New Book Minces No Words About Feminism and Mass Incarceration

When I worked as an advocate, we had a range of options to offer survivors seeking help. Survivors could come into emergency shelter, make safety plans, sign up for state benefits, and find housing. They could seek divorces and protection orders. They could receive emergency financial assistance and could attend support groups. Survivors who were students could report to the Title IX office. Survivors could also get forensic exams, make police reports, and participate in prosecution.

Some chose a path completely outside the criminal system. Others chose a path only inside of it. For most, it was a mix. I supported them no matter their path. But even in my small, rural, and largely white community, the men sitting in the defendant’s or respondent’s chair and in jail were disproportionately Black and brown.

Is this the feminist vision for justice and liberation? Is mass incarceration something you have to stomach to be an advocate? These questions exasperated me during my first year of law school.

Then, I discovered Professor Aya Gruber in my Criminal Law casebook. One excerpt of hers critiqued the feminist call to eliminate the provocation defense for homicide because eliminating it would mean incarcerating more young men of color accused of non-intimate homicides. Another excerpt of Gruber’s emphasized that rape law should not be about setting best practices for respectful relationships, but about determining what conduct warrants criminal punishment.

 When I saw that Professor Gruber would be releasing a book on mass incarceration and feminism in May of 2020, I knew that it would be first on my summer reading list. And, it did not disappoint.

The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration is a must-read for anyone advocating for feminism and anti-racism, be they policymakers, law students, or anyone who has been to both a Women’s March and a Black Lives Matter protest.

Gruber’s book was inspired by what she calls the “feminist defense attorney dilemma.”[1] The dilemma is the author’s own awareness of, on the one hand, gender crimes and how they reinforce women’s subordination in society and, on the other hand, a racist and violent criminal system.

The Feminist War on Crime minces no words in detailing the history of feminist criminal law reform. Gruber argues that mainstream feminism was not simply swept up by a carceral wave, but rather was—and is—a driving force of mass incarceration. Gruber describes the numerous carceral twists in the antirape and battered women’s movements, from mandatory arrest and no-drop prosecution to the sex offender registry and rape shield laws.

More modern feminist history gets no break from Gruber, either. She details the problematic evolution of Title IX, Take Back the Night Marches, affirmative consent, and the Violence Against Women Act. Gruber warns that a “focus on victimhood is already a subtle but powerful redirection away from structural, social, and institutional accounts of harm and toward punishment.”[2] She also provocatively pushes this argument to its logical conclusion, questioning reactions to the Aziz Ansari article and the recall of Judge Persky–the judge who sentenced Brock Turner.

Feminists, of course, are not a monolith. Gruber describes various factions in the history of the movement and sheds light on where there may be a path forward for those committed to ending mass incarceration and gendered violence. Gruber argues that the very origins of the feminist movement show that the “connection between the feminist antiviolence agenda and incarceration is not natural, inevitable, or desirable.”[3]

Gruber posits that reconnecting to Black feminists’ antiauthoritarian and antipoverty roots can be the key for radical, substantive justice. She urges readers to adopt what she calls a “neofeminist approach.” Neofeminism questions whenever punishment is said to equal feminism. Neofeminism understands intersectionality, supports healthy sexuality education over sexual assault fearmongering, and gives material aid to women most vulnerable to violence. Neofeminism topples “powerful abusers through political action, not through allying with criminal authority that disproportionately harms the disempowered.”[4]

Ultimately, after providing an intensely researched and heavily footnoted history of feminism’s carcerality, The Feminist War on Crime does not lay out an exact blueprint for undoing feminism’s carceral ties. But it certainly convinces the reader that a fundamental change in the mainstream feminist, antiviolence agenda is necessary and overdue.

[1] Aya Gruber, The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration 1 (2020).

[2] Id. at 97.

[3] Id. at 15.

[4] Id. at 18.