Contested suffering: navigating care and making meaning from gendered violence
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
Unequal, gendered power relations drive gendered violence, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. A paucity of research compares knowledge produced by people who experience gendered violence to their technocratic representations. An analysis of fieldwork data collected virtually through a community-based advocacy program and semi-structured interviews (n=23), shows that survivors and service providers utilize and contest gendered discourses, like constructions of victimhood and survivorship, and policies ostensibly designed to facilitate care in conjoined and distinct ways. I also demonstrate how care systems structure the lives and subjectivities of people who travel through them, producing forms of contested and moralized citizenship. However, people actively resist these forces by creating their own care systems outside the context of managed care. Adopting harm reduction strategies (e.g., affirming people as the primary agents of their care), addressing structural factors underlying gendered violence, and increasing inter-agency communication will create inclusivity and streamline care pathways.