Resilience: Coming to Terms with Slow Justice
“Healing is organic, healing is our birthright.” Lisa Thomas Adeyemo
I don’t think that it was a mere coincidence that I happened to read adrienne maree brown’s chapter on Resilience in Emergent Strategy the same week that a white man “spoke” to my class about interpersonal violence. The speaker, in addition to mansplaining how women should consider the ways that rape accusations impact men, suggested that the #MeToo movement perpetuated a mob mentality against sexual assault perpetrators and that utilizing the hashtag to air out grievances was “screaming into the void.”
Whew.
The sheer number of women who have experienced sexual assault (between 1 in four and 1 in 6, depending on your source) is appalling. And the fact that anyone has the audacity to callously describe a movement that is simultaneously a tool in deconstructing rape culture and a safe space of solidarity for survivors as “mob mentality” does not deserve to be given a platform anywhere. (This isn’t even addressing his tone and lack of empathy).
I was angry. I am angry. I went through my day absolutely enthralled in my anger and gutwrenching disdain for the lecture I was forced to sit through. I get it: conversations must be had about any social movement in order to critically dissect the systems they inadvertently prop up, and whether the movement is truly serving the community it seeks to liberate. But these conversations are to be had by the individuals directly impacted and their engaged, empathetic, and rightfully allied comrades, not by individuals who question the integrity of the movement from a lens of privilege.
Enter adrienne maree brown with: “Finding the places of healing and transformation, moving towards a world beyond enemies, is work that has to be done for survival. Which means transformative justice — justice that transforms the root causes of injustice — is necessary at every scale, but I am particularly focused on how it becomes the common orientation and practice of movements for social change, for peace, for liberation.”
What I got from this was, how do we make the lived experience of the survivor the common orientation for addressing interpersonal violence (IPV) and gender-based violence (GBV)? I’m not interested in calling in an individual that plays “devil’s advocate” or someone who adheres to a “what about the accused” mentality, but I am interested in reorienting our justice system and our social interactions on a macro-level to make rape culture and misogynistic underpinnings of everyday behavior unacceptable and — dare I say it? — shame-filled.
A little bit of the steam was released. I continued through this chapter, highlighting and trying to learn how exactly we can address the patriarchal, dangerous system we live in without perpetuating more cages, more vengeance, and more harm in our communities. The following post is a messy documentation of my struggle with amb’s call for transformative justice.
Addressing Injustice without Perpetuating Harmful Cycles
I am anti-cages, anti-prisons, anti-ICE, and anti-deportation, but grappling with the idea of dangerous men like Harvey Weinstein being allowed back into society is hard for me. I understand the implications of involving police in domestic violence and wellness checks — 90% of people in women’s prisons are survivors of sexual and domestic violence; compulsory arrest mandates, frequently pushed for by organizations seeking to protect victims of domestic violence, often backfire, resulting in the arrest of both the perpetrator and the survivor.
Men (*white men) have consistently been given leniency when they do harm (I still can’t look at Brett Kavanaugh in Justice robes; Brock Turner still turns my stomach; I refuse to refer to Trump as “President”) and seeing this same narrative played over and over hardens me. It makes me want to push for the maximum sentence when I see another malefactor come out a winner in a rigged game that continues to see women as objects.
I can't speak for the women that spoke out against their perpetrators made infamous from the news, or the hundreds of other men that evaded sentences and notoriety for their actions, but for me, a slap on the wrist doesn’t seem enough. Why should we continue to let men dehumanize women? Why is it my job to protect myself against assault and not the assaulter’s job to not assault? Why should we continue to let women’s lives, wellness, and bodily autonomy be dictated by men in power who have utilized the women in their lives for their benefit only?
“Why should I care if they fall prey to a system that harms them after they’ve harmed women?” is what I’m really grappling with. But I know that that path of “justice” isn’t macro-level transformational or healthy or towards a more liberated future.
So now what?
Resilience Against the System that Harms
adrienne maree brown includes the following definitions of resilience in Emergent Strategy:
- Resilience: the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens. The ability of something to return to its original shape after it has been pulled, stretched, bent, etc. an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change
- Resilience: the way the water knows just how to flow, not force itself around a river rock; Surely I can stretch myself in the shape my own path is asking of me — Corina Fadel
amb’s chapter focuses on the power of transformative justice and the ways that we as humans are capable of responding to and thriving in systems that were built to break us. As someone interested in the impact of trauma and resiliency in the humanitarian realm, I’ve noticed that we often fail to denounce the systems that require individuals to be resilient. I often refer to necessary resiliency due to a broken system as “pushed resiliency.” It’s not scientific or backed in any of the literature, but it helps me distinguish developmentally supported and positive resiliency (i.e. can you adapt to change and modify your behaviors to fit a new situation?) with resiliency that is necessary due to a failure in or from our local or global actors to provide and protect individuals from unacceptable harm.
Pushed resiliency is only expected and needed because we anticipate future harm. We shouldn’t need resiliency in this way because we shouldn't live in a world that disproportionately harms Black and communities of color, LGBTQI+ individuals, poor folks, rural folks. For example, we shouldn’t need to promote childhood resiliency in the context of immigration and family separation because ICE detention centers shouldn’t exist. (I wrote an entire article on the failure of the immigration system, and how we actively harm entire communities through our failure to dismantle harmful systems). To expect resiliency from a community is to expect that they accept the harm done to them and be able to “come back” from it.
The point is that we shouldn’t expect women (or anyone) to have “to return to [their] original shape after being pulled” because we shouldn't have been pulled in the first place. Why do we continue to expect women to be resilient instead of expecting men to not be assaulters? Why do we continue to expect women to “get over it” instead of demanding that men be held accountable for their actions? Why do we deny women promotions if they are overly emotional but reward men for the same behavior?
It’s maddening to think that, even after four years of sexual assault claims and unacceptable and racist behavior, another white man was almost rewarded for his shameful actions. Again.
The eradication of the Trump administration is one that should be celebrated, and one that is a sigh of relief for so many different individuals on so many levels. But the results of 2016, the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, and the countless women who were silenced after accusing Trump of sexual assault is a reminder that the world does not care about the lived experiences of women. (And this is even more apparent when we consider the damning number of missing and murdered indigenous women, murdered transwomen, and murdered Black women). It is a reminder that one woman, two women, three women, over two dozen women’s testimonies were not enough to dethrone Trump. It’s a reminder that Republican representatives laughed and mocked Christine Blasey Ford during her testimony. It is a reminder that men still come out ahead at the expense of and through the utilization of women’s minds and bodies.
“Skunk medicine. The skunk asks us to defend ourselves effectively, without causing further conflict. Self-protection but do no harm. Gangsterish peace-making…The skunk asks us to use our powers effectively, without wiping ourselves out…Just as the skunk does not seek to be the bear, let us not attempt to trade places with the oppressor.” Holiday Simmons
The man that spoke to my class suggested that the rapid nature of social media causes a mob mentality in the #MeToo movement. adrienne maree brown notes that social media time is faster than “real” time, and that we are fast to attack in “social media” time. adrienne advocates for a slower response to wrongs. I agree that social media has created a culture of instant gratification, a culture that cancels after one misstep, a culture that screenshots faster than the blink of the eye. I understand this call for slowness.
But some things cannot be slow. The takedown of Harvey Weinstein was, I believe, precipitated by the fact that women came forward and social media provided not only documentation of his countless harmful acts but an avalanche of support. Being able to share stories and testimony helps root out the festering rot of the system that continues to create and spread oppression like a disease. It helps give voice to those who are otherwise ignored or purposefully muted.
Destroying the patriarchal and harmful system that perpetuates these types of actions is not neat and it certainly isn’t quiet.
As I work through this idea of slow justice and resiliency, I see its merits. But I also see the value and necessity of women’s rage. I see the need for shame as a tool to not only push people into taking accountability for their actions but also do the work needed to change how they move in the world. I see how women’s voices are stifled by men in power and how, as a result, our deep belly-aching bellows are needed.
Perhaps the #MeToo hashtag is screaming into the void. But it wouldn’t be if men uncovered their ears and stepped into the void with us.
