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CeciliaPlazaFirstEssay 4 - 25 Apr 2018 - Main.CeciliaPlaza
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< | The Justice Myth: How Our Criminal Justice System and its Representation in the Media Fosters a False Sense of Progress | >
> | The Justice Myth: How Our Criminal Justice System and Media Representation of Gendered Violence Fosters a False Sense of Progress | | | | |
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< | -- By CeciliaPlaza - 24 Feb 2018 | >
> | -- By CeciliaPlaza - 25 Apr 2018 | | | | |
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< | Arnold describes a theory of social change in which changing material conditions give rise to new necessities to which the current sociopolitical regime cannot or does not respond. A new structure will emerge to replace the old and thereby adapt to the new conditions. These are “contemporary revolutions.” However, because we as individuals never see our participation in social institutions as primarily unconscious and tacit compliance with the status quo, we are never able to see society’s impressive ability to extinguish social progress. The power and endurance of this stubborn inertia is evidenced by the astounding lack of change in women’s historical social positioning. This essay will analyze the social stagnation of women’s rights through the lens of the cultural meaning of “justice,” which I think is a prime example of Arnold’s mythology of government. | >
> | Individuals’ needs change whenever society’s material conditions change. According to Arnold, whenever the sociopolitical regime does not adapt to new needs, “revolutions” arise to create new structures that address that gap. However, because individuals unconsciously interact with social institutions and are often unaware of their tacit compliance with the status quo, they rarely recognize the incongruence between existing power structures and society’s needs. Arnold’s “revolutions” are thus superficial; the existing structures that “revolutions” seek to change merely bend in new ways that might seem, briefly, like social progress. Upon the eventual realization of the contrary, a new “revolution” arises to address the same gap, bringing another wave of temporary feelings of progress. This cyclical stagnation is then obscured by the myth that our criminal system is just and protects all individuals equally. | | | | |
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< | We have a two-prong system of oppression: the legal-political represents moral and cultural values while capitalism represents the “American way” and imposes economic roles on stratified demographic groups. The justice myth, promoting the illusion that all our rights are equally protected, is the nexus through which law, morality, and economics converge to keep subordinated groups from climbing up through the social hierarchy. In American society, capitalism distributes power and the legal-political sphere reifies that distribution by deciding what is legally and morally correct and what is punishable. The resulting system disadvantages women—specifically certain subgroups thereof—and is largely enforced by a pervasive culture of violence. | >
> | The Women's Movement: A Case Study | | | | |
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< | The Capitalist Setting | >
> | There is no better illustration of this phenomenon than the inertia of women’s historical social positioning. American societal power is founded on two pillars: American capitalism, which distributes power by imposing economic roles on stratified demographic groups, and the legal-political structures that reify capitalistic appropriations of power by dictating moral and cultural values and defining what is punishable. Women, and specifically certain subgroups thereof, are economically valuable producers with little control over their culturally devalued labor. Their lack of control is enforced by a pervasive culture of allowable violence. The criminal justice system identifies which kinds of violence are allowable against whom and solidifies these power divisions. | | | | |
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< | Women’s bodies are a site of capitalist expansion; for women to control their own bodies would be to topple the system as we know it. Women generate a continuous labor supply by birthing the American workforce. They are a powerful consumer base and the center of the nuclear family. And yet their economic potential is stifled by lack of access to the “American businessman” ideal. Femininity and womanhood are antithetical to the American hero figure. This devalues women and their bodies as anything other than consumers and recipients, which collective violence against women reinforces. | >
> | 1. Proscribed Economic Roles | | | | |
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< | The Crime | >
> | Women’s bodies are a site of capitalist expansion: They birth and socialize the future workforce. As physical producers, they generate a continuous labor supply. As moral reproducers, they are the center of the ideal nuclear family. Dominant cultural perceptions of femininity and womanhood devalue this economic potential, casting women and their bodies primarily as consumers and recipients while their labor is appropriated to support the structure that devalues them. | | | | |
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< | As a society we punish violence, but only the right kinds of violence against certain people. Sexual violence, which disproportionately affects women, is not the “right” kind of violence. According to the FBI, a rape happens every six minutes, but only 0.006% of rapists ever see the inside of a prison. Victims, on the other hand, are systematically punished for protecting themselves. (Think of Marissa Alexander, who was imprisoned for almost six years for protecting herself from her abusive husband, who she did not attempt to nor actually injure.) Victims are derided, insulted, and subjected to additional violence when they come forward with experiences of harassment and sexual violence. | >
