Social movements are often places of hope, ranging from a refuge in today’s society to the origin of a better world. However, hope often comes with expectations, with expectations that cannot always be met. This means that hope already carries within it its own potential for failure. The question is how this failure is dealt with. Simone de Beauvoir (2018) argues that failure should be recognised and accepted as a fact of life and a prerequisite for human development. It is only through experiencing failure that we can develop, learn, and transform. However, acting according to this philosophy is easier said than done. This is evident, for example, when sexualised violence occurs within social movements. Such occurrences contradict the expectations regarding shared values and ideals, regarding the hope for a space free of violence and discrimination. The resulting discrepancy between self-image and reality, the experience of failing to meet one’s own expectations, can make it difficult to deal with sexualised violence.
In this presentation, I examine the reluctance to recognise sexualised violence within social movements and to see the failure to meet one’s own expectations as an integral part of social transformation. I also explore how this affects the addressing and transformation of the underlying power structures that perpetuate sexualised violence. Sexualised violence is often considered to be external to social movements and seen as part of the ‘other’, i.e. the society rather than the social movement itself. This supposedly different stance on sexualised violence serves as a boundary towards society and as a source of identity for the social movement. When it occurs, sexualised violence is often relegated to a “borderland” (Anzaldúa 2015) between the social movement and society. Consequently, it becomes untreatable. However, I would argue that, