1 Kerry Zhao Professor Laury Oaks Femst 20 January 25, 2020 Feminist Threshold Concepts in Marriage Story How Social Constructs Factor Into Divorce Proceedings A valuable piece of feminist media is one that accurately portrays the discrepancy between the treatment of males and females. Such a piece of media allows the viewer to accurately discern where differences in gender roles and expectations arise. One such text is Noah Baumbach’s 2019 film Marriage Story, starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as a married couple going through a divorce. The film is raw and at times difficult to watch, highlighting both the difficulties of a divorce and the double standards that arise when a child is involved. Part of analyzing a feminist piece of work includes juxtaposing how males and females are treated differently. This is referenced in the textbook via the threshold concept of the social construction of gender. (Launius and Hassel, 10) Using this threshold concept as a lens, we see Marriage Story as a commentary on how contemporary notions of marriage and divorce treat men and women differently, exemplifying the differences and double standards between the two. The threshold concept of the social construction of gender focuses on how the “ideas and constructions of gender change across time, between and within cultures, and even within one’s lifespan […] they also establish and perpetuate sexism; additionally, racial, ethnic, and cultural identities frame expectations for appropriate gendered behavior, as does social class and sexuality.” (Launius, 54) Marriage Story demonstrates how all these factors play out in a divorce. Nicole and Charlie Barber are going through a divorce – Charlie is a successful New York City theatre director and Nicole is a former teen actress who occasionally stars in Charlie’s plays. They have a young son, and the film opens with the couple already in marriage counselling. Baumbach’s film proceeds to 2 follow the two as they navigate the trials and tribulations of divorce, made particularly difficult when Nicole moves from their New York home to Los Angeles, in order for her to begin starring in a television show. At times, the film is almost uncomfortable because how raw and real it is – typically, films don’t allow their stars to appear so awkward and unlikeable. But Marriage Story is believable because of how relatable its content is, particularly that of how Nicole and Charlie are held to entirely different standards throughout their divorce. Perhaps the best example of how social constructs play a role in such a situation is when Laura Dern’s character – Nicole’s divorce lawyer Nora Fanshaw - monologues about how Nicole will be portrayed in a trial versus how Charlie – Nicole’s soon-to-be ex-husband, will be portrayed: “People don't accept mothers who drink too much wine and yell at their child and call him an asshole. I get it. I do it too. We can accept an imperfect dad. .

1. 1
Kerry Zhao
Professor Laury Oaks
Femst 20
January 25, 2020
Feminist Threshold Concepts in Marriage Story
How Social Constructs Factor Into Divorce Proceedings
A valuable piece of feminist media is one that accurately
portrays the discrepancy between
the treatment of males and females. Such a piece of media
allows the viewer to accurately discern
where differences in gender roles and expectations arise. One
such text is Noah Baumbach’s 2019
film Marriage Story, starring Adam Driver and Scarlett
Johansson as a married couple going through a
divorce. The film is raw and at times difficult to watch,
highlighting both the difficulties of a divorce
and the double standards that arise when a child is involved.
Part of analyzing a feminist piece of

2. work includes juxtaposing how males and females are treated
differently. This is referenced in the
textbook via the threshold concept of the social construction of
gender. (Launius and Hassel, 10) Using
this threshold concept as a lens, we see Marriage Story as a
commentary on how contemporary
notions of marriage and divorce treat men and women
differently, exemplifying the differences and
double standards between the two.
The threshold concept of the social construction of gender
focuses on how the “ideas and
constructions of gender change across time, between and within
cultures, and even within one’s
lifespan […] they also establish and perpetuate sexism;
additionally, racial, ethnic, and cultural
identities frame expectations for appropriate gendered behavior,
as does social class and sexuality.”
(Launius, 54) Marriage Story demonstrates how all these factors
play out in a divorce. Nicole and
Charlie Barber are going through a divorce – Charlie is a
successful New York City theatre director
and Nicole is a former teen actress who occasionally stars in
Charlie’s plays. They have a young son,
and the film opens with the couple already in marriage

3. counselling. Baumbach’s film proceeds to
2
follow the two as they navigate the trials and tribulations of
divorce, made particularly difficult when
Nicole moves from their New York home to Los Angeles, in
order for her to begin starring in a
television show. At times, the film is almost uncomfortable
because how raw and real it is – typically,
films don’t allow their stars to appear so awkward and
unlikeable. But Marriage Story is believable
because of how relatable its content is, particularly that of how
Nicole and Charlie are held to
entirely different standards throughout their divorce.
Perhaps the best example of how social constructs play a role in
such a situation is when
Laura Dern’s character – Nicole’s divorce lawyer Nora Fanshaw
- monologues about how Nicole
will be portrayed in a trial versus how Charlie – Nicole’s soon-
to-be ex-husband, will be portrayed:
“People don't accept mothers who drink too much wine and yell
at their child and call him
an asshole. I get it. I do it too. We can accept an imperfect dad.

4. […] God is the father and
God didn't show up. So, you have to be perfect, and Charlie can
be a fuck up and it doesn't
matter. You will always be held to a different, higher standard.
And it's fucked up, but that's
the way it is.
- Marriage Story, dir. Noah Baumbach (2019)
This quote perfectly exemplifies how social constructs define
how Nicole must navigate her
divorce as opposed to Charlie, who faces challenges that are
just as difficult, albeit different.
Charlie’s lawyer encourages him to fight dirty, exacerbating all
of Nicole’s minor flaws and making
her out to be a terrible mother in court, despite Charlie not fully
believing such accusations himself.
Ultimately, it is clear how this divorce favored Nicole,
regardless of what Charlie did to demonstrate
his devotion to his child. This further exemplifies how the
social construct of gender is not only sexist
towards females in divorce cases, but potentially unfair towards
men too. Nicole’s abrupt move to
3

5. Los Angeles leaves Charlie struggling to find a divorce lawyer
in the city and forcing him to look
negligent as he attempts to continue his career in New York.
Marriage Story demonstrates something unique in how it treats
both its male and female
protagonists evenly, which is an excellent tool through which
we can critique and analyze the social
construct of gender as a threshold concept. I choose this
threshold concept paired with this
particular text because it is vital to highlight the differences
between how men and women are
treated in situations as common and human as divorce.
Analyzing how Nicole and Charlie are
portrayed differently is crucial to understanding how this
threshold concept applies in such cases.
4
Works Cited
Baumbach, Noah. Marriage Story. Netflix, 2019.
Launius, Christie and Holly Hassel. Threshold Concepts in
Women’s and Gender Studies: Ways of Seeing,
Thinking, and Knowing, 2nd ed. Routledge: New York, 2018.

6. Print.
1
Kerry Zhao
Professor Laury Oaks
Femst 20
January 25, 2020
Feminist Threshold Concepts in Marriage Story
How Social Constructs Factor Into Divorce Proceedings
A valuable piece of feminist media is one that accurately
portrays the discrepancy between
the treatment of males and females. Such a piece of media
allows the viewer to accurately discern
where differences in gender roles and expectations arise. One
such text is Noah Baumbach’s 2019
film Marriage Story, starring Adam Driver and Scarlett
Johansson as a married couple going through a
divorce. The film is raw and at times difficult to watch,
highlighting both the difficulties of a divorce
and the double standards that arise when a child is involved.
Part of analyzing a feminist piece of

7. work includes juxtaposing how males and females are treated
differently. This is referenced in the
textbook via the threshold concept of the social construction of
gender. (Launius and Hassel, 10) Using
this threshold concept as a lens, we see Marriage Story as a
commentary on how contemporary
notions of marriage and divorce treat men and women
differently, exemplifying the differences and
double standards between the two.
The threshold concept of the social construction of gender
focuses on how the “ideas and
constructions of gender change across time, between and within
cultures, and even within one’s
lifespan […] they also establish and perpetuate sexism;
additionally, racial, ethnic, and cultural
identities frame expectations for appropriate gendered behavior,
as does social class and sexuality.”
(Launius, 54) Marriage Story demonstrates how all these factors
play out in a divorce. Nicole and
Charlie Barber are going through a divorce – Charlie is a
successful New York City theatre director
and Nicole is a former teen actress who occasionally stars in
Charlie’s plays. They have a young son,

8. and the film opens with the couple already in marriage
counselling. Baumbach’s film proceeds to
2
follow the two as they navigate the trials and tribulations of
divorce, made particularly difficult when
Nicole moves from their New York home to Los Angeles, in
order for her to begin starring in a
television show. At times, the film is almost uncomfortable
because how raw and real it is – typically,
films don’t allow their stars to appear so awkward and
unlikeable. But Marriage Story is believable
because of how relatable its content is, particularly that of how
Nicole and Charlie are held to
entirely different standards throughout their divorce.
Perhaps the best example of how social constructs play a role in
such a situation is when
Laura Dern’s character – Nicole’s divorce lawyer Nora Fanshaw
- monologues about how Nicole
will be portrayed in a trial versus how Charlie – Nicole’s soon-
to-be ex-husband, will be portrayed:
“People don't accept mothers who drink too much wine and yell
at their child and call him

9. an asshole. I get it. I do it too. We can accept an imperfect dad.
[…] God is the father and
God didn't show up. So, you have to be perfect, and Charlie can
be a fuck up and it doesn't
matter. You will always be held to a different, higher standard.
And it's fucked up, but that's
the way it is.
- Marriage Story, dir. Noah Baumbach (2019)
This quote perfectly exemplifies how social constructs define
how Nicole must navigate her
divorce as opposed to Charlie, who faces challenges that are
just as difficult, albeit different.
Charlie’s lawyer encourages him to fight dirty, exacerbating all
of Nicole’s minor flaws and making
her out to be a terrible mother in court, despite Charlie not fully
believing such accusations himself.
Ultimately, it is clear how this divorce favored Nicole,
regardless of what Charlie did to demonstrate
his devotion to his child. This further exemplifies how the
social construct of gender is not only sexist
towards females in divorce cases, but potentially unfair towards
men too. Nicole’s abrupt move to

10. 3
Los Angeles leaves Charlie struggling to find a divorce lawyer
in the city and forcing him to look
negligent as he attempts to continue his career in New York.
Marriage Story demonstrates something unique in how it treats
both its male and female
protagonists evenly, which is an excellent tool through which
we can critique and analyze the social
construct of gender as a threshold concept. I choose this
threshold concept paired with this
particular text because it is vital to highlight the differences
between how men and women are
treated in situations as common and human as divorce.
Analyzing how Nicole and Charlie are
portrayed differently is crucial to understanding how this
threshold concept applies in such cases.
4
Works Cited
Baumbach, Noah. Marriage Story. Netflix, 2019.
Launius, Christie and Holly Hassel. Threshold Concepts in
Women’s and Gender Studies: Ways of Seeing,

11. Thinking, and Knowing, 2nd ed. Routledge: New York, 2018.
Print.
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible
Knapsack
by Peggy McIntosh
Through work to bring materials
from Women’s Studies into the rest of
the curriculum, I have often noticed
men’s unwillingness to grant that they
are over-privileged, even though they
may grant that women are
disadvantaged. They may say that they
will work to improve women’s status,
in the society, the university, or the
curriculum, but they can’t or won’t
support the idea of lessening men’s.
Denials which amount to taboos
surround the subject of advantages
which men gain from women’s
disadvantages. These denials protect
male privilege from being fully
acknowledged, lessened or ended.
Thinking through unacknowledged
male privilege as a phenomenon, I
realized that since hierarchies in our
society are interlocking, there was
most likely a phenomenon of white
privilege which was similarly denied
and protected. As a white person, I

12. realized I had been taught about racism
as something which puts others at a
disadvantage, but had been taught not
to see one of its corollary aspects,
white privilege, which puts me at an
advantage.
I think whites are carefully taught not
to recognize white privilege, as males
are taught not to recognize
Peace and Freedom July/August 1989
Peggy McIntosh is Associate Director of
the Wellesley College Center for Research
on Women. This essay is excerpted from
her working pager, “White Privilege and
Male Privilege: A Personal Account of
Coming to See Correspondences Through
Work in Women’s Studies,” copyright ©
1988 by Peggy McIntosh. Available for
$4.oo from address below. The paper
includes a longer list of privileges.
Permission to excerpt or reprint must be
obtained from Peggy McIntosh, Wellesley
College Center for Research on Women,
Wellesley, MA 02181; (617) 283-2520; Fax
(617) 283-2504
male privilege. So I have begun in an
un-tutored way to ask what it is like to
have white privilege. I have come to
see white privilege as an invisible

13. package of unearned assets which I can
count on cashing in each day, but about
which I was ‘meant’ to remain
oblivious. White privilege is like an
invisible weightless knapsack of
special provisions, maps, passports,
codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and
blank checks.
Describing white privilege makes
one newly accountable. As we in
Women’s Studies work to reveal male
privilege and ask men to give up some
of their power, so one who writes
about having white privilege must ask,
“Having described it, what will I do to
lessen or end it?”
After I realized the extent to which
men work from a base of
unacknowledged privilege, I
understood that much of their
oppressiveness was unconscious. Then
I remembered the frequent charges
from women of color that white
women whom they encounter are
oppressive. I began to understand why
we are justly seen as oppressive, even
when we don’t see ourselves that way.
I began to count the ways in which I
enjoy unearned skin privilege and have
been conditioned into oblivion about
its existence.
My schooling gave me no training in
seeing myself as an oppressor, as an
unfairly advantaged person, or as a
participant in a damaged culture. I was
taught to see myself as an individual

14. whose moral state depended on her
individual moral will. My schooling
followed the pattern my colleague
Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out:
whites are taught to think of their lives
as morally neutral, normative, and
average, and also ideal, so that when
we work to benefit others, this is seen
as work which will allow “them” to be
more like “us.”
I decided to try to work on myself at
least by identifying some of the daily
I was taught to see racism
only in individual acts of
meanness, not in invisible
systems conferring dominance
on my group.
effects of white privilege in my life. I
have chosen those conditions which I
think in my case attach somewhat
more to skin-color privilege than to
class, religion, ethnic status, or
geographical location, though of
course all these other factors are
intricately intertwined. As far as I can
see, my African American co[workers,
friends and acquaintances with whom I
come into daily or frequent contact in
this particular time, place, and line of
work cannot count on most of these
conditions.
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the

15. company of people of my race most of
the time.
2. If I should need to move, I can be
pretty sure of renting or purchasing
housing in an area which I can afford
and in which I want to live.
3. I can be pretty sure that my
neighbors in such a location will be
neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the
time, pretty well assured that I will not
be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open
to the front page of the paper and see
people of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national
heritage or about “civilization,” I am
shown that people of my color made it
what it is.
7. I can be sure that my children will
be given curricular materials that
testify to the existence of their race.
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of
finding a publisher for this piece on
white privilege.
9. I can go into a music shop and

16. count on finding the music of my race
represented, into a supermarket and
find the staple foods which fit with my
cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s
shop and find someone who can cut
my hair.
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards,
or cash, I can count on my skin color
not to work against the appearance of
financial reliability.
11. I can arrange to protect my
children most of the time from people
who might not like them.
12. I can sear, or dress in second hand
clothes, or not answer letters, without
having people attribute these choices to
the bad morals, the poverty, or the
illiteracy of my race.
13. I can speak in public to a powerful
male group without putting my race on
trial.
14. I can do well in a challenging
situation without being called a credit
to my race.
15. I am never asked to speak for all
the people of my racial group.
16. I can remain oblivious of the
language and customs of persons of
color who constitute the world’s

17. majority without feeling in my culture
any penalty for such oblivion.
17. I can criticize our government and
talk about how much I fear its policies
and behavior without being seen as a
cultural outsider.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to
talk to “the person in charge,” I will be
facing a person of my race.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if
the IRS audits my tax return, I can be
sure I haven’t been singled out because
of my race
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards,
picture books, greeting cards, dolls,
toys, and children’s magazines
featuring people of my race.
21. I can go home from most meetings
of organizations I belong to feeling
somewhat tied in, rather than isolated,
out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard,
held at a distance, or feared.
22. I can take a job with an affirmative
action employer without having co-
workers on the job suspect that I got it
because of race.
23. I can choose public
accommodation without fearing that

18. people of my race cannot get in or will
be mistreated in the places I have
chosen.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or
medical help, my race will not work
against me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going
badly, I need not ask of each negative
episode or situation whether it has
racial overtones.
26. I can choose blemish cover or
bandages in “flesh” color and have
them more or less match my skin.
I repeatedly forgot each of the
realizations on this list until I wrote it
down. For me white privilege has
turned out to be an elusive and fugitive
subject. The pressure to avoid it is
great, for in facing it I must give up the
myth of meritocracy. If these things
are true, this is not such a free country;
one’s life is not what one makes it;
many doors open for certain people
through no virtues of their own.
In unpacking this invisible knapsack
of white privilege, I have listed
conditions of daily experience which I
once took for granted. Nor did I think
of any of these prerequisites as bad for
the holder. I now think that we need a
more finely differentiated taxonomy of

19. privilege, for some of these varieties
are only what one would want for
everyone in a just society, and others
give license to be ignorant, oblivious,
arrogant and destructive.
I see a pattern running through the
matrix of white privilege, a pattern of
assumptions which were passed on to
me as a white person. There was one
main piece of cultural turf; it was my
own turf, and I was among those who
could control the turf. My skin color
was an asset for any move I was
educated to want to make. I could
think of myself as belonging in major
ways, and of making social systems
work for me. I could freely disparage,
fear, neglect, or be oblivious to
anything outside of the dominant
cultural forms. Being of the main
culture, I could also criticize it fairly
freely.
In proportion as my racial group was
being made confident, comfortable,
and oblivious, other groups were likely
being made unconfident,
uncomfortable, and alienated.
Whiteness protected me from many
kinds of hostility, distress and
violence, which I was being subtly
trained to visit in turn upon people of
color.
For this reason, the word “privilege”
now seems to me misleading. We
usually think of privilege as being a
favored state, whether earned or

20. conferred by birth or luck. Yes some
of the conditions I have described here
work to systematically over empower
certain groups. Such privilege simply
confers dominance because of one’s
race or sex.
I want, then, to distinguish between
earned strength and unearned power
conferred systemically. Power from
unearned privilege can look like
strength when it is in fact permission to
escape or to dominate. But not all of
the privileges on my list are inevitably
damaging. Some, like the expectation
that neighbors will be decent to you, or
that your race will not count against
you in court, should be the norm in a
just society. Others, like the privilege
to ignore less powerful people, distort
the humanity of the holders as well as
the ignored groups.
Peace and Freedom July/August 1989
Peace and Freedom July/August 1989
We might at least start by
distinguishing between positive
advantages which we can work to
spread, and negative types of
advantages which unless rejected will
always reinforce our present

21. hierarchies. For example, the feeling
that one belongs within the human
circle, as Native Americans say, should
not be seen as privilege for a few.
Ideally it is an unearned entitlement.
At present, since only a few have it, it
is an unearned advantage for them.
This paper results from a process of
coming to see that some of the power
which I originally saw as attendant on
being a human being in the U.S.
consisted in unearned advantage and
conferred dominance.
I have met very few men who are
truly distressed about systemic,
unearned male advantage and
conferred dominance. And so one
question for me and others like me is
whether we will get truly distressed,
even outraged about unearned race
advantage and conferred dominance
and if so, what we will do to lessen
them. In any case, we need to do more
work in identifying how they actually
affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps
most, of our white students in the U.S.
think that racism doesn’t affect them
because they are not people of color;
they do not see “whiteness” as a racial
identity. In addition, since race and
sex are not the only advantaging
systems at work, we need similarly to
examine the daily experience of having
age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or
physical ability, or advantage related to
nationality, religion, or sexual

22. orientation.
Difficulties and dangers surrounding
the task of finding parallels are many.
Since racism, sexism, and
heterosexism are not the same, the
advantaging associated with them
should not be seen as the same. In
addition, it is hard to disentangle
aspects of unearned advantage which
rest more on social class, economic
class, race, religion, sex and ethnic
identity than on other factors. Still, all
of the oppressions are interlocking, as
the Combahee River Collective
Statement of 1977 continues to remind
us eloquently.
One factor seems clear about all of
the interlocking oppressions. They
take both active forms which we can
see and embedded forms which as a
member of the dominant group one is
taught not to see. In my class and
place, I did not see myself as a racist
because I was taught to recognize
racism only in individual acts of
meanness by members of my group,
never in invisible systems conferring
unsought racial dominance on my
group from birth.
Disapproving of the systems won’t
be enough to change them. I was
taught to think that racism could end if
white individuals hanged their
attitudes. [But] a “white” skin in the
United States opens many doors for

23. whites whether or not we approve of
the way dominance has been conferred
on us. Individual acts can palliate, but
cannot end, these problems.
To redesign social systems we need
first to acknowledge their colossal
unseen dimensions. The silences and
denials surrounding privilege are the
key political tool here. They keep the
thinking about equality or equity
incomplete, protecting unearned
advantage and conferred dominance by
making these taboo subjects. Most talk
by whites about equal opportunity
seems to me now to be about equal
opportunity to try to get into a position
of dominance while denying that
systems of dominance exist.
It seems to me that obliviousness
about white advantage, like
obliviousness about male advantage, is
kept strongly inculturated in the United
States so as to maintain the myth of
meritocracy, the myth that all
democratic choice is equally available
to all. Keeping most people unaware
that freedom of confident action is
there for just a small number of people
props up those in power, and serves to
keep power in the hands of the same
groups that have most of it already.
Though systematic change takes
many decades, there are pressing
questions for me and I imagine for
some others like me if we raise our
daily consciousness on the perquisites

24. of being light-skinned. What will we
do with such knowledge? As we know
from watching men, it is an open
The question is: “Having
described white privilege,
what will I do to end it?”
question whether we will choose to use
unearned advantage to weaken hidden
systems of advantage, and whether we
will use any of our arbitrarily-awarded
power to try to reconstruct power
systems on a broader base.