> | 2. Devaluation Through Allowable Violence | | | | |
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< | To be sure, white upper-class women experience these atrocities, but at lower rates; they are also more likely to be considered “worthy” victims than their minoritized counterparts. The “contemporary revolutions” we’ve called progress are theirs and theirs alone. | >
> | Devaluation is reinforced by determinations of the kinds of people and behaviors that can be punished. Sexual violence, which disproportionately affects women, is not the “right” kind of violence: A rape happens every six minutes, but only 0.006% of rapists ever see the inside of a prison (FBI statistics). In fact, women victims are systematically punished for protecting themselves: Marissa Alexander was imprisoned for almost six years for protecting herself from her abusive husband, who she did not attempt to nor actually injure. This devaluation is racially and economically stratified. White upper-class women are victimized at lower rates and are more likely to be considered “worthy” victims than their minoritized counterparts. The “price” of violence varies with gender, race, class, and other factors. | | | | |
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< | Failed "Contemporary Revolutions" | >
> | 3. The Justice Myth | | | | |
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< | The “waves” of feminism are each presumably fighting for some new set of rights and privileges. In reality, each wave is a reincarnation of its predecessor with a new rhetoric. In the midst of our fourth wave, many of the same first wave issues are still present. White, middle-class women are still excluding—whether ignorantly or purposefully—the interests of women of color, immigrant women, non-English speaking women, trans* women, non-heterosexual women, low-income women…the list goes on. They seem to believe that if white women ask for too much, if they deviate too far from the status quo, they’ll be laughed out the door. And who better to convince the white, well-to-do, heterosexual men to sign onto a “progressive” agenda than their female counterparts? | >
> | We learn who the “right” kinds of victims are from highly publicized example cases in which “justice” was served. For instance, the week of the Central Park Jogger there were 29 violent rape cases, but only one involved a young, white, female investment banker. Consider, also, the Nassar case: The victims are mostly white, sometimes famous, athletically talented children. Innocents. Perfect victims. Media coverage of the case grossly appropriated and sensationalized their statements and a dramatic 125-year sentence so that we, as a society, can continue believing that we will not allow this kind of violence. The silent caveat is that such justice only applies to certain victims in certain circumstances. These cases, after all, are the exception, not the norm. | | | | |
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< | The true failure is that this “revolution” feels like progress. Women go to college. Women can vote. Women can climb the business ladder and become high-powered executives. Women can be senators and congresswomen (but not president). But these are just the handful of women necessary to maintain the illusion—and the majority are white and upper-class. College women are still told their primary purpose is to get their “MRS” degree to become more suitable companions for their male counterparts. They’re still pressured to join (white) sororities that tout the same values of Christian purity they’ve espoused since the 1800s. They’re steered away from STEM and high-paying fields. They’re harassed and assaulted in the workplace and faulted for bearing children with unpaid leave and less opportunities for advancement. And while these are real and important issues, they’ve become the only issues of the fourth wave—completely discarding the needs of minoritized groups, which ironically excludes and oppresses most women. By making white, upper-class women the “right” victims and othering everyone else, the movement extracts “progress” at the expense of minoritized groups. | >
> | The “Revolution” Cycle | | | | |
<
< | Justice: The Cover-Up | >
> | From this vantage point, it is no surprise that each new feminist “wave” is but a reincarnation of the last, simply with a new rhetoric. In all fairness, it would be incorrect to say the modern women’s movement has made no progress: Women vote. Women go to college. Women climb business ladders and become high-powered executives. Women are senators and congresswomen (but not president). Nonetheless, it is important to remember two things. | | | | |
<
< | The week of the Central Park Jogger there were 28 other rape cases we didn’t hear about. These cases didn’t involve a young, white, female investment banker. The criminal “justice” system—widely perceived as the guardian of safety, rightness, remedy, and morality—primarily protects white femininity. The media then uses example cases with perfect victims to make such a system seem palatable to anyone whose emotions inevitably interfere with the rational capitalist model. Consider the Nassar case: the victims are mostly white children, athletic, talented, and sometimes famous. They’re innocent. Nobody asked them what they were wearing or what they may have done to provoke their abuser. They’re perfect victims. Media coverage proceeded to grossly appropriate and sensationalize their statements and a dramatic 125-year sentence to pretend that “justice” was achieved here. This does little to help these girls heal; it does everything for the American public to keep believing in the justice myth. | >
