Our Approach to Transformative Justice

The Long Version

Why are Transformative Justice principles relevant to Spit it Out’s mission? 

Spit it Out is a collective dedicated to holding spaces in which we hope survivors of sexual trauma, mental ill health and structural marginalisation can find solidarity, catharsis, community, kinship and empowerment. We hope these spaces of creativity and learning can aid the healing journeys for survivors. Our aim is to centre all our events around the lived experience of sexual harm and make them as accessible as possible to those suffering with post-traumatic stress. 

However, providing so-called ‘safe spaces’ for survivors is not our primary objective, since as survivors ourselves, we know that no one can guarantee a safe-feeling space. Instead, our goal is to change the cultural landscape in which sexual violence is endemic, trivialised and normalised by exploring the complex contexts in which it takes place. We provide a platform for expressions of the myriad ways in which people experience nonconsent - and the effects that this violation has upon individuals, relationships and communities. It is our hope that open and nuanced conversations about these vastly over-simplified topics will help to transform our society into a place where sexual violence is less predominant. Furthermore, we believe that when such violence does take place, everyone involved must be treated with compassion and empathy. 

To this end, we as a collective align ourselves with the values of transformative justice  . When people become victims of sexual violence, we maintain that they need to be believed, supported and empowered by the community around them in order to recover. Unfortunately the current landscape remains blighted by victim-blaming, slut-shaming and the damaging belief in various rape myths that obsure the reality of victims’ experiences. We believe that ostracising the people that have done harm from the community does more harm than good, and that in order to collectively heal from sexual violence, a non-punitive and compassionate approach is preferable. When people act harmfully, we hold that their communities have a responsibility to support the healing and empowerment not only of victims but also of those who have harmed others, in order to encourage empathy and accountability and to prevent further harm in future.

Where did Transformative Justice come from and who is it for? 

It is important to note that the concepts and frameworks surrounding transformative justice were developed by Black and Indiginous communities in North America, who have been systematically and structurally marginalised from the criminal justice system. In the absence of any state protection for such communities, an alternative had to be created. 

We believe that this model can be empowering to all victims, since states routinely fail to provide victims with adequate models of justice, regardless of their position within society. For more information on the ideological, moral and practical shortcomings of the criminal justice system, and the ways in which it fails to deliver ‘justice’ to anyone, see Abolitionist Futures and CAPE . 

Why ‘cancelling’ people is tempting, and why it’s harmful

In this legal context, as well as the social context where survivors are routinely blamed and shamed, it is unsurprising that those dedicated to supporting survivors seek to carve out spaces safe from abusers and those who seem sympathetic to them. Ironically, though, in many circles (especially in the educated, social justice-oriented Left) we reenact a comparable punitive, vengeful and harmful dynamic of responding to those who cause sexual harm by cancelling, calling-out, banning, publicly shaming and disowning them. 

We might react this way out of solidarity with survivors’ pain and righteous rage, out of fear for ourselves and our friends or in a bid to prevent further harm - ‘this person caused harm. If they are removed from the community then we can prevent further harm being done to those within the community (by protecting the survivor from their potentially-triggering presence and protecting everyone from their potentially-abusive presence). Because they caused this harm they no longer deserve to be a part of the community, therefore it doesn’t matter/ is deserved / is not our problem / is positively good that they will be isolated from the community.’ 

To be clear - any rage and vengefulness a survivor might feel is entirely legitimate and understandable- spaces must be held to support and validate any and all the emotions someone might feel in response to sexual harm without any shame or judgment. Also, there are various scenarios where those hosting or facilitating a specific social space will have to decide between making it accessible to a survivor or excluding the person who harmed them. We are not suggesting that excluding someone from an individual event for the sake of protecting a survivor from their presence is wrong; rather, when we discuss ‘cancelling’ we mean total social ostracism and exclusion from community. 

At other times we might react in this way because vengeful mud-slinging can feel so good- satisfying, righteous, self-protective, victorious. “This person caused this harm. I didn’t/ wouldn’t behave in that harmful way, and therefore am better than they are in some relevant way, and have the authority to punish them in whichever way I deem fit, including public shaming and social ostracisation. They deserve this because they hurt me and my friends. My collection of structurally-oppressed intersecting identities mean these spaces are some of the only places where I can wield this kind of power, and it feels satisfying and necessary to gleefully redress historic imbalances and deep, multi-generational trauma by cancelling this individual for what they’ve done and what they represent.” This is a very understandable reaction, but not one rooted in compassion, empathy or trauma-awareness. 

When we cast out the “harmful person” from our communities, far from achieving justice, healing, safety or transformation, we also merely relocate the  ‘problem’ to another community. “This person is harmful. We are not interested in helping them to become less harmful, but would rather push them to move along to another community. So long as they are not ruining our safe space, they’re not our problem.” (#nimby) This leaves the ‘cancelled’  person feeling victimised, defensive and isolated, compounding the harm experienced, rather than redressing it, and reducing the likelihood  they might take accountability for, and ultimately change their behaviour.

This is not a strategy that Spit it Out endorses or will engage with. It rests on the premise that a handful of people are responsible for causing harm within a community, and that if they are simply removed, all will be well. This fails to acknowledge that every person has the capacity to cause harm. Activist and anti-violence circles are not outside the sphere of reproach since sexual violence and emotional abuse are endemic to our societies. What we want to see is a far more radical cultural shift: the transformation of sexuality and intimacy into spheres of empowerment, autonomy, playfulness and joy, instead of the current minefields of trauma, violation, performativity, dissociation and shame. This is not going to happen unless everyone acknowledges their own capacity to cause harm, cultivates humility, and resists the urge to simplify the problem, and divide people into binaries of harmful/ harmless, safe/unsafe, abuser/victim, good/bad. 

In summary

In the recently published We Will Not Cancel Us, adrienne maree brown articulates the sentiment SIO seeks to embody and promote as a collective:

“When we [...] inevitably disagree, or cause harm, we will respond not with rejection, exile, or public shaming, but with clear naming of harm; education around intention, impact, and pattern breaking; satisfying apologies and consequences; new agreements and trustworthy boundaries; and lifelong healing resources for all involved. I have a vision of a movement as sanctuary. Not a tiny perfectionist utopia behind miles of barbed wire and walls and fences and tests and judgments and righteousness, but a vast sanctuary where our experiences, as humans who have experienced and caused harm, are met with centred, grounded invitations to grow.” (p 11 WWNCU)

Our hope is to open a dialogue in order to emphasise the complexity of the cultural landscape in which violence takes place. We are not experts on transformative justice or community accountability processes (though we are investigating training possibilities to upskill ourselves), nor are we offering Spit It Out as an alternative to seeking justice by other means. Rather, we are acutely aware of the ease by which anyone in our society can cause harm, the shortcomings of a punitive justice system and the radical possibilities offered by a community-centred and compassionate approach. With this statement, we hope to make our sentiments and position clear so that we can support individuals and communities to heal from sexual violence, while empowering them to radically transform from the inside out. 

Ruth Heneke Eliot

June 2021