Rape Crisis Center Institutionalization and the State: Linking Commodification and Dehumanization

• In Event: Authoritative Control and Collective Action in State Complexes

Abstract

Once seen as the sites of the collective movement against sexual abuse, rape crisis centers have become increasingly distant from their second-wave feminist foundations. In this paper, I address this fission using three years of ethnographic research at a U.S. rape crisis center. I discuss how victims of sexual violence are medically and legally commodified by the various state agencies tasked with sexual assault response, including victim advocacy organizations. As a result, I propose these systemic responses to sexual assault be conceptualized as industrial complexes. I highlight how gendered nationalist and economic forces influence the treatment of sexual abuse. I show that the shift of rape crisis organizations towards legal and governmental institutions has resulted in a marginalization of advocate and victim desires, and pathologized conceptions of both victims and perpetrators. By individualizing sexual violence and prioritizing institutional structures, rape crisis centers function to serve state power, which in turn perpetuates both state and sexual violence.

Author

• Elizabeth Whalley, Framingham State University