25. KISHONNA L. GRAY
Masculinity Studies
KEYWORDS feminism, hegemony, masculinity, media,
narrative
One of the significant contributions of feminist theory is the
critical examina-
tion of masculinity and heterosexual oppression. For example,
lesbian and radical
feminists examine women’s subordination to men in a
heterosexual hierarchy
and highlight the problem of male domination over women in
challenging the
institution of heterosexuality.1 From this perspective, male

26. domination over
women is the fundamental problem and the fundamental
injustice within the
system of heterosexuality, and a particular focus is placed on
men as being core
arbiters of this structure. Recent work in masculinity studies has
criticized this
essentialist thinking, arguing that masculinity takes on a
multiplicity of forms
and arises out of social interaction, not biology, and focuses on
the role of mar-
ginalized groups in perpetuating oppression.2 This focus moves
the discussion of
masculinity and heterosexuality from unspoken and accepted
assumptions to the
social arena, where the gender order is fluid, and where
masculinity is, according
to R. W. Connell, “simultaneously a place in gender relations,
the practices
through which men and women engage that place in gender, and
the effects of
these practices in bodily experience, personality and culture.”3
Connell clarifies
how masculinities are configurations of practice within gender
relations, and that
this structure includes large-scale institutions, economic
relationships, and sexu-
ality. This complexity must extend beyond men’s bodies and
biology, and must
also incorporate a focus on objects, symbols, gestures, places,
and spaces. For
example, masculinity may evoke images of maleness, but
masculinity can also be
attributed to women. Feminist contributions examine this binary
thinking to
better capture the diversity and complexity of masculinity.

27. Feminists indicate that masculinity is a politically, socially,
physically, and
emotionally charged identity experience. Feminist scholarship
conceptualizes
masculine identity as being both constructed and subjective, a
place where
107
–
-
of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please
direct all requests for permission to photocopy
orreproducearticlecontentthroughtheUniversityofCaliforniaPress
’sReprintsandPermissionswebpage,
http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI:
http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints
https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2018.4.2.107
tension, negotiation, resistance, and reform can occur.
Masculinity studies,
being informed by feminist contributions, has reframed
narratives of power,
control, and hierarchies, and rightfully critiques images of
marginalized popula-
tions, limiting stories, and gendered dynamics that continuously
bind us within
rigid structures.
Sociologist Michael Kimmel rightfully claims that masculinity
studies is a
significant outgrowth of feminist studies.4 Media scholar Steve

28. Craig adds that
men’s studies is clearly the offspring of not only feminist
theory, but also the
social awareness brought on by the women’s movement.5 As a
result, men’s
studies is largely pro-feminist in its approach. The successes
and subsequent
backlashes of the women’s movement ushered in a critical
examination of mas-
culinity and men’s identities, and a reexamination of women’s
roles within fam-
ilies, workplaces, and society.6 This cultural shift in gendered
expectations
garnered the necessary attention from men who are in particular
solidarity with
feminist critiques of patriarchy and sexism. This radical
revisioning represents
the core of what guides men’s studies.
Television programs provide useful context for imagining the
intellectual
contributions of men’s studies. Take for example the dramatic
transformation
of white masculinity in the television series Breaking Bad
–
The show’s complex portrayal suggests that men are not merely
experiencing
a crisis of their masculinity in contemporary society, but that
there is a problem
with uniformly white, heteronormative representations of
masculinity on TV,
and that these representational complexities have always been
present. Walter
White, Breaking Bad’s antihero, behaves in a “masculine”
manner because the
culture in which he lives constructs his identity through certain

29. expectations of
manly behavior (breadwinner, limited emotional connection,
dominating a
subordinate wife). He is a dispossessed character who engages
in criminal behav-
ior (drug dealing) to help with his family’s struggling finances.
His battle into
darkness and struggle with cancer become what Edward Simon
refers to as a
“grotesque magnification of the American ethos of self-
actualization.”7 White’s
initial portrayal of a disgruntled, working-class patriarch soon
transforms, as his
character does not perpetually uphold hegemonic masculinity. It
serves as a nec-
essary reminder that not every white man in the United States
has equal access to
the most prized forms of masculinity (political power, wealth,
social esteem).
The kinds of gendered performances in Breaking Bad are central
to the de-
velopment of masculinity studies and highlight the contributions
of feminist
media studies to men’s studies—specifically, analytical tools to
better under-
stand these narratives. For example, Judith Butler examines how
the concept of
108 FEMINIST MEDIA HISTORIES SPRING 2018
a true or stable gender is illusory because gender identity is a
social construction
attained through repeated performances of specific, expected

30. behaviors.8 She
explores how acts, gestures, and desires are all produced and
performed through
gendered lenses and are often used to express fabricated and
manufactured real-
ities. In simpler terms, the actions that men take in relation to
others, including
aggressive gestures, controlling conversations, problematic
interactions with
women, et cetera, are not based on a static, unchanging
masculine essence, but
upon a role that is continually constructed by the individual’s
desires and the
influences of a dominant culture.
Media has been a significant site where masculinity is
performed in exagger-
ated ways; Walter White highlights this trend but he is only one
example. The
work by historian Joan W. Scott is useful to understand the
mediated trend to
make men’s lives complicated. Gender, she notes, “provides a
way to decode
meaning and to understand the complex connections among
various forms of
human interactions.”9 The coding of masculinity establishes a
gendered hierar-
chy of power, especially in the myriad ways that masculinity is
depicted. But all
men are not created equal within the masculine order. This
becomes pro-
nounced at the intersection of masculinity, class, and race and
ethnicity. Take
for example the delimiting imagery of Asian masculinity. In the
United
States, the image of the sexually deviant Asian man underwent a

31. transformation
soon after World War II, shifting from the cunning, devious
enemy to the de-
feated and weak. The emasculating effects of the immigration
that banned married Asians from entering the United States and
prohibited
Asian men from marrying white women were soon replicated in
the media,
with the image of the Asian man shifting from sexual predator
to someone de-
void of any sexuality whatsoever.10 The evil Fu Manchu
character who exempli-
fied the Yellow Peril evolved into images of Bruce Lee and
Charlie Chan.11 Yen
Le Espiritu describes the images of Asian American men “as
alternatively infe-
rior, threatening, or praiseworthy.”12 Racist images collapsed
gender and sexual-
ity so that Asian American men appeared to be both
hypermasculine and
effeminate. But both images continue to symbolize the advent of
the “domesti-
cated” Asian man whose lack of sexual prowess and threat aided
the ease of
assimilation in the United States (in addition to other concerns
surrounding la-
bor exploitation).13 And this imagery continues to shift based
on global eco-
nomics and political situations between the United States and
Asian countries.
The media has played a pivotal role in othering Black
masculinity as well.
From slave narratives, to minstrel performances during Jim
Crow, to Black

32. Power iterations during the civil rights movement, Black
masculinity continues
Gray | Masculinity Studies 109
to evolve even as mediated representations continue to be
regressive. The cultur-
ally bounded framing of Black masculinity within mainstream
media can be cat-
egorized, according to Joshua K. Wright, into four major
paradigms of (mis)
representation: the resistant masculinity paradigm; the self-
made masculinity
paradigm; the Black rage paradigm; and the plantation
patriarchy paradigm.14
Resistant masculinity is the first theme that has been
popularized in the media.
Scholars define it as an attempt by Black men to resist
oppression and assert
their masculinity in a society that sought to strip away any
sense of manhood.
Self-made masculinity discusses the standard of manhood
situated in the new
standard of individual achievement. Although Black men were
excluded from
being considered self-made men, a concept mostly associated
with the privileges
of white masculinity, many historical and contemporary Black
men achieve de-
spite impossible odds. However, the media has popularized
greed, extreme ma-
terialism, and capitalism as core tenets of self-made men within
Black media.

33. Black rage is “a response to black suffering and failure, which
is exacerbated by
irresistible temptation to attribute African-American problems
to a history of
white racist oppression.”15 Historically and in contemporary
media, Black men
have been portrayed as innately violent beasts. Lastly,
plantation patriarchy re-
fers to the model of manhood demonstrated by white men on
Southern plan-
tations during slavery. As bell hooks reveals, plantation
patriarchy is situated in
white supremacy and white men’s need to dominate anyone that
they con-
sider inferior.16 hooks also dubs this paradigm patriarchal
masculinity.17
These paradigms continue the demarcation of Black masculinity
as inferior,
violent, and aggressive. Black masculinity studies rightfully
suggests that
these mediated representations are damaging and intended to
sustain white
masculine supremacy.18
Why has it taken so long to begin to critically examine
masculinity? In their
landmark study on female masculinities, Jack Halberstam argues
that “mascu-
linity . . . becomes legible as masculinity where and when it
leaves the white male
middle-class body,” such that the study of male masculinity is
not the best
means to uncover the ideological constructions of
masculinity.19 Moreover,
Halberstam argues, the normalization of maleness has been an

34. important tech-
nique by which normative—straight white male—masculinity
has evaded anal-
ysis and allowed a narrow range of men to define masculinity.
Halberstam also
points to the racial and sexual work accomplished by the fiction
of hetero-
masculinity’s assumed norm. Racialized and sexualized “others”
are delegiti-
mated and denaturalized through performative work: women
“talk with their
hands”; Black men exhibit “exaggerated” or “hyper”
masculinity; gay men are
110 FEMINIST MEDIA HISTORIES SPRING 2018
“drama queens,” and so on.20 A means to challenge this
ideology is analyzing
nonnormative masculine performances enacted by those
performing and resid-
ing at marginalized masculinity. Research on genderqueer
identities presents
particular strengths, along with intellectual and practical power,
as it is a cate-
gory encompassing gender identities that are not exclusively
masculine or femi-
nine. This resistance to normative identities does not necessary
signify
homosexual, transsexual, or even heterosexual identities, but
rather identities
that resist normative constructions. Feminist media studies
provides the inno-
vative ability to situate contemporary moments within historical
discourse to

35. account for and make retrospective comparisons with current
developments.
We have a plethora of mediated examples portraying men within
hegemonic
masculinity and femininity in compliance with hegemonic
masculinity.
Feminist media studies encourages a broadened understanding
of these por-
trayals to complicate men’s lives.
KISHONNA L. GRAY is an assistant professor in the School of
Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona
State University. She is also a faculty associate at the Berkman
Klein Center for Internet and Society at
Harvard University. Her work broadly intersects identity and
new media, with a particular focus on
gaming. She is working on a monograph tentatively titled On
Being Black and . . . The Journey to
Intersectionality in Digital Gaming Culture, currently under
contract with Louisiana State University
Press. Follow her on Twitter @KishonnaGray.
NOTES
Theory,” in Sexualizing
the Social: Power and the Organization of Sexuality, ed. Lisa
Adkins and Vicki Merchant
–
Handbook of Studies on
h
Gardiner, ed., Masculinity Studies
and Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press,

36. Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (New York: Routledge,
-Made Man,” in The
Masculinity Studies
Reader, ed. Rachel Adams and David Savran (Malden, MA:
di Gardiner, Backlash: The Undeclared War
against American Women
“‘Mobilizing Masculinities’:
–
nocks’: Milton’s Lucifer
and the American
Tragic Character,” in The Hermeneutics of Hell, ed. Gregor
Thuswaldner and Daniel
of Identity (New York:
Gray | Masculinity Studies 111

37. York: Columbia University
History of Asian Americans
(Bost
Institutions and Identities
Images of Color: Images of
Crime, ed. C. R. Mann and M. S. Zatz (Los Angeles: Roxbury,
–
Rappers: Black Masculinity,
Bad Men, and the Struggle for Power (Washington, DC: Howard
University Pres
and Racist Acts:
Examining the Experiences of African-American Gamers in
Xbox Live,” New Review of
–
Kishonna L. Gray, “‘They’re Just
Too Urban’: Black Gamers Streaming on Twitch,” Digital
–
Bryant K. Alexander, Performing Black Masculinity: Race,
Culture, and Queer Identity

