Thursday Noodles - A Tale of Two Books 11/9/23
One I highly recommend and one I highly, very much don't.
Highly recommend:
The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day.
You know those books you press to your heart, and sigh deeply, after you read them?
And maybe toss into your bag to carry around with you? Just for company?
This is one of those for me.
I’m just going to share a few of my starred and dog-eared parts.
“Going to confession is hard. Writing a book is hard, because you are ‘giving yourself away.’ But if you love, you want to give yourself. You write as you are impelled to write, about man and his problems, his relation to God and his fellows. You write about yourself because in the long run all man’s problems are the same, his human needs of sustenance and love.” p. 10. Same, Dorothy. I feel the same.
“[In college] I felt that my faith had nothing in common with that of Christians around me.” p. 43. Same, Dorothy. Same.
“There was little one could do [for migrant workers in the Great Depression]—empty one’s pockets, give what one had, live on sandwiches with the organizers, and write, write to arouse the public conscience.” p. 213.
“The spiritual works of mercy include enlightening the ignorant …, consoling the afflicted, as well as bearing wrongs patiently, and we have always classed picket lines and the distribution of [social justice] literature among these works.” p. 220. (emphasis mine)
“Community—that was the social answer to the long loneliness.” p. 224.
FROM THE POSTSCRIPT of The Long Loneliness:
We were just sitting there talking when Peter Maurin came in.
We were just sitting there talking when lines of people began to form, saying, ‘We need bread.’ We could not say, ‘Go, be thou filled.’ If there were six small loaves and a few fishes, we had to divide them. There was always bread.
We were just sitting there talking and people moved in on us. Let those who can take it, take it. Some moved out and that made room for more. And somehow the walls expanded.
We were just sitting there talking and someone said, ‘Let’s all live on a farm.’
It was as casual as all that, I often think. It just came about. It just happened.
I found myself, a barren woman, the joyful mother of children. It is not easy always to be joyful, to keep in mind the duty of delight.
The most significant thing about THE CATHOLIC WORKER is poverty, some say.
The most significant thing is community, others say. We are not alone anymore.
But the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.
We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.
Great Cosmic Echidna, I love this book. Thank you, Dorothy. Thank you.
And now for some controversy!
“Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice” is a book I do NOT recommend, although people I love seem to love it.
A second seminal work by Dr. Judith Hermann this is not. (IMHO.)
Woof. This might get weedsy, but sometimes the spirit moves an Unruly Quaker to write a scathing review, and then tuck it in her “drafts” folder, and then decide WHAT THE HELL and go ahead and actually post it.
The book is “Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice,” by renowned trauma expert Judith Hermann, M.D.
This book is the toast of the town, the bee’s knees, the book on everyone’s TBR lists, in multiple communities I am a part of: sexual assault survivors (SAS), trauma workers, feminists, and restorative justice (RJ) communities.
I picked it up from the little lending library curated by my beloved Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham.
I expected to love it.
Reader, I did not love it.
I anti-loved it.
And I seem to be in the vaaaaast minority of folks in my circles by having major beefs with this book.
I thought about not posting this. (I wrote this draft two months ago.) But it is still laying on my mind and heart, and what’s the point, really, of being a writer here on this beautiful green and blue orb spinning through the cosmos if not to say what I have to say. Here goes.
Where I’m coming from here
I am a rape and sexual assault survivor (separate incidents). I’m a restorative justice practitioner. I volunteer with trauma survivors. I studied trauma and counseling in graduate school.
I DEEPLY appreciated Dr. Hermann’s seminal work, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence — from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. I read it in grad school in 2000, and it profoundly informed my thinking about trauma. (I should probably reread it; I wonder how I’d feel about it now.)
What I remember most from that 2000 reading is that trauma memory is stored in a different way / different part of the brain than “normal” memories. And that forming a cohesive narrative around a trauma is a huge part of healing.
That alone changed the game for me, both personally and professionally.
A similarly seminal and ground-breaking work in trauma research, this book is NOT.