> | First, this is the minimum change necessary to maintain the illusion of progress and justice. The archetypal successful, free, modern woman is white and upper-class—and even her progress is limited. College women are still pressured to join (white) sororities that tout the same values of Christian purity they’ve espoused since the 1800s. They’re steered away from STEM and high-paying fields. They’re harassed and assaulted in the workplace and faulted for bearing children (and recall that this has historically been their most “productive” economic use) with unpaid leave and less opportunities for advancement. | | | | |
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< | And just like that, we’re content to keep living through a series of fake contemporary revolutions and believing things will get better. | >
> | Second, these frontiers of progress, while real and important, have obscured and effectively discarded the needs of minoritized groups. After four “waves,” white middle-class women are still excluding the interests of women of color, immigrants, the lower class, non-English speakers, trans* and non-heterosexual women…Ironically, most women. This exclusion perpetuates the notion, integral to the justice myth, of white, upper-class women as the only “right” victims. | | | | |
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< | Until we take off the blinders, it won’t. | >
> | This is the result of a pervasive fear permeating each “revolution” (not just the women’s movement) that change must happen slowly—almost so slowly as to be imperceptible. The fear is that if “revolutionaries” ask for too much, deviate too far from the status quo, their “revolution” will never succeed. This concern is perfectly reasonable; equality is a radical concept, repugnant to the historically entrenched hierarchical structures of domination that these “revolutions” seek to change. However, this fearful approach allows dominant societal structures to dictate what kinds and degrees of change are possible. A “revolution” ceases to be so when it goes only as far as dominant society will tolerate. | | | | |
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I think the use of "we" in this conclusion is valuable in helping to
answer one basic question about any essay: to whom is it written?
Here the audience throughout is clearly this "we." At one level, we
could be everybody, but we are most likely to be the people who
agree with you already. This, then, is writing meaning to be
addressed primarily to those who are already bucking the received
wisdom, for whom your analysis of the social situation is already
largely agreed to.
I am one of those people to whom the essay is therefore intended.
In general I agree with its analysis. Equality is undoubtedly a
radical concept. We claim to be committed to it, but its
radicalism—its disturbing recognition that we are neither
raising those who are in subjection nor bringing down those who have
inherited immense ill-gotten gains—implies that existing
structures of power will never fully accept it. Making men and
women and everyone in between completely equal: politically,
socially, legally is among the forms of equality that we are
therefore never actually honoring, though in order to stop wishing
we were we would have to abandon mythologies of justice and societal
commitment that we need in order to remain socially functional.
So the result is dissociative activity, repression of cognitive
dissonance, mental process at the individual and social levels.
Your basic argument is to force that dissociation into
consciousness. By making no longer automatic our mental divisions,
this sorting of the real and the allowable real into different
buckets, we can no longer keep believing—personally and
collectively—that we are for equality while not having to
notice that we aren't. We have to think about what we believe and
why we don't actually do what we think we want to do.
That forcing into consciousness could be called, for want of a
better term, "law school." But the "we" of law school are not only
the "we" you are addressing here. You aren't forcing into
consciousness the condition of those who are not already conscious.
The problem presented in politics, Arnold would say, is that the
people who are already conscious of the chasm between real and
allowable real are not the only people who need to be brought along.
This is why a draft that addresses not the "we" of the present draft
but the "we" of law school—people not necessarily willing to
be "forced" even by therapy into consciousness, but also our
absolute equals in the civil struggles that must for the reasons you
give be always going on—might be valuable for you. As
political advocacy directed to the energizing and focusing of your
own "party," the present draft could hardly be bettered. Is there a
way to make it as effective in addressing the slightly broader range of
readers law school, or at least this fragment of it, contains?
| >
> | But the alternative is to bring a revolution of extremely uncertain outcome. A non-Arnoldian revolution might leave us with less than even false progress. So, we dissociate. We allow ourselves to believe the media coverage and say to ourselves, “thank goodness men like Nassar are punished appropriately by our legal system.” The mythology of justice becomes necessary for our societal functioning because it is easier to believe that we are revolutionizing, little by little, than to come to terms with the deeply unjust world in which we live. | | |
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CeciliaPlazaFirstEssay 3 - 02 Apr 2018 - Main.EbenMoglen
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The Justice Myth: How Our Criminal Justice System and its Representation in the Media Fosters a False Sense of Progress | | | Until we take off the blinders, it won’t. | |
>
> |
I think the use of "we" in this conclusion is valuable in helping to
answer one basic question about any essay: to whom is it written?