38. University Press,
112 FEMINIST MEDIA HISTORIES SPRING 2018
<<
/ASCII85EncodePages false
/AllowTransparency false
/AutoPositionEPSFiles true
/AutoRotatePages /None
/Binding /Left
/CalGrayProfile ()
/CalRGBProfile (Adobe RGB 0501998051)
/CalCMYKProfile (None)
/sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1)
/CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Error
/CompatibilityLevel 1.3
/CompressObjects /Off
/CompressPages true
/ConvertImagesToIndexed true
/PassThroughJPEGImages true
/CreateJobTicket false
/DefaultRenderingIntent /Default
/DetectBlends true
/DetectCurves 0.1000
/ColorConversionStrategy /LeaveColorUnchanged
/DoThumbnails false
/EmbedAllFonts true
/EmbedOpenType false
/ParseICCProfilesInComments true
/EmbedJobOptions true

39. /DSCReportingLevel 0
/EmitDSCWarnings false
/EndPage -1
/ImageMemory 1048576
/LockDistillerParams true
/MaxSubsetPct 100
/Optimize false
/OPM 1
/ParseDSCComments true
/ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true
/PreserveCopyPage false
/PreserveDICMYKValues true
/PreserveEPSInfo true
/PreserveFlatness true
/PreserveHalftoneInfo false
/PreserveOPIComments false
/PreserveOverprintSettings true
/StartPage 1
/SubsetFonts false
/TransferFunctionInfo /Apply
/UCRandBGInfo /Remove
/UsePrologue false
/ColorSettingsFile (None)
/AlwaysEmbed [ true
]
/NeverEmbed [ true
]
/AntiAliasColorImages false
/CropColorImages true
/ColorImageMinResolution 266
/ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /Warning
/DownsampleColorImages false
/ColorImageDownsampleType /Average
/ColorImageResolution 300
/ColorImageDepth 8
/ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1

40. /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000
/EncodeColorImages true
/ColorImageFilter /FlateEncode
/AutoFilterColorImages false
/ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG
/ColorACSImageDict <<
/QFactor 0.15
/HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1]
>>
/ColorImageDict <<
/QFactor 0.15
/HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1]
>>
/JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict <<
/TileWidth 256
/TileHeight 256
/Quality 30
>>
/JPEG2000ColorImageDict <<
/TileWidth 256
/TileHeight 256
/Quality 30
>>
/AntiAliasGrayImages false
/CropGrayImages true
/GrayImageMinResolution 266
/GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /Warning
/DownsampleGrayImages false
/GrayImageDownsampleType /Average
/GrayImageResolution 300
/GrayImageDepth 8
/GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2
/GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000
/EncodeGrayImages true
/GrayImageFilter /FlateEncode
/AutoFilterGrayImages false

41. /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG
/GrayACSImageDict <<
/QFactor 0.15
/HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1]
>>
/GrayImageDict <<
/QFactor 0.15
/HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1]
>>
/JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict <<
/TileWidth 256
/TileHeight 256
/Quality 30
>>
/JPEG2000GrayImageDict <<
/TileWidth 256
/TileHeight 256
/Quality 30
>>
/AntiAliasMonoImages false
/CropMonoImages true
/MonoImageMinResolution 900
/MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /Warning
/DownsampleMonoImages false
/MonoImageDownsampleType /Average
/MonoImageResolution 1200
/MonoImageDepth -1
/MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000
/EncodeMonoImages true
/MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode
/MonoImageDict <<
/K -1
>>
/AllowPSXObjects false
/CheckCompliance [
/None

42. ]
/PDFX1aCheck true
/PDFX3Check false
/PDFXCompliantPDFOnly true
/PDFXNoTrimBoxError true
/PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [
0.00000
0.00000
0.00000
0.00000
]
/PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true
/PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [
0.00000
0.00000
0.00000
0.00000
]
/PDFXOutputIntentProfile (None)
/PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier ()
/PDFXOutputCondition ()
/PDFXRegistryName ()
/PDFXTrapped /False
/CreateJDFFile false
/Description <<
/CHS
<FEFF4f7f75288fd94e9b8bbe5b9a521b5efa76840020004100640
06f0062006500200050004400460020658768637b265408002000
5000440046002f0058002d00310061003a0032003000300031002
089c4830330028fd9662f4e004e2a4e1395e84e3a56fe5f6251855b
b94ea46362800c52365b9a7684002000490053004f0020680751c
6300251734e8e521b5efa7b2654080020005000440046002f00580
02d00310061002089c48303768400200050004400460020658768
6376848be67ec64fe1606fff0c8bf753c29605300a0041006300720
06f00620061007400207528623763075357300b300260a853ef4ee

43. 54f7f75280020004100630072006f0062006100740020548c00200
0410064006f006200650020005200650061006400650072002000
34002e003000204ee553ca66f49ad87248672c676562535f00521b
5efa768400200050004400460020658768633002>
/CHT
<FEFF4f7f752890194e9b8a2d7f6e5efa7acb76840020004100640
06f006200650020005000440046002065874ef67b265408002000
5000440046002f0058002d00310061003a0032003000300031002
0898f7bc430025f8c8005662f70ba57165f6251675bb94ea463db8
00c5c08958052365b9a76846a196e96300295dc65bc5efa7acb7b2
654080020005000440046002f0058002d003100610020898f7bc4
76840020005000440046002065874ef676848a737d308cc78a0aff
0c8acb53c395b1201c004100630072006f00620061007400204f7f
7528800563075357201d300260a853ef4ee54f7f75280020004100
630072006f0062006100740020548c002000410064006f0062006
5002000520065006100640065007200200034002e003000204ee5
53ca66f49ad87248672c4f86958b555f5df25efa7acb76840020005
000440046002065874ef63002>
/DAN
<FEFF004200720075006700200069006e0064007300740069006
c006c0069006e006700650072006e0065002000740069006c0020
006100740020006f0070007200650074007400650020004100640
06f006200650020005000440046002d0064006f006b0075006d00
65006e007400650072002c00200064006500720020006600f8007
20073007400200073006b0061006c002000730065007300200069
00670065006e006e0065006d00200065006c006c0065007200200
073006b0061006c0020006f0076006500720068006f006c006400
650020005000440046002f0058002d00310061003a00320030003
00031002c00200065006e002000490053004f002d007300740061
006e0064006100720064002000740069006c00200075006400760
065006b0073006c0069006e006700200061006600200067007200
61006600690073006b00200069006e00640068006f006c0064002
e00200059006400650072006c006900670065007200650020006f
0070006c00790073006e0069006e0067006500720020006f006d0
020006f007000720065007400740065006c007300650020006100
660020005000440046002f0058002d00310061002d006b006f006

44. d00700061007400690062006c00650020005000440046002d0064
006f006b0075006d0065006e007400650072002000660069006e0
06400650072002000640075002000690020006200720075006700
650072006800e5006e00640062006f00670065006e00200074006
9006c0020004100630072006f006200610074002e002000440065
0020006f007000720065007400740065006400650020005000440
046002d0064006f006b0075006d0065006e007400650072002000
6b0061006e002000e50062006e006500730020006900200041006
30072006f00620061007400200065006c006c0065007200200041
00630072006f00620061007400200052006500610064006500720
0200034002e00300020006f00670020006e007900650072006500
2e>
/DEU
<FEFF00560065007200770065006e00640065006e00200053006
90065002000640069006500730065002000450069006e00730074
0065006c006c0075006e00670065006e0020007a0075006d00200
0450072007300740065006c006c0065006e00200076006f006e00
20005000440046002f0058002d00310061003a003200300030003
1002d006b006f006d00700061007400690062006c0065006e0020
00410064006f006200650020005000440046002d0044006f006b0
075006d0065006e00740065006e002e0020005000440046002f00
58002d003100610020006900730074002000650069006e0065002
000490053004f002d004e006f0072006d0020006600fc007200200
0640065006e002000410075007300740061007500730063006800
200076006f006e002000670072006100660069007300630068006
5006e00200049006e00680061006c00740065006e002e00200057
00650069007400650072006500200049006e0066006f0072006d0
06100740069006f006e0065006e0020007a0075006d0020004500
72007300740065006c006c0065006e00200076006f006e0020005
000440046002f0058002d00310061002d006b006f006d00700061
007400690062006c0065006e0020005000440046002d0044006f0
06b0075006d0065006e00740065006e002000660069006e006400
65006e002000530069006500200069006d0020004100630072006
f006200610074002d00480061006e00640062007500630068002e
002000450072007300740065006c006c007400650020005000440
046002d0044006f006b0075006d0065006e007400650020006b00

45. f6006e006e0065006e0020006d006900740020004100630072006
f00620061007400200075006e0064002000410064006f00620065
002000520065006100640065007200200034002e00300020006f0
064006500720020006800f600680065007200200067006500f600
660066006e00650074002000770065007200640065006e002e>
/ESP
<FEFF005500740069006c0069006300650020006500730074006
100200063006f006e0066006900670075007200610063006900f3
006e0020007000610072006100200063007200650061007200200
064006f00630075006d0065006e0074006f007300200050004400
46002000640065002000410064006f00620065002000710075006
500200073006500200064006500620065006e00200063006f006d
00700072006f0062006100720020006f002000710075006500200
064006500620065006e002000630075006d0070006c0069007200
20006c00610020006e006f0072006d0061002000490053004f002
0005000440046002f0058002d00310061003a0032003000300031
0020007000610072006100200069006e007400650072006300610
06d00620069006f00200064006500200063006f006e0074006500
6e00690064006f00200067007200e1006600690063006f002e002
000500061007200610020006f006200740065006e006500720020
006d00e1007300200069006e0066006f0072006d0061006300690
0f3006e00200073006f0062007200650020006c00610020006300
72006500610063006900f3006e00200064006500200064006f006
30075006d0065006e0074006f0073002000500044004600200063
006f006d00700061007400690062006c0065007300200063006f0
06e0020006c00610020006e006f0072006d006100200050004400
46002f0058002d00310061002c00200063006f006e00730075006
c007400650020006c006100200047007500ed0061002000640065
006c0020007500730075006100720069006f00200064006500200
04100630072006f006200610074002e0020005300650020007000
75006500640065006e00200061006200720069007200200064006
f00630075006d0065006e0074006f007300200050004400460020
00630072006500610064006f007300200063006f006e002000410
0630072006f006200610074002c002000410064006f0062006500
2000520065006100640065007200200034002e003000200079002
000760065007200730069006f006e0065007300200070006f0073