If this book were entitled, “Some Musings (from a Cis White Second-Wave Feminist Who Seems to Have Zero Experience with Restorative Justice, and is Clearly Anti- “Sex-Positive,” Anti-Porn, and Anti-Sex Work but Does Not Openly State her Biases) About a Group of 40 Grossly Non-Representative Sexual Assault Survivors and Their Thoughts About Their Limited Experiences with Restorative Justice, and a Few Cherry-Picked Readings About Restorative Justice”
… then … ok, I guess?
But that’s not the title. The title is “Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice.”
HOW TRAUMA SURVIVORS ENVISION JUSTICE. Is the subtitle of this book.
Grab a juice box and a snack. Buckle up. Get ready for swears.
First. It really pisses me off when I am spoken for. We need to get that stated up front.
You know what (one of the many things) rape and sexual assault do to someone? They disempower you. They take your voice and your autonomy and your control away. They say you don’t matter here. Judith Hermann points this out very eloquently, even in this book.
So. To then be spoken for, and in ways that I STRONGLY disagree with - well it does more than bug me. It cuts to the core.
It shows up in my dreams. It shows up in my body. It makes me nauseous and shaky.
And it fucking pisses me off.
Again. If this book was simply presented as personal reflections, fine. I would disagree with stuff, but that’s par for the course.
But she is subtitling her work “HOW TRAUMA SURVIVORS ENVISION JUSTICE.”
And Hermann’s book is not how I envision justice.
Don’t speak for me.
I was recently in a meeting where one rape survivor was speaking for survivors of rape and sexual assault, with the “all” very much implied in there.
She said things that I FUNDAMENTALLY disagreed with — and I said so.
She said that some people are just bad people, just bad people, bad to the core, irredeemable. “And survivors know this.”
Um. No. I do NOT cosign that. No one is bad to the core, no one is irredeemable. Is what I think.
But guess what?
My views were, and often are, totally discounted. Oh, I’m told I’m naïve. I’m an SJW. I’m misguided.
[And, slight digression: the unspoken implication is 100% there, looming in the air: that perhaps my rape and sexual assault weren’t “bad enough” to teach me the truth about bad apples. So even survivors are in on the bullshit hierarchy of what we count as “real” or “bad” rape (a stranger, at the point of a weapon) and who we count as “real” rape and trauma survivors (white women who are seen as wholly blameless and innocent.)?]
That is a problem in general. And it is a problem with this book.
The “Informants” of this book are not representative of trauma survivors. (For real. Informants. She calls them Informants.)
She is only talking about rape and sexual assault.
She talked to only 40 survivors.
Yet the subtitle of the book is “how trauma survivors envision justice.”
And they are not a representative sample, even of sexual assault survivors.
Most rape and SA survivors do not report their assaults to authorities. Let alone do they get a conviction. Reporting and conviction? That is an exceedingly low number of survivors. Look it up yourselves, I’m too mad to Google.
This book? Is based on interviews with 40 “informants.”
Hermann tells us in her “A Note About Methodology” section:
…over half [of the informants] had reported the crimes and made attempts to hold offenders accountable through the criminal and/or civil justice systems. Six (20%) had actually taken part in proceedings that resulted in criminal conviction of the offender.
Y’all.
I could easily EASILY interview 40 rape survivors who did not report the rape to ANYONE in “authority.”
Over half of her “informants” actually reported and THEN ALSO made attempts to hold offenders accountable through the justice system.
So it’s … *interesting??*… to write a book about Restorative Justice and “how trauma survivors you know the rest” based on this widely skewed sample.
While we’re in the methodology section, take a gander at this, on the next page.
Quoth Dr. Hermann:
“During the pandemic, while I was pretty much in solitary confinement, the time finally seemed right to begin writing this book.”
Wait. Do you hear that? Do you hear that noise?
That is the sound of red flags flapping in the wind.
Look. I do not want to discount how stressful and isolating the pandemic was to many, many of us.
And I’m certain that being a widow, and newly relocated to an assisted-living community during Covid, and not being able to visit with her grandchildren, was awful for Dr. Hermann. I’m sorry it was so hard on her. Good for her for writing a book! I sure didn’t have it in me during that time!
Isolation, yes. Very difficult indeed.
Solitary confinement? No.
It’s a total pet peeve of mine, I admit, when folks refer to Covid isolation as “jail.” Because it’s not jail. Or prison. It might suck a lot. But it’s not incarceration. You can open a window. You can wear what you want. If you can afford them, you can use the phone, internet, or Zoom. You can watch TV or read books. You aren’t caged inside a tiny cinder-block cell.
But okay, putting my pet peeve aside, this also matters because the woman is writing a book about justice.
For Hermann to call her situation during Covid solitary confinement makes me wonder:
how many, if any, folks on “the other side” of the justice system she’s spoken with
what her sympathies or compassions are for incarcerated folks, which really matters because again, she’s talking about “justice” in this book
how careful with her words she is (important for a writer!), and/or
where in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks is her editor? It’s sloppy to let this be in print because it reflects so poorly on the author.
OK.
BUT THE WORST PART:
SHE DOESN’T SEEM TO KNOW MUCH ABOUT RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
It TRULY does not seem like she got even one RJ practitioner on the horn.
I mean pick up the phone, lady.
I could be wrong.
But this book reads like Hermann cherry-picked some books and studies and left it at that.
For instance.
She says that according to “Australian criminologist John Braithwaite, a leading theorist of this [RJ] movement…”
“‘… vigorous moralizing about guilt, wrong-doing, and responsibility, in which the harm-doer is confronted with community resentment and ultimately invited to come to terms with it… [is important.]
“‘Shaming is conceived [in RJ] as a means of making citizens actively responsible… by communicating moral claims.’”
Um. Vigorous moralizing? Shaming? As a crucial part of RJ?
NOPE. I can’t agree.
For moi, and I daresay many of the folks I co-facilitate RJ with, one of the core practices, the basis for repair, is to facilitate a sense of belonging to, and being valued by, our community — and that’s one of the ways we help folks come to terms with the harm they’ve done.
Knowing about shame and how it works is important for RJ practice. But shaming people we work with? That doesn’t work for me.
If you don’t feel like you are valued by your community? If you feel actively shamed (along with the shame you likely already have)?
What would your buy-in be towards a process of repair?
The problems just keep rolling. I could cite a beef in every section.
I’m going to cherry-pick my beefs because I’m feeling petty and this whole book reads to me like an exercise in cherry-picking.
Skip to page 125.
Here, Hermann says “there’s a problem of expense” because Restorative Justice is quite costly in terms of time and energy.
She’s not wrong about that. It takes a ton of time and a ton of energy. To be sure.
But … court isn’t costly? Prison isn’t costly? Trauma isn’t costly? Therapy isn’t costly?
WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE, JUDITH?
Same page:
“…the same value of peer engagement [as being on a jury] inspires RJ volunteers, but in addition to playing the role of jurors, they are expected to be amateur social workers, psychologists, and probation officers.”
What!?
As RJ facilitators, we’re supposed to be jurors? And psychologists? And probation officers? That is news to me. Put it in the training manual!
In point of fact, we are specifically NOT judging or being jurors. We are listening and helping folks come to a process of “making things as right as possible.” We are not deciding guilt or innocence or the legality of actions.
I don’t even know what to say about her thinking we’re supposed to be probation officers.
We’re not psychologists. We don’t provide therapy or diagnosis.
Maybe we are sometimes adjacent to social workers, in terms of connecting folks with resources when we can. I won’t argue with that.
Hermann points out some valid dilemmas and issues we do need to talk about when we talk about RJ. But then she makes weird conclusions about them.
This book reads like her ONLY framework is the criminal punishment system, so she’s constantly comparing RJ to the criminal punishment system and pointing out where RJ comes up lacking compared to police and courts - even though she spends the first part of the book talking about problematic the criminal punishment system is— that it is re-victimizing and alienating for survivors.
Sorry. I mean “informants.”
It’s like she doesn’t have an editor.
Maybe she really did write it in solitary confinement.
Another thing. This book is anti- sex work and anti-porn. She literally uses scare quotes around feminists who are “so-called ‘sex positive’.”
