults or domestic violence acts are not reported to law enforcement.. One in five women report experiencing some kind of sexual violence in their lives; one in six men report experiencing some form of sexual abuse. Cheung notes that men are more likely to be victims of sexual or domestic violence than they are to be falsely accused of rape.
A Feminism which Empowers the Most Vulnerable
Cheung believes that feminism–like society at large–needs to be reconstructed on a socialist basis. She believes that society needs to focus on providing survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault with the health care, housing, education, child care, counseling and other services to allow them the resources to fully control their own lives. She believes that while the #metoo movement had some virtues, its deepest flaw was that it centered around the experiences of rich white celebrities. While such people deserve justice of course, Cheung believes it is absolutely crucial for a truly vibrant feminism to orient itself around society’s most vulnerable i.e. poor people, people of color and LGBTQ+ persons. Such people must be the leaders at the forefront of true feminist struggle and Cheung points to reproductive rights mutual aid groups around the country led by low income and working class black and indigenous peoples as key examples of how the struggle should move forward.
Cheung is a police and prison abolitionist. She believes “many if not most crimes” could be eliminated by seriously addressing the social and economic inequality which gives birth to them. She argues that many sexual assault cases should be addressed in civil rather than criminal court. She believes that the “clear and convincing” evidence standard in civil trials would make it easier for sexual violence victims to get justice as opposed to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of criminal trials. She argues that most gender-based crimes should be dealt with in a non-carceral fashion by government and other institutions through the principles of restorative justice and transformational justice. She believes that society should focus much less on punishing the perpetrators of gender based violence and much more on healing the victims of such crimes.
Cheung is a sexual assault survivor. She writes that her work exploring sexual assault was inspired to a large extent by the heroism and dignity of Chanel Miller, whom Stanford student Brock Turner was convicted of raping in 2016 (but was only given a three month incarceration sentence). Her book is a thoughtful and intelligent contribution to the discussion of feminist problems.
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