321ACTION: October 21, 2024
With just two weeks before election day, it's time to finalize your plans to vote. Researching local candidates during this period will help you make the most informed decisions about which individuals align with your values.
Today, we're focusing on the issue of gender-based violence, which is shockingly common in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 40% of women experience intimate partner physical violence, sexual violence, or stalking with ‘IPV impact’ in their lifetimes, and that 27% of women experience attempted or completed rape.
Long considered a “private matter,” only in the recent past has the government made a concerted effort to address gender-based violence as a societal issue needing a coordinated community response.
Unfortunately, not all responses to gender-based violence are helpful. While very few politicians explicitly endorse gender-based violence, certain policy platforms keep survivors from getting the support that they need.
Ready to make a difference?
Here are three ways to get started:
3. Learn the Green Flags
The following policy positions indicate a candidate has a victim-centered platform and supports policies that will help all victims and survivors:
• Supports robust government funding for holistic victim services, including domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and legal services
• Supports domestic violence and sexual assault prevention programs, including ongoing healthy relationship education for K-12 students
• Supports firearm restrictions for adjudicated abusers and stalkers, as well as surrender and removal protocols
• Supports economic assistance for victims and survivors, including direct cash assistance
• Supports housing assistance for victims and survivors
• Supports culturally specific victim services, services for underserved victims, and victim services created by and for the communities they serve
2. Learn the Red Flags
The following are policy positions that indicate a candidate either does not support victims and survivors or only supports some victims and survivors.
• Shifts the burden of funding of victim services to philanthropic organizations or says the government cannot afford to fund such programs
• Limits access to victim services based on sexual orientation or gender-identity, or claims that biological males are attempting to access shelters in order to harm 'real women'
• Supports arming victims
• Claims that domestic violence protective orders violate due process
• Minimizes domestic violence or sexual assault
• Engages in victim blaming
• Uses misogynistic or sexualized language
1. Reject the Idea of 'Perfect Victims'
Too often, politicians and society expect victims and survivors to conform to an unrealistic standard of a “model victim” to be worthy of support and justice, a standard that is entirely divorced from the lived reality of most victims and survivors.
A victim-centered response to gender-based violence meets survivors where they are, not where an arbitrary outsider believes they “should” be.
+ In case you missed it...
On October 22 at 12:00 ET, join JWI’s CEO, Meredith Jacobs, for a conversation with JCADA’s Executive Director, Amanda Katz, about their work to end intimate partner violence.