46. 0074006500720069006f007200650073002e>
/FRA
<FEFF005500740069006c006900730065007a002000630065007
30020006f007000740069006f006e00730020006100660069006e
00200064006500200063007200e90065007200200064006500730
0200064006f00630075006d0065006e0074007300200041006400
6f006200650020005000440046002000710075006900200064006
f006900760065006e0074002000ea0074007200650020007600e9
007200690066006900e900730020006f0075002000ea007400720
06500200063006f006e0066006f0072006d00650073002000e000
20006c00610020006e006f0072006d00650020005000440046002
f0058002d00310061003a0032003000300031002c00200075006e
00650020006e006f0072006d0065002000490053004f002000640
02700e9006300680061006e006700650020006400650020006300
6f006e00740065006e00750020006700720061007000680069007
100750065002e00200050006f0075007200200070006c00750073
0020006400650020006400e9007400610069006c0073002000730
07500720020006c006100200063007200e9006100740069006f00
6e00200064006500200064006f00630075006d0065006e0074007
3002000500044004600200063006f006e0066006f0072006d0065
0073002000e00020006c00610020006e006f0072006d006500200
05000440046002f0058002d00310061002c00200076006f006900
720020006c0065002000470075006900640065002000640065002
0006c0027007500740069006c0069007300610074006500750072
002000640027004100630072006f006200610074002e0020004c0
065007300200064006f00630075006d0065006e00740073002000
500044004600200063007200e900e900730020007000650075007
60065006e0074002000ea0074007200650020006f007500760065
007200740073002000640061006e00730020004100630072006f0
06200610074002c002000610069006e0073006900200071007500
2700410064006f006200650020005200650061006400650072002
00034002e0030002000650074002000760065007200730069006f
006e007300200075006c007400e90072006900650075007200650
073002e>
/ITA (Utilizzare queste impostazioni per creare documenti
Adobe PDF che devono essere conformi o verificati in base a

47. PDF/X-1a:2001, uno standard ISO per lo scambio di contenuto
grafico. Per ulteriori informazioni sulla creazione di documenti
PDF compatibili con PDF/X-1a, consultare la Guida dell'utente
di Acrobat. I documenti PDF creati possono essere aperti con
Acrobat e Adobe Reader 4.0 e versioni successive.)
/JPN
<FEFF30b030e930d530a330c330af30b330f330c630f330c4306e5
90963db306b5bfe3059308b002000490053004f00206a196e9689
8f683c306e0020005000440046002f0058002d00310061003a003
20030003000310020306b6e9662e03057305f002000410064006f
0062006500200050004400460020658766f830924f5c621030593
08b305f3081306b4f7f75283057307e30593002005000440046002
f0058002d0031006100206e9662e0306e00200050004400460020
658766f84f5c6210306b306430443066306f300100410063007200
6f006200610074002030e630fc30b630ac30a430c9309253c27167
30573066304f30603055304430023053306e8a2d5b9a30674f5c62
103055308c305f0020005000440046002030d530a130a430eb306f
3001004100630072006f0062006100740020304a3088307300200
0410064006f006200650020005200650061006400650072002000
34002e003000204ee5964d3067958b304f30533068304c3067304
d307e30593002>
/KOR
<FEFFc7740020c124c815c7440020c0acc6a9d558c5ec0020c791
c131d558b294002000410064006f0062006500200050004400460
020bb38c11cb2940020d655c778c7740020d544c694d558ba7000
20adf8b798d53d0020cee8d150d2b8b97c0020ad50d658d558b29
40020bc29bc95c5d00020b300d55c002000490053004f0020d45c
c900c7780020005000440046002f0058002d00310061003a00320
03000300031c7580020addcaca9c5d00020b9dec544c57c0020d56
9b2c8b2e4002e0020005000440046002f0058002d003100610020
d638d65800200050004400460020bb38c11c0020c791c131c5d00
020b300d55c0020c790c138d55c0020c815bcf4b2940020004100
630072006f0062006100740020c0acc6a90020c124ba85c11cb97c
0020cc38c870d558c2edc2dcc624002e0020c774b807ac8c0020c7
91c131b41c00200050004400460020bb38c11cb29400200041006
30072006f0062006100740020bc0f002000410064006f006200650

48. 02000520065006100640065007200200034002e00300020c774c0
c1c5d0c11c0020c5f40020c2180020c788c2b5b2c8b2e4002e>
/NLD (Gebruik deze instellingen om Adobe PDF-documenten
te maken die moeten worden gecontroleerd of moeten voldoen
aan PDF/X-1a:2001, een ISO-standaard voor het uitwisselen van
grafische gegevens. Raadpleeg de gebruikershandleiding van
Acrobat voor meer informatie over het maken van PDF-
documenten die compatibel zijn met PDF/X-1a. De gemaakte
PDF-documenten kunnen worden geopend met Acrobat en
Adobe Reader 4.0 en hoger.)
/NOR
<FEFF004200720075006b0020006400690073007300650020006
9006e006e007300740069006c006c0069006e00670065006e0065
002000740069006c002000e50020006f007000700072006500740
0740065002000410064006f006200650020005000440046002d00
64006f006b0075006d0065006e00740065007200200073006f006
d00200073006b0061006c0020006b006f006e00740072006f006c
006c0065007200650073002c00200065006c006c0065007200200
073006f006d0020006d00e50020007600e6007200650020006b00
6f006d00700061007400690062006c00650020006d00650064002
0005000440046002f0058002d00310061003a0032003000300031
002c00200065006e002000490053004f002d007300740061006e0
06400610072006400200066006f00720020007500740076006500
6b0073006c0069006e00670020006100760020006700720061006
600690073006b00200069006e006e0068006f006c0064002e0020
0048007600690073002000640075002000760069006c002000680
0610020006d0065007200200069006e0066006f0072006d006100
73006a006f006e0020006f006d002000680076006f007200640061
006e0020006400750020006f00700070007200650074007400650
0720020005000440046002f0058002d00310061002d006b006f00
6d00700061007400690062006c00650020005000440046002d006
4006f006b0075006d0065006e007400650072002c002000730065
0020006200720075006b00650072006800e5006e00640062006f0
06b0065006e00200066006f00720020004100630072006f006200
610074002e0020005000440046002d0064006f006b0075006d006
5006e00740065006e00650020006b0061006e002000e50070006e

49. 00650073002000690020004100630072006f00620061007400200
065006c006c00650072002000410064006f006200650020005200
65006100640065007200200034002e003000200065006c006c006
50072002000730065006e006500720065002e>
/PTB
<FEFF005500740069006c0069007a00650020006500730073006
1007300200063006f006e00660069006700750072006100e700f5
0065007300200064006500200066006f0072006d0061002000610
0200063007200690061007200200064006f00630075006d006500
6e0074006f0073002000410064006f00620065002000500044004
600200063006100700061007a0065007300200064006500200073
006500720065006d0020007600650072006900660069006300610
064006f00730020006f0075002000710075006500200064006500
760065006d00200065007300740061007200200065006d0020006
3006f006e0066006f0072006d0069006400610064006500200063
006f006d0020006f0020005000440046002f0058002d003100610
03a0032003000300031002c00200075006d002000700061006400
7200e3006f002000640061002000490053004f002000700061007
200610020006f00200069006e007400650072006300e2006d0062
0069006f00200064006500200063006f006e0074006500fa006400
6f00200067007200e1006600690063006f002e002000500061007
200610020006f00620074006500720020006d0061006900730020
0069006e0066006f0072006d006100e700f500650073002000730
06f00620072006500200063006f006d006f002000630072006900
61007200200064006f00630075006d0065006e0074006f0073002
000500044004600200063006f006d00700061007400ed00760065
0069007300200063006f006d0020006f0020005000440046002f0
058002d00310061002c00200063006f006e00730075006c007400
650020006f0020004700750069006100200064006f00200075007
3007500e100720069006f00200064006f0020004100630072006f0
06200610074002e0020004f007300200064006f00630075006d00
65006e0074006f007300200050004400460020006300720069006
10064006f007300200070006f00640065006d0020007300650072
002000610062006500720074006f007300200063006f006d00200
06f0020004100630072006f006200610074002000650020006f00
2000410064006f006200650020005200650061006400650072002

50. 00034002e0030002000650020007600650072007300f500650073
00200070006f00730074006500720069006f007200650073002e>
/SUO
<FEFF004b00e40079007400e40020006e00e40069007400e4002
000610073006500740075006b007300690061002c0020006b0075
006e0020006c0075006f0074002000410064006f0062006500200
050004400460020002d0064006f006b0075006d0065006e007400
740065006a0061002c0020006a006f0074006b006100200074006
10072006b0069007300740065007400610061006e002000740061
00690020006a006f006900640065006e0020007400e4007900740
07900790020006e006f0075006400610074007400610061002000
5000440046002f0058002d00310061003a0032003000300031003
a007400e400200065006c0069002000490053004f002d00730074
0061006e006400610072006400690061002000670072006100610
066006900730065006e002000730069007300e4006c006c00f600
6e00200073006900690072007400e4006d00690073007400e4002
000760061007200740065006e002e0020004c0069007300e40074
006900650074006f006a00610020005000440046002f0058002d0
0310061002d00790068007400650065006e0073006f0070006900
7600690065006e0020005000440046002d0064006f006b0075006
d0065006e0074007400690065006e0020006c0075006f006d0069
007300650073007400610020006f006e0020004100630072006f0
062006100740069006e0020006b00e400790074007400f6006f00
70007000610061007300730061002e00200020004c0075006f006
4007500740020005000440046002d0064006f006b0075006d0065
006e00740069007400200076006f0069006400610061006e00200
06100760061007400610020004100630072006f00620061007400
69006c006c00610020006a0061002000410064006f00620065002
000520065006100640065007200200034002e0030003a006c006c
00610020006a006100200075007500640065006d006d0069006c0
06c0061002e>
/SVE
<FEFF0041006e007600e4006e00640020006400650020006800e
4007200200069006e0073007400e4006c006c006e0069006e0067
00610072006e00610020006f006d0020006400750020007600690
06c006c00200073006b006100700061002000410064006f006200

51. 650020005000440046002d0064006f006b0075006d0065006e007
400200073006f006d00200073006b00610020006b006f006e0074
0072006f006c006c006500720061007300200065006c006c00650
07200200073006f006d0020006d00e50073007400650020006d00
6f0074007300760061007200610020005000440046002f0058002
d00310061003a0032003000300031002c00200065006e00200049
0053004f002d007300740061006e0064006100720064002000660
0f600720020007500740062007900740065002000610076002000
6700720061006600690073006b007400200069006e006e0065006
800e5006c006c002e00200020004d0065007200200069006e0066
006f0072006d006100740069006f006e0020006f006d0020006800
7500720020006d0061006e00200073006b0061007000610072002
0005000440046002f0058002d00310061002d006b006f006d0070
0061007400690062006c00610020005000440046002d0064006f0
06b0075006d0065006e0074002000660069006e006e0073002000
6900200061006e007600e4006e00640061007200680061006e006
40062006f006b0065006e002000740069006c006c002000410063
0072006f006200610074002e002000200053006b0061007000610
06400650020005000440046002d0064006f006b0075006d006500
6e00740020006b0061006e002000f600700070006e00610073002
000690020004100630072006f0062006100740020006f00630068
002000410064006f0062006500200052006500610064006500720
0200034002e00300020006f00630068002000730065006e006100
720065002e>
/ENU (Use these settings to create Adobe PDF documents for
submission to The Sheridan Press. Configured for Adobe
Acrobat Distiller v8.0 02-28-07.)
>>
/Namespace [
(Adobe)
(Common)
(1.0)
]
/OtherNamespaces [
<<
/AsReaderSpreads false

