In the 1970s the mainstream feminist movement in the United States turned to the carceral system as a desirable tool to pursue feminist goals. Nowadays, feminists often advocate for harsher penalties as the solution to sexist violence, as can be seen in the current discussion around the Spanish Organic Law 10/2022, on the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom—punitive responses to male violence have become the norm. In this context, this paper aims to question the naturalization of punishment ...
In the 1970s the mainstream feminist movement in the United States turned to the carceral system as a desirable tool to pursue feminist goals. Nowadays, feminists often advocate for harsher penalties as the solution to sexist violence, as can be seen in the current discussion around the Spanish Organic Law 10/2022, on the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom—punitive responses to male violence have become the norm. In this context, this paper aims to question the naturalization of punishment and widen the responses to violence we are able to imagine by asking the following questions: what should the relationship between feminism and punishment be? What can feminist justice look like? These questions have been addressed by first discussing some of the main criticisms of punitive approaches to justice presented by anti-punitivist and abolitionist feminists, to then examine the idea of abolition as well as alternative practices such as restorative and transformative justice and their limitations. Through this, I have argued that transformative and intersectional feminism should not rely on punitive strategies that fail victims and often come into conflict with the aims of feminism. I have also tried to show that feminist justice could look like restorative and transformative practices that center the needs of those involved while working to dismantle the systems of oppression that sustain violence. Some of the limitations of these alternatives have been discussed, such as their reliance on the existence of community, pointing to potential future lines of research.
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