Kulturkampf

[HaughtyFrank]

This is a crazy read

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/why-i-didnt-report-my-rape/#

The simple answer to the question of why I never reported the rape is that I believe in the abolition of police and prisons. The less simple, less articulate answer is that to pursue prosecuting and potentially incarcerating other people is inconceivable to me, even when they have hurt me more than I could have ever believed possible. Because of this, I can only vocalize what I want in negative and inherently impossible terms: that all I want is for it to never have happened. The prospect of being a participant in other peoples’ incarceration is as alien to me as anything could be, to the point that I can only conceive of it in childish terms—how silly and strange it would be to have a group of people incarcerated at my expense when doing so would do nothing to fix the damage they have already so thoroughly done.

This seems to be the most she engages with the idea that reporting the rape might at least protect future victims

Others have tried, too; friends have spoken patiently to me about how, even if I don’t want to do it for myself, pursuing legal action against those men who hurt me might protect other women someday. Many people say domestic and sexual violence are the only exceptions to prison abolition; those same people accuse abolitionists of professing to speak for what victims want (responses to rape that doesn’t involve someone’s incarceration) in their supposedly real aim of advancing a political movement. I’m skeptical of this charge, especially when it materializes much more urgently in the reverse. Supporters of the criminal justice system as it currently exists also proclaim that they are speaking for victims; they insist that prosecution and incarceration are the outcomes that victims want and deserve. When there is so little available to sexual violence victims in the way of justice or fairness, the current shape of criminal justice can begin to look appealing, if only because it is the most straightforward type of response to rape that currently exists. In fact, it’s because on some level that I suspect that carceral logic creeps, however unconsciously or unintentionally, into the minds of those who encouraged me to prosecute my rapists, that I cannot fully welcome that advice. Like any ideology, carceral logic presents itself as invisible and natural, the commonsense response to a crime and way of preventing future violence. I can’t be sure that this logic hasn’t inadvertently creeped into the guidance my friends offered. And so after all these years, I haven’t been able to pick up the phone; instead it hangs there suspended in time forever.