Tikkun's Winter 2016 issue. On stands now!
These online exclusives are freely accessible articles that are part of an ongoing special series associated with Tikkun’s Winter 2016 print issue Intimate Violence, Societal Violence. These pieces represent a range of sophisticated, multi-faceted perspectives on intimate partner violence. Taken as a whole the pieces work to challenge the dogmas and ideological blind-spots that silence victims, while opening up space for creative and nuanced approaches to healing for both the abusers and the abused.
In her piece, “An Invitation to Community: Restorative Justice Circles for Intimate Partner Violence,” Emily Gaarder describes the empowering process of restorative justice and the profound effects of drawing upon community support for assistance in conflict resolution. In “Intimate Partner Violence & Intimate Partner Justice: How Spiritual Teachings Impact Both” The Reverend Al Miles challenges what he calls a “misuse of spiritual teachings,” noting that spiritual texts that support the oppression of women appear to directly contradict teachings within those same traditions which profess love, dignity, and mutual respect in intimate relationship. In “AfroLezfemcentric Perspectives on Coloring Gender and Queering Race” Aishah Shahidah Simmons calls for a holistic, intersectional approach to understanding issues of sexual violence, arguing that “we can’t continue to have conversations about racial profiling, policing, and mass incarceration that erase and ignore the role of gender and sexuality and the experiences of women and LGBTQIA people of color.” Building on the call for intersectional nuance in analysis of intimate partner violence, Venessa Garcia and Patrick McManimon discuss the ways in which occupying multiple marginalized identities complicates violence and the criminal justice system’s response to that violence in “Intersectionality and Intimate Part Violence: Barriers Women Face.” Below are excerpts from and links to these online exclusive articles.
“An Invitation to Community: Restorative Justice Circles for Intimate Partner Violence” by Emily Gaarder: “Restorative justice is a community-based approach to justice that emphasizes repairing the harm caused by crime. It departs from the contemporary criminal justice system in several ways. First, it views crime as more than lawbreaking, recognizing that offenders harm victims, communities, and even themselves. Second, restorative justice views success differently – rather than determining how much punishment should be inflicted, the focus is on how much harm can be repaired or prevented. Third, restorative justice directly involves affected parties – rather than leaving decisions in the hands of government officials, it includes victims, family members, and communities. It relies on the participation of ordinary people to confront and solve problems.”
“Intimate Partner Violence & Intimate Partner Justice: How Spiritual Teachings Impact Both” by The Reverend Al Miles: “Since the beginning of recorded history, spiritual teachings have frequently been interpreted, translated, written, and utilized to encourage, excuse, and justify atrocities. Both secular and spiritual leaders and laity have cited divine beings, religious doctrine, and sacred texts to support culturalism, ethnocentrism, genocide, homophobia, racism, sexism, and war…
The core values espoused throughout philosophical, religious, spiritual, and secular scholarship about intimate partner relationships are mutual dignity, mutual love, mutual respect, and mutual responsibility. We must therefore always treat with suspicion the doctrine and writings that include the degradation, discrimination, minimization, or subjugation of any individual or group.”
“AfroLezfemcentric Perspectives on Coloring Gender and Queering Race” by Aishah Shahidah Simmons: “For over two decades, my lived experiences, cultural work, and activism repeatedly show me that the struggle to talk about and address state and personal violence against Black women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people in a local, national, and international racial justice framework is never ending and relentless. When Black straight women, girls, and LGBTQ people are raped, sexually assaulted, beaten, brutalized, and/or murdered as a result of misogynist, patriarchal, state-sanctioned, and/or white supremacist violence, it is too often the victim’s individual issue. There is a continued need for an anti-gender based violence movement geared to addressing the intersections of oppressions on the lives of Black queer and straight, cisgender and transgender women who are victims/survivors of sexual violence so that Black women’s experiences of violence are seen as part of a systemic problem to be addressed collectively rather than as an individual predicament.”
“Intersectionality and Intimate Partner Violence” by Venessa Garcia and Patrick McManimon: “While race has been a common focus, we cannot ignore the fact that the power structure of society also creates age minorities, economic minorities, religious minorities, and so forth. Examinations of the intersections of these statuses reveal that young (but not too young), poor, racial/ethnic minority females of IPV are more likely than older, wealthy, white female victims to be blamed for their victimizations. Stereotypes of poor people as vagrant, lazy, and immoral have given officials excuses to deny them as victims.”
Read More: “Powerful Illusions: A Critical Look at the Legacy of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia” by Gary Peller
“For Hillary” by Joel Bellman
“The First Jewish President” by David Harris-Gershon
‘The Real Meaning of Self-Radicalization” by Rev. Michael Burch