52. /CropImagesToFrames true
/ErrorControl /WarnAndContinue
/FlattenerIgnoreSpreadOverrides false
/IncludeGuidesGrids false
/IncludeNonPrinting false
/IncludeSlug false
/Namespace [
(Adobe)
(InDesign)
(4.0)
]
/OmitPlacedBitmaps false
/OmitPlacedEPS false
/OmitPlacedPDF false
/SimulateOverprint /Legacy
>>
<<
/AddBleedMarks false
/AddColorBars false
/AddCropMarks false
/AddPageInfo false
/AddRegMarks false
/ConvertColors /ConvertToCMYK
/DestinationProfileName ()
/DestinationProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK
/Downsample16BitImages true
/FlattenerPreset <<
/PresetSelector /HighResolution
>>
/FormElements false
/GenerateStructure false
/IncludeBookmarks false
/IncludeHyperlinks false
/IncludeInteractive false
/IncludeLayers false
/IncludeProfiles false

53. /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings
/Namespace [
(Adobe)
(CreativeSuite)
(2.0)
]
/PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK
/PreserveEditing true
/UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged
/UntaggedRGBHandling /UseDocumentProfile
/UseDocumentBleed false
>>
]
>> setdistillerparams
<<
/HWResolution [2400 2400]
/PageSize [612.000 792.000]
>> setpagedevice
Critical Resistance-Incite! Statement on Gender Violence And
the Prison-Industrial
Complex
Author(s): Critical Resistance and Incite!
Source: Social Justice, Vol. 30, No. 3 (93), The Intersection of
Ideologies of Violence (2003),
pp. 141-150
Published by: Social Justice/Global Options
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29768215
Accessed: 24-01-2020 00:35 UTC

54. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected]
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Social Justice/Global Options is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend
access to Social Justice
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Critical Resistance-Incite!
Statement on Gender Violence
And the Prison-Industrial Complex
Critical Resistance and Incite!
WE CALL ON SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS TO
DEVELOP STRATEGIES AND ANALY?
SIS that address both state and interpersonal violence,
particularly

55. violence against women.1 Currently, activists/movements that
address
state violence (such as anti-prison, anti-police brutality groups)
often work in
isolation from activists/movements that address domestic and
sexual violence.
The result is that women of color, who suffer
disproportionately from both state
and interpersonal violence, have become marginalized within
these movements.
It is critical for us to develop responses to gender violence that
do not depend on
a sexist, racist, classist, and homophobic criminal justice
system. It is also
important that we develop strategies that challenge the criminal
justice system,
while providing safety for survivors of sexual and domestic
violence. To live
violence-free lives, we must develop holistic strategies for
addressing violence
that speak to the intersection of all forms of oppression.
The anti-violence movement has been critically important in
breaking the
silence around violence against women and providing much-
needed services to
survivors. However, the mainstream anti-violence movement
has increasingly
relied on the criminal justice system as the front-line approach
toward ending
violence against women of color. It is important to assess the
impact of this
strategy.

56. (1) Law enforcement approaches to violence against women
may deter some
acts of violence in the short term. However, as an overall
strategy for ending
violence, criminalization has not worked. In fact, mandatory
arrest laws for
domestic violence have led to decreases in the number of
battered women who kill
their partners in self-defense, but they have not led to a
decrease in the number of
batterers who kill their partners.2 Thus, the law protects
batterers more than it
protects survivors.
(2) The criminalization approach has also brought many women
into conflict
with the law, particularly women of color, poor women,
lesbians, sex workers,
Critical Resistance and Incite! Women of Color Against
Violence are U.S .-based organizations.
To sign on to the Critical Resistance-Incite statement as an
organization or individual, e-mail
[email protected] or phone (415) 553-3837.
Social Justice Vol. 30, No. 3 (2003) 141
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

57. 142 Critical Resistance and Incite!
immigrant women, women with disabilities, and other
marginalized women. For
instance, under mandatory arrest laws, there have been
numerous occasions in
which police officers called to domestic incidents have arrested
the woman being
battered.3 Many undocumented women have reported cases of
sexual and domes?
tic violence, only to find themselves deported.4 A tough law-
and-order agenda also
leads to long punitive sentences for women convicted of killing
their batterers.5
Finally, when public funding is channeled into policing and
prisons, budget cuts
for social programs, including women's shelters, welfare, and
public housing, are
the inevitable side effect.6 These cutbacks leave women less
able to escape violent
relationships.
(3) Prisons don't work. Despite an exponential increase in the
number of men
in prisons, women are not any safer and the rates of sexual
assault and domestic
violence have not decreased.7 In calling for greater police
responses to, and
harsher sentences for, perpetrators of gender violence, the anti-
violence move?
ment has fueled the proliferation of prisons. The U.S. now
locks up more people
per capita than does any other country.8 During the past 15
years, the number of
women in prison, especially women of color, has skyrocketed.9
Prisons also inflict

58. violence on the growing numbers of women behind bars.
Slashing, suicide, the
proliferation of HIV, strip searches, medical neglect, and rape
of prisoners has
largely been ignored by anti-violence activists.10 The criminal
justice system, an
institution of violence, domination, and control, has increased
the level of violence
in society.
(4) Reliance on state funding to support anti-violence programs
has increased
the professionalization of the anti-violence movement and
alienated it from its
community-organizing, social justice roots.11 Such reliance
has isolated the anti
violence movement from other social justice movements that
seek to eradicate
state violence, such that it acts in conflict rather than in
collaboration with these
movements.
(5) Reliance on the criminal justice system has taken power
away from
women's ability to organize collectively to stop violence and
has invested this
power within the state. The result is that women who seek
redress in the criminal
justice system feel disempowered and alienated.12 It has also
promoted an
individualistic approach toward ending violence, such that the
only way people
think they can intervene to stop violence is to call the police.
This reliance has

59. shifted our focus away from developing ways communities can
collectively
respond to violence.
In recent years, the mainstream anti-prison movement has
called attention to
the negative impact of criminalization and to the build-up of
the prison-industrial
complex. Because activists seeking to reverse the tide of mass
incarceration and
criminalization of poor communities and communities of color
have not consis?
tently made gender and sexuality central to their analysis or
organizing, they have
not always responded adequately to the needs of survivors of
domestic and sexual
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex 143
violence. We need to analyze the limitations of anti-prison and
police accountabil?
ity activism.
(1) Prison and police accountability activists have generally
organized around
and conceptualized men of color as the primary victims of state
violence. Female
prisoners and victims of police brutality have been made
invisible by a focus on
the war on our brothers and sons. This emphasis fails to

60. consider that state violence
affects women as severely as it does men.13 The plight of
women who are raped
by INS officers or prison guards, for instance, has not received
sufficient attention.
In addition, women carry the burden of caring for extended
family when family
and community members are criminalized and warehoused.14
Several organiza?
tions have been established to advocate for women prisoners;15
however, these
groups have frequently been marginalized within the
mainstream anti-prison
movement.
(2) The anti-prison movement has not addressed strategies for
addressing the
rampant forms of violence women face in their everyday lives,
including street
harassment, sexual harassment at work, rape, and intimate
partner abuse. Until
these strategies are developed, many women will feel
shortchanged by the
movement. In addition, the anti-prison movement's failure to
seek alliances with
the anti-violence movement has sent the message that it is
possible to liberate
communities without guaranteeing the well-being and safety of
women.
(3) The anti-prison movement has failed to sufficiently
organize around the
forms of state violence faced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans,
Two-spirited, and

61. Intersex (LGBTTI) communities. LGBTTI street youth and
trans people in general
are particularly vulnerable to police brutality and
criminalization.16 LGBTTI prison?
ers are denied basic human rights such as family visits from
same-sex partners, and
same-sex consensual relationships in prison are policed and
punished.17
(4) Although prison abolitionists have correctly noted that
rapists and serial
murderers comprise a small percentage of the prison
population, we have not
answered the question of how these cases should be
addressed.18 Many anti
violence activists interpret this inability to answer the question
as a lack of concern
for the safety of women.
(5) The various alternatives to incarceration developed by anti-
prison activists
have generally failed to provide a sufficient mechanism for
safety and accountabil?
ity for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. These
alternatives often rely on
a romanticized notion of communities, which have yet to
demonstrate their
commitment and ability to keep women and children safe or to
seriously address
the sexism and homophobia that is deeply embedded within
them.19
We call on social justice movements concerned with ending
violence in all its
forms to:

62. (1) Develop community-based responses to violence that do not
rely on the
criminal justice system and that have mechanisms to ensure
safety and account
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
144 Critical Resistance and Incite!
ability for survivors of sexual and domestic violence.
Transformative practices
emerging from local communities should be documented and
disseminated to
promote collective responses to violence.
(2) Critically assess the impact of state funding on social
justice organizations
and develop alternative fundraising strategies to support these
organizations.
Develop collective fundraising and organizing strategies for
anti-prison and anti
violence organizations. Develop strategies and analysis that
specifically target
state forms of sexual violence.
(3) Make connections between interpersonal violence, the
violence inflicted
by domestic state institutions (such as prisons, detention
centers, mental hospitals,
and child protective services), and international violence (such
as war, military
base prostitution, and nuclear testing).

63. (4) Develop analyses and strategies to end violence that do not
isolate acts of
state or individual violence from their larger contexts. These
strategies must
address how entire communities of all genders are affected in
multiple ways by
state violence and interpersonal gender violence. Battered
women prisoners
represent an intersection of state and interpersonal violence and
as such provide
and opportunity for both movements to build coalitions and
joint struggles.
(5) Place poor and working-class women of color at the center
of their analysis,
organizing practices, and leadership development. Recognize
the role of eco?
nomic oppression, welfare "reform," and attacks on women
workers' rights in
increasing women's vulnerability to all forms of violence;
locate anti-violence and
anti-prison activism alongside efforts to transform the
capitalist economic system.
(6) Center stories of state violence committed against women
of color in our
organizing efforts.
(7) Oppose legislative change that promotes prison expansion
or criminalization
of poor communities and communities of color, and thus state
violence against
women of color, even if these changes also incorporate
measures to support
victims of interpersonal gender violence.

64. (8) Promote holistic political education at the everyday level
within our
communities. Specifically, show how sexual violence helps to
reproduce the
colonial, racist, capitalist, heterosexist, and patriarchal society
in which we live,
as well as how state violence produces interpersonal violence
within communities.
(9) Develop strategies for mobilizing against sexism and
homophobia within
our communities to keep women safe.
(10) Challenge men of color and all men in social justice
movements to take
particular responsibility to address and organize around gender
violence in their
communities as a primary strategy for addressing violence and
colonialism. We
challenge men to address how their own histories of
victimization have hindered
their ability to establish gender justice in their communities.
(11) Link struggles for personal transformation and healing
with struggles for
social justice.
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex 145

65. We seek to build movements that not only end violence, but
also create a
society based on radical freedom, mutual accountability, and
passionate reciproc?
ity. In this society, safety and security will not be premised on
violence or the threat
of violence; it will be based on a collective commitment to
guaranteeing the
survival and care of all peoples.
Signatures:
Organizations
American Friends Service Committee, Arab Women's Solidarity
Association,
North America Arab Women's Solidarity Association, San
Francisco Chapter,
Arizona Prison Moratorium Coalition, Asian Women's Shelter,
Audre Lorde
Project, Black Radical Congress, California Coalition for
Women Prisoners,
Center for Human Rights Education, Center for Immigrant
Families, Center for
Law and Justice, Coalition of Women from Asia and the Middle
East, Colorado
Progressive Alliance, Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence
(New York),
Communities Against Rape and Abuse (Seattle), Direct Action
Against Refugee
Exploitation (Vancouver), East Asia-US-Puerto Rico Women's
Network Against
Militarism, Institute of Lesbian Studies, Justice Now, Korean
American Coalition
to End Domestic Abuse, Lavender Youth Recreation &

66. Information Center (San
Francisco), Legal Services for Prisoners with Children,
Minnesota Black Political
Action Committee, National Coalition Against Domestic
Violence, National
Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects, National Network for
Immigrant and Refu?
gee Rights, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (Seattle),
Pennsylvania Lesbian
and Gay Task Force, Prison Activist Resource Center, Project
South San Fran?
cisco, Women Against Rape, Shimtuh Korean Domestic
Violence Program, Sista
II Sista, Southwest Youth Collaborative (Chicago), Spear and
Shield Publications,
Chicago, Women of All Red Nations, Women of Color
Resource Center, and
Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (Bronx)
Individuals
Debra M. Akuna, Gigi Alexander, Jiro Arase, Helen Arnold,
Office of Sexual
Misconduct, Prevention & Education, Columbia University,
Molefe Asante,
Temple University, Rjoya K. Atu, Karen Baker, National
Sexual Violence
Resource Center, Rachel Baum, National Coalition of Anti-
Violence Projects,
Elham Bayour, Women's Empowerment Project (Gaza,
Palestine), Zoe Abigail
Bermet, Eulynda Toledo-Benalli, Dine' Nation, First Nations
North & South,
Diana Block, California Coalition for Women Prisoners,
Marilyn Buck, Political

67. Prisoner, Lee Carroll, National Coalition Against Domestic
Violence, Emma
Catague, API Women & Safety Center, Ann Caton, Young
Women United,
Mariama Changamire, Department of Communication, Univ. of
Massachusetts,
Amherst, Eunice Cho, National Network for Immigrant and
Refugee Rights,
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
146 Critical Resistance and Incite!
Sunjung Cho, KACEDA and Asian Community Mental Health
Services, Chris?
tina Chu, Dorie D. Ciskowsky, Cori Couture, BAMM, Kimberle
Crenshaw,
UCLA Law School, Gwen D'Arcangelis, Shamita Das
Dasgupta, Manavi, Inc.,
Angela Y. Davis, University of California ? Santa Cruz, Jason
Durr, University
of Hawaii School of Social Work, Michael Eric Dyson,
University of Pennsylva?
nia, Siobhan Edmondson, Michelle Erai, Santa Cruz
Commission for the Preven?
tion of Violence Against Women, Samantha Francois, Edna
Frantela, National
Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Loretta Frederick,
Battered Women's
Justice Project, Arnoldo Garcia, National Network for
Immigrant and Refugee
Rights, Dionne Grigsby, University of Hawaii Outreach

68. College, Lara K. Grimm,
Sarah Hoagland, Institute of Lesbian Studies, Elizabeth
Harmuth, Prison Activist
Resource Center, Katayoun Issari, Family Peace Center
(Hawaii), Desa Jacobsson,
Anti-Violence Activist (Alaska), Joy James, Brown University,
Leialoha Jenkins,
Jamie Jimenez, Northwestern Sexual Assault Education
Prevention Program,
Dorothea Kaapana, Isabel Kang, Dorean American Coalition
for Ending Domes?
tic Abuse, Valli Kanuha, Asian Pacific Islander Institute on
Domestic Violence,
Mimi Kim, Asian Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic
Violence, Erl Kimmich,
Paul Kivel, Violence Prevention Educator, M. Carmen Lane,
Anti-violence
activist, In Hui Lee, KACEDA, Meejeon Lee, Shimtuh &
KACEDA, Beckie
Masaki, Asian Women's Shelter, Ann Rhee Menzie, Shimtuh &
KACEDA, Sarah
Kim-Merchant, KACEDA, Patricia Manning, Alternatives to
Violence Project
(AVP) volunteer, Kristin Millikan, Chicago Metropolitan
Battered Women's
Network, Steven Morozumi, Programs Adviser, Univ. of
Oregon Multicultural
Center, Soniya Munshi, Manavi, Sylvia Nam, KACEDA &
KCCEB (Korean
Community Center of the East Bay), Stormy Ogden, American
Indian Movement,
Margo Okazawa-Rey, Mills College, Angela Naomi Paik, Ellen
Pence, Praxis,

69. Karen Porter, Trity Pourbahrami, University of Hawaii, Laura
Pulido, University
of Southern California, Bernadette Ramog, Matt Remle, Center
for Community
Justice, Monique Rhodes, Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual
Assault, Lisa
Richardson, Beth Richie, African American Institute on
Domestic Violence,
David Rider, Men Can Stop Rape, Loretta Rivera, Alissa
Rojers, Clarissa Rojas,
Latino Alianza Against Domestic Violence, Paula Rojas,
Refugio/Refuge (New
York), Tricia Rose, University of California ? Santa Cruz,
Katheryn Russell
Brown, University of Maryland, Ann Russo, Women's Studies
Program, DePaul
University, Anuradha Sharma, Asian & Pacific Islander
Institute on Domestic
Violence, David Thibault Rodriguez, South West Youth
Collaborative, Roxanna
San Miguel, Karen Shain, Legal Services for Prisoners with
Children, Proshat
Shekarloo, Oakland, Anita Sinha, attorney ? Northwest
Immigrant Rights
Project, Wendy Simonetti, Barbara Smith, founder, Kitchen
Table Press, Matthea
Little Smith, Natalie Sokoloff, John Jay College of Criminal
Justice ? CUNY,
Nan Stoops, Theresa Tevaga, Kabzuag Vaj, Hmong American
Women Associa?
tion, Cornel West, Janelle White, Leanne Knot, Violence
Against Women
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

70. Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex 147
Consortium, Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner, Sherry
Wilson, Women
of All Red Nations, Glenn Wong, Yon Soon Yoon, KACEDA,
Mieko Yoshihama,
University of Michigan School of Social Work, Tukufu Zuberi,
Center for
Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania.
NOTES
1. Critical Resistance and Incite! Women of Color Against
Violence are U.S.-based organiza?
tions that participate in transnational networks and alliances.
Although many of the critiques of the anti
violence and anti-prison movements in the statement may be
relevant to non-U.S. contexts, the authors
do not make any claims of universality and recognize that
movements in other countries have
developed from distinct histories and political contexts.
2. In a 20-year study of 48 cities, Dugan et al. (2003) found
that greater access to criminal legal
remedies for women led to fewer men being killed by their
wives, since women who might otherwise
have killed to escape violence were offered alternatives.
However, women receiving legal support were
no less likely to be killed by their intimate partners, and were
exposed to additional retaliatory violence.
3. See McMahon (2003), Osthoff (2002), and Miller (2001).

71. Noting that in some cities, over
20% of those arrested for domestic violence are women, Miller
concludes: "An arrest policy intended
to protect battered women as victims is being misapplied and
used against them. Battered women have
become female offenders."
4. Women's dependent or undocumented status is often
manipulated by batterers, who use the
threat of deportation as part of a matrix of domination and
control. Although the Violence Against
Women Act (VAWA, 1994; 2000) introduced visas for battered
immigrant women, many women do
not know about the act's provisions or are unable to meet
evidentiary requirements. Since the Illegal
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act made
domestic violence grounds for depor?
tation, women may also be reluctant to subject a legal
permanent resident spouse to potential
deportation proceedings by reporting him to the police. In
addition, women arrested under mandatory
arrest laws could themselves face deportation. See Raj and
Silverman (2002) and Jang et al. (1997).
5. For example, former California Governor Grey Davis, whose
tough law-and-order platform
included a promise that no one convicted of murder would go
free, rejected numerous parole board
recommendations on behalf of battered women incarcerated for
killing in self-defense (Vesely, 2002).
For further information and testimonies of incarcerated
survivors of domestic violence, see
www.freebatteredwomen.org.

72. 6. Christian Parenti (1999) documents the shift in government
spending from welfare, educa?
tion, and social provision to prisons and policing.
7. The U.S. prison and jail population grew from 270,000 in
1975 to two million in 2001 as
legislators pushed "tough on crime" policies such as mandatory
minimums, three strikes and you're
out, and truth in sentencing (Tonry, 2001:17). Over 90% of
these prisoners are men, and approximately
50% are black men. Despite claims that locking more people
away would lead to a dramatic decrease
in crime, reported violent crimes against women have remained
relatively constant since annual
victimization surveys were initiated in 1973 (Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 1994).
8. In 2001, the U.S., with 686 prisoners per 100,000 residents,
surpassed the incarceration rate
of gulag-ridden Russia. The U.S. dwarfs the incarceration rate
of Western European nations like
Finland and Denmark, which incarcerate only 59 people out of
every 100,000 (Home Office
Development and Statistics Directorate, 2003).
9. The rate of increase of women's imprisonment in the U.S.
has exceeded that of men. In 1970,
there were 5,600 women in federal and state prisons; by 1996,
there were 75,000 (Currie, 1998).
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

73. 148 Critical Resistance and Incite!
10. Amnesty International's investigation of women's prisons in
the U.S. revealed countless
cases of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse. In one case,
the Federal Bureau of Prisons paid
$500,000 to settle a lawsuit by three black women who were
sexually assaulted when guards took
money from male prisoners in exchange for taking them to the
women's cells; prisoners in Arizona
were subjected to rape, sexual fondling, and genital touching
during searches, as well as to constant
prurient viewing when using the shower and toilet; women at
Valley State Prison, California, were
treated as a "private harem to sexually abuse and harass"; in
numerous cases, women were kept in
restraints while seriously ill, dying, or in labor and women
under maximum-security conditions were
kept in isolation and sensory deprivation for long periods
(Amnesty International, 1999).
11. See Smith (2000-2001).
12. May Koss (2000) argues that the adversarial justice system
traumatizes survivors of domestic
violence. For a first-person account of a rape survivor's fight to
hold the police accountable, see Doe
(2003). Jane Doe was raped by the Toronto "Balcony rapist"
after police used women in her
neighborhood as "bait."
13. For a comprehensive account of state violence against
women in the U.S., see Bhattacharjee
(2001).

74. 14. Added burdens on women when a loved one is incarcerated
include dealing with the arrest
and trials of family members, expensive visits and phone calls
from correctional facilities, and meeting
disruptive parole requirements (Richie, 2002).
15. In the U.S., see Justice Now; Legal Services for Prisoners
with Children, at http://
prisonerswithchildren.org; Free Battered Women, at
www.freebatteredwomen.org; California Coali?
tion for Women Prisoners, at http://womenprisoners.org; and
Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcer?
ated Mothers, at www.c-l-a-i-m-.org. In the U.K., see Women
in Prison, at www.womeninprison.org;
and Justice for Women, at www.jfw.org.uk. In Canada, see the
Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry
Associations, at www.elizabethfry.ca/caefs_e.htm.
16. According to transgender activists in the Bay Area, the
police are responsible for approxi?
mately 50% of all trans abuse cases. The Transaction hotline
regularly receives reports from TG/TS
survivors of police violence who have been forced to strip to
"verify gender," or subjected to demands
for sex from undercover police officers (San Francisco
Examiner, 2002; Bay Area Reporter, 1999).
17. See Faith (1993: 211-223).
18. The response of abolitionists Thomas and Boehlfeld (1993)
to the question of what to do about
Henry, a violent rapist, is an example of this problem. The
authors conclude that this is the wrong
question since it focuses attention on a small and anomalous
subsection of the prison population and

75. detracts from a broader abolitionist vision.
19. Alternatives to the traditional justice system such as
Sentencing Circles are particularly
developed in Canada and Australia, where they have been
developed in partnership with indigenous
communities. However, native women have been critical of
these approaches, arguing that they fail to
address the deep-rooted sexism and misogyny engendered by
experiences of colonization and may
revictimize women (Monture-Angus, 2000). See also Hudson
(2002).
REFERENCES
Amnesty International
1999 Not Part of My Sentence: Violations of the Human Rights
of Women in
Custody. New York.
Bay Area Reporter
1999 "Another Transgender Murder." April 8: 29,14.
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Gender Violence and the Prison-Industrial Complex 149
Bhattacharjee, Annanya
2001 Women of Color and the Violence of Law Enforcement.
Philadelphia:

76. American Friends Service Committee and Committee on
Women, Population,
and the Environment.
Bramman, Donald
2002 "Families and Incarceration." Marc Mauer and Meda
Chesney-Lind (eds.),
Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass
Imprisonment.
New York: The New Press.
Bureau of Justice Statistics
1994 National Crime Victimization Survey Report: "Violence
Against Women."
NCJ 145325.
Chesney-Lind, Meda
2002 Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of
Mass Imprisonment,
New York: The New Press.
Critical Resistance
2002 What Is Abolition ? At www.criticalresistance.org.
Currie, Elliott
1998 Crime and Punishment in America. New York: Henry
Holt.
Doe, Jane
2003 The Story of Jane Doe: A Book About Rape. New York:
Random House.
Dugan, Laura, Daniel S. Nagin, and Richard Rosenfeld

77. 2003 "Exposure Reduction or Retaliation? The Effects of
Domestic Violence
Resources on Intimate-Partner Homicide." Law & Society
Review 37:1.
Faith, Karlene
1993 Unruly Women: The Politics of Confinement and
Resistance. Vancouver: Press
Gang Publishers.
Home Office Development and Statistics Directorate
2003 World Prison Population List. Online at:
www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/
rl88.pdf.
Hudson, Barbara
2002 "Restorative Justice and Gendered Violence." British
Journal of Criminology
42,3.
James, Joy
1996 Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race
in U.S. Culture.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Jang, Deena, Len Marin, and Gail Pendleton
1997 Domestic Violence in Immigrant and Refugee
Communities: Assessing the
Rights of Battered Women. Second Edition. San Francisco:
Family Violence
Prevention Fund.

78. Koss, May
2000 "Blame, Shame, and Community: Justice Responses to
Violence Against
Women." American Psychologist 55,11 (November): 1332.
McMahon, Martha
2003 "Making Social Change." Violence Against Women
(January) 9,1: 47-74.
Miller, Susan
2001 "The Paradox of Women Arrested for Domestic
Violence." Violence Against
Women 7,12 (December).
Monture-Angus, Patricia
2000 "The Roles and Responsibilities of Aboriginal Women:
Reclaiming Justice."
Robynne Neugebauer (ed.), Criminal Injustice: Racism in the
Criminal Justice
System. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press Inc.
New York Times
2003 "The Growing Inmate Population." Editorial (August 1).
Osthoff, Sue
2002 "But Gertrude, I Beg to Differ, a Hit Is Not a Hit Is Not a
Hit." Violence
Against Women 8,12 (December): 1521-1544.
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

79. 150 Critical Resistance and Incite !
Parenti, Christian
1999 Lockdown America: Policing and Prisons in the Age of
Crisis. New York:
Verso Books.
Raj, Anita and Jay Silverman
2002 "Violence Against Immigrant Women: The Role of
Culture, Context, and
Legal Immigrant Status on Intimate Partner Violence."
Violence Against
Women 8,3: 367-398.
Richie, Beth
2002 "The Social Impact of Mass Incarceration on Women."
Marc Mauer and Meda
Chesney-Lind (eds.), Invisible Punishment: The Collateral
Consequences of
Mass Imprisonment. New York: The New Press.
San Francisco Examiner
2002 "Transgender Sues Police." August 9.
Smith, Andrea
2000-2001 "Colors of Violence." Colorlines 3,4.
Thomas, Jim and Sharon Boehlefeld
1993 "Rethinking Abolitionism: 'What Do We Do with
Henry?'" Brian MacLean
and Harold Pepinsky (eds.), We Who Would Take No

80. Prisoners: Selections
from the Fifth International Conference on Penal Abolition.
Vancouver:
Collective Press.
Tonry, Michael (ed.)
2001 Penal Reform in Overcrowded Times. Oxford and New
York: Oxford
University Press.
Vesely, Rebecca
2002 "Davis' Right to Deny Parole to Abused Women Upheld."
Women's Enews
(December 19).
This content downloaded from 169.231.135.107 on Fri, 24 Jan
2020 00:35:43 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Contentsp. 141p. 142p. 143p. 144p. 145p. 146p. 147p. 148p.
149p. 150Issue Table of ContentsSocial Justice, Vol. 30, No. 3
(93) (2003) pp. 1-153Front MatterOverview: The Intersection
Of Ideologies of Violence [pp. 1-3]Mapping Political Violence
in a Globalized World: The Case of Hindu Nationalism [pp. 4-
16]The Imagination to Listen: Reflections on a Decade of
Zapatista Struggle [pp. 17-31]Defending the Pueblo: Indigenous
Identity and Struggles for Social Justice in Guatemala, 1970 to
1980 [pp. 32-47]The Racial Economies of Criminalization,
Immigration, And Policing in Italy [pp. 48-62]Learning to Kill
by Proxy: Colombian Paramilitaries and the Legacy of Central
American Death Squads, Contras, and Civil Patrols [pp. 63-
81]The False Allure of Security Technologies [pp. 82-93]In
Defense of Good Work: Jobs, Violence, and the Ethical
Dimension [pp. 94-107]Legitimacy and Political Violence: A
Habermasian Perspective [pp. 108-126]"Bowling for
Columbine": Critically Interrogating the Industry of Fear [pp.

81. 127-133]Toward a Holistic Anti-Violence Agenda: Women of
Color as Radical Bridge-Builders [pp. 134-140]Critical
Resistance-Incite! Statement on Gender Violence And the
Prison-Industrial Complex [pp. 141-150]Back Matter
The Story of X
by Lois Gould
Once upon a time, a Baby named X was born. It
was named X so that nobody could tell whether it
was a boy or girl. Its parents could tell, of course,
but they couldn't tell anybody else. They couldn't
even tell Baby X - at least not until much, much
later.
You see, X was a part of a very important Secret
Scientific Xperiment known officially as Project
Baby X. This Xperiment was going to cost Xactly
23 billion dollars and 72 cents. Which might seem
like a lot for one Baby, even if it was an important
Secret Scientific Xperiment Baby. But when you
remember the cost of strained carrots, stuffed
bunnies, booster shots, 28 shiny quarters from the
tooth fairy...you begin to see how it adds up.
Long before Baby X was born, the smartest
scientists had to work out the secret details of the
Xperiment and to write the Official Instruction
Manual in secret code for Baby X's parents,
whoever they were. These parents had to be
selected very carefully. Thousands of people
volunteered to take thousands of tests with
thousands of tricky questions. Almost everybody
failed because it turned out almost everybody

82. wanted a boy or a girl and not a Baby X at all.
Also, almost everybody thought a Baby X would be
more trouble than a boy or girl. (They were right
too!)
There were families with grandparents named
Milton and Agatha, who wanted the baby named
Milton or Agatha instead of X, even if it was an X.
There were aunts who wanted to knit tiny dresses
and uncles who wanted to send tiny baseball mitts.
Worst of all, there were families with other children
who couldn't keep a Secret. Not if they knew the
Secret was worth 23 billion dollars and 72 cents -
and all you had to do was take one little peek at
Baby X in the bathtub to know what it was.
Finally, the scientists found the Joneses, who
really wanted to raise an X more than any other
kind of baby - no matter how much trouble it was.
The Joneses promised to take turns holding X,
feeding X, and singing X to sleep. And they
promised never to hire any babysitters. The
scientists knew that a babysitter would probably
peek at X in the bathtub, too.
The day the Joneses brought their baby home, lots
of friends and relatives came to see it. And the first
thing they asked was, what kind of a baby X was.
When the Joneses said, "It's an X!" nobody knew
what to say. They couldn't say, "Look at her cute
little dimples!" On the other hand, they couldn't
say, "Look at his
husky little biceps!"
And they didn't feel

83. right about saying
just plain "kitchy-
coo". The relatives
all felt embarrassed
about having an X in
the family. "People
will think there's
something wrong
with it!" they whispered. "Nonsense!" the Joneses
said stoutly. "What could possibly be wrong with
this perfectly adorable X?"
Clearly, nothing at all was wrong.
Nevertheless, the cousins who had sent a tiny
football helmet could not come and visit any more.
And the neighbors who sent a pink-flowered
romper suit pulled their shades down when the
Joneses passed their house.
The Official Instruction Manual had warned
the new parents that this would happen, so they
didn't fret about it. Besides, they were too busy
learning how to bring up Baby X. Ms. and Mr.
Jones had to be Xtra careful. If they kept bouncing
it up in the air and saying how strong and active it
was, they'd be treating it more like a boy than an X.
But if all they did was cuddle it and kiss it and tell
it how sweet and dainty it was, they'd be treating it
more like a girl than an X. On page 1654 of the
Official Instruction Manual, the scientists
prescribed: "Plenty of bouncing and plenty of
cuddling, both. X ought to be strong and sweet
and active. Forget about dainty altogether".
There were other problems, too. Toys, for

84. instance. And clothes. On his first shopping trip,
Mr. Jones told the store clerk, "I need some things
for a new baby". The clerk smiled and said, "Well,
now, is it a boy or a girl?" "It's an X," Mr. Jones
said, smiling back. But the clerk got all red in the
face and said huffily, "In that case, I'm afraid I can't
help you, sir.î Mr. Jones wandered the aisles trying
to find what X needed. But everything was in
sections marked BOYS or GIRLS: "Boys' Pajamas"
and "Girls' Underwear" and "Boys' Fire Engines"
and "Girls' Housekeeping Sets". Mr. Jones went
home without buying anything for X.
That night he and Ms. Jones consulted page
2326 of the Official Instruction Manual. It said
firmly: "Buy plenty of everything!" So they bought
all kinds of toys. A boy doll that made pee-pee and
cried "Pa-Pa". And a girl doll that talked in three
languages and said, "I am the
Pre-i-dent of Gen-er-al Mo-tors".
They bought a storybook about a
brave princess who rescued a
handsome prince from his tower,
and another one about a sister
and brother who grew up to be a
baseball star and a ballet star and
you had to guess which.
The head scientists of Project Baby X checked
all their purchases and told them to keep up the
good work. They also reminded the Joneses to see
page 4629 of the Manual where it said, "Never
make Baby X feel embarrassed or ashamed about