Here the audience throughout is clearly this "we." At one level, we
could be everybody, but we are most likely to be the people who
agree with you already. This, then, is writing meaning to be
addressed primarily to those who are already bucking the received
wisdom, for whom your analysis of the social situation is already
largely agreed to.
I am one of those people to whom the essay is therefore intended.
In general I agree with its analysis. Equality is undoubtedly a
radical concept. We claim to be committed to it, but its
radicalism—its disturbing recognition that we are neither
raising those who are in subjection nor bringing down those who have
inherited immense ill-gotten gains—implies that existing
structures of power will never fully accept it. Making men and
women and everyone in between completely equal: politically,
socially, legally is among the forms of equality that we are
therefore never actually honoring, though in order to stop wishing
we were we would have to abandon mythologies of justice and societal
commitment that we need in order to remain socially functional.
So the result is dissociative activity, repression of cognitive
dissonance, mental process at the individual and social levels.
Your basic argument is to force that dissociation into
consciousness. By making no longer automatic our mental divisions,
this sorting of the real and the allowable real into different
buckets, we can no longer keep believing—personally and
collectively—that we are for equality while not having to
notice that we aren't. We have to think about what we believe and
why we don't actually do what we think we want to do.
That forcing into consciousness could be called, for want of a
better term, "law school." But the "we" of law school are not only
the "we" you are addressing here. You aren't forcing into
consciousness the condition of those who are not already conscious.
The problem presented in politics, Arnold would say, is that the
people who are already conscious of the chasm between real and
allowable real are not the only people who need to be brought along.
This is why a draft that addresses not the "we" of the present draft
but the "we" of law school—people not necessarily willing to
be "forced" even by therapy into consciousness, but also our
absolute equals in the civil struggles that must for the reasons you
give be always going on—might be valuable for you. As
political advocacy directed to the energizing and focusing of your
own "party," the present draft could hardly be bettered. Is there a
way to make it as effective in addressing the slightly broader range of
readers law school, or at least this fragment of it, contains?
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CeciliaPlazaFirstEssay 2 - 24 Feb 2018 - Main.CeciliaPlaza
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The Justice Myth: How Our Criminal Justice System and its Representation in the Media Fosters a False Sense of Progress
-- By CeciliaPlaza - 24 Feb 2018 | |
<
< | Arnold's Theory of Social Change is More Appropriate as a Theory of Social Stagnation. | >
> | Arnold describes a theory of social change in which changing material conditions give rise to new necessities to which the current sociopolitical regime cannot or does not respond. A new structure will emerge to replace the old and thereby adapt to the new conditions. These are “contemporary revolutions.” However, because we as individuals never see our participation in social institutions as primarily unconscious and tacit compliance with the status quo, we are never able to see society’s impressive ability to extinguish social progress. The power and endurance of this stubborn inertia is evidenced by the astounding lack of change in women’s historical social positioning. This essay will analyze the social stagnation of women’s rights through the lens of the cultural meaning of “justice,” which I think is a prime example of Arnold’s mythology of government. | | | | |
>
> | We have a two-prong system of oppression: the legal-political represents moral and cultural values while capitalism represents the “American way” and imposes economic roles on stratified demographic groups. The justice myth, promoting the illusion that all our rights are equally protected, is the nexus through which law, morality, and economics converge to keep subordinated groups from climbing up through the social hierarchy. In American society, capitalism distributes power and the legal-political sphere reifies that distribution by deciding what is legally and morally correct and what is punishable. The resulting system disadvantages women—specifically certain subgroups thereof—and is largely enforced by a pervasive culture of violence. | | | | |
>
> | The Capitalist Setting | | | | |
<
< | Subsection A | >
> | Women’s bodies are a site of capitalist expansion; for women to control their own bodies would be to topple the system as we know it. Women generate a continuous labor supply by birthing the American workforce. They are a powerful consumer base and the center of the nuclear family. And yet their economic potential is stifled by lack of access to the “American businessman” ideal. Femininity and womanhood are antithetical to the American hero figure. This devalues women and their bodies as anything other than consumers and recipients, which collective violence against women reinforces. | | | | |
>
> | The Crime | | | | |
<
< | Subsub 1 | >
> | As a society we punish violence, but only the right kinds of violence against certain people. Sexual violence, which disproportionately affects women, is not the “right” kind of violence. According to the FBI, a rape happens every six minutes, but only 0.006% of rapists ever see the inside of a prison. Victims, on the other hand, are systematically punished for protecting themselves. (Think of Marissa Alexander, who was imprisoned for almost six years for protecting herself from her abusive husband, who she did not attempt to nor actually injure.) Victims are derided, insulted, and subjected to additional violence when they come forward with experiences of harassment and sexual violence. | | | | |
<
< | Subsection B | >
> | To be sure, white upper-class women experience these atrocities, but at lower rates; they are also more likely to be considered “worthy” victims than their minoritized counterparts. The “contemporary revolutions” we’ve called progress are theirs and theirs alone. | | | | |
>
> | Failed "Contemporary Revolutions" | | | | |
<
< | Subsub 1 | >
> | The “waves” of feminism are each presumably fighting for some new set of rights and privileges. In reality, each wave is a reincarnation of its predecessor with a new rhetoric. In the midst of our fourth wave, many of the same first wave issues are still present. White, middle-class women are still excluding—whether ignorantly or purposefully—the interests of women of color, immigrant women, non-English speaking women, trans* women, non-heterosexual women, low-income women…the list goes on. They seem to believe that if white women ask for too much, if they deviate too far from the status quo, they’ll be laughed out the door. And who better to convince the white, well-to-do, heterosexual men to sign onto a “progressive” agenda than their female counterparts? | | | | |
>
> | The true failure is that this “revolution” feels like progress. Women go to college. Women can vote. Women can climb the business ladder and become high-powered executives. Women can be senators and congresswomen (but not president). But these are just the handful of women necessary to maintain the illusion—and the majority are white and upper-class. College women are still told their primary purpose is to get their “MRS” degree to become more suitable companions for their male counterparts. They’re still pressured to join (white) sororities that tout the same values of Christian purity they’ve espoused since the 1800s. They’re steered away from STEM and high-paying fields. They’re harassed and assaulted in the workplace and faulted for bearing children with unpaid leave and less opportunities for advancement. And while these are real and important issues, they’ve become the only issues of the fourth wave—completely discarding the needs of minoritized groups, which ironically excludes and oppresses most women. By making white, upper-class women the “right” victims and othering everyone else, the movement extracts “progress” at the expense of minoritized groups. | | | | |
<
< | Subsub 2 | >
> | Justice: The Cover-Up | | | | |
>
> | The week of the Central Park Jogger there were 28 other rape cases we didn’t hear about. These cases didn’t involve a young, white, female investment banker. The criminal “justice” system—widely perceived as the guardian of safety, rightness, remedy, and morality—primarily protects white femininity. The media then uses example cases with perfect victims to make such a system seem palatable to anyone whose emotions inevitably interfere with the rational capitalist model. Consider the Nassar case: the victims are mostly white children, athletic, talented, and sometimes famous. They’re innocent. Nobody asked them what they were wearing or what they may have done to provoke their abuser. They’re perfect victims. Media coverage proceeded to grossly appropriate and sensationalize their statements and a dramatic 125-year sentence to pretend that “justice” was achieved here. This does little to help these girls heal; it does everything for the American public to keep believing in the justice myth. | | | | |
>
> | And just like that, we’re content to keep living through a series of fake contemporary revolutions and believing things will get better. | | | | |
<
< | Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B | >
> | Until we take off the blinders, it won’t. | | |
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<
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CeciliaPlazaFirstEssay 1 - 24 Feb 2018 - Main.CeciliaPlaza
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
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The Justice Myth: How Our Criminal Justice System and its Representation in the Media Fosters a False Sense of Progress
-- By CeciliaPlaza - 24 Feb 2018
Arnold's Theory of Social Change is More Appropriate as a Theory of Social Stagnation.
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1
Subsub 2
Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list. |
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