This is big-time liberal cis-het white lady second-wave “feminist” energy.
She categorizes herself as a “radical feminist” (p. 163) who aspires to “abolish the sex trade entirely…” because “… Let’s face it: no little girl aspires to have strangers, or even regular clients, ejaculate into her bodily orifices ten to twelve times per night when she grows up…” (p. 161.).
She also has big 1970s-1980s Catherine McKenna anti-porn energy (which she again equates with being a “radical feminist”). (pp. 198-199)
Has she read any recent, not second-wave, feminist thinkers? I have so many books I could recommend!
I kind of doubt it, based on this book.
Has she watched any fun porn she likes, made by feminists?
I kind of doubt it, based on this book.
Look, there is a LOT of problematic, and even violent, porn out there.
This Unruly Quaker 100% agrees with Hermann that young people should not be getting their sex ed from violent, misogynistic, racist, and/or anti-LGBTQI+ porn.
Which is precisely why good, comprehensive, unbiased and —gasp, clutch pearls— “so-called sex positive” [her words, not mine] sex education is super important.
Hermann herself admits that it’s unrealistic to think young people won’t be looking at porn. It’s everywhere.
So that’s exactly why good porn is important!
Also, how about not yucking someone’s yum?
Just because some kinds (ok, many kinds) of porn aren’t for me, and clearly don’t do it for Dr. Hermann, does not mean they are bad or immoral.
(Some porn is bad and immoral, through and through. Child porn, human trafficking, nonconsensual filming. Agree with Hermann. Those are bad, bad, bad. But I do not agree with Hermann that ALL porn is bad porn.)
Will someone show this lady some better porn?
Then she has the gall to say “that RJ practitioners lack the ability to frame sexual assault within the patriarchy.”
Yeah.
I can’t find the page number because I threw the book across the room.
Not really. I didn’t throw the book.
But I mean. I don’t even… I mean.
Who the holy crapmuffins does she think RJ facilitators are?
Sure. Probably some RJ facilitators don’t fully grok sexual assault within a patriarchal framework. But a whole lot —a whole lot of us — do.
And, to use my teen’s phrase, “What if I turn the turntables around? How the turntables have turned.”
Dr. Hermann’s not an RJ practitioner.
But if she were: would she have the ability to frame sexual assault within a white supremacist system? Within heteronormative systems? Within colonialist frameworks? Within late-stage capitalist commodification of bodies and experiences?
WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE JUDITH.
Anyway.
You may have noticed I’m not a huge fan of big chunks of this book.
There are some things that the book recommends, and I agree they are fine ideas:
trauma trainings for cops
sexual assault awareness / prevention trainings on college campuses
RJ “by proxy” on college campuses
RJ exchanges of written notes - also on college campuses
money for victims (“like Reagan started,” she says. Oy.)
“vicarious restorative justice” using surrogates or representatives — which we actually do in RJ, but apparently none of the resources Hermann consulted do. Or they do and she didn’t seem to understand that they do?
I could go on. But I really do need to return this book to RCND’s lending library.
First I need to peel off all the sticky-note bookmarks from passages I found particularly problematic.
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
Reading is great!
Even when you disagree with an entire pad of sticky notes worth of someone’s ideas!
You can agree with some stuff and disagree with other stuff!
It helps you understand your own thinking!
XOXO
P.S. Paid subscribers are great, too! This week we welcome Peggy H. to the paid subscriber fold. Thank you, Peggy H.! May the Great Cosmic Echidna play all your favorite songs on this great big dance floor we call life.
I love you so much! I love your review so much! Given your comments, I applaud you for getting through the book! I know I wouldn’t have and I do not even have your level of knowledge, nor your experience/s. Was this book self-published? Just reading your words eMate me enraged for you and so many others. Though, I admit to chortling at your [perhaps paraphrased]- “Will someone show this woman some good porn comment.” ❤️
Love your Holy Boldness! ❤️ Thank you for your honesty and thoughtfulness. I would love a glossy card of the quote/art to keep beside me as I read and write. Message me about fair compensation
if I print one copy (not glossy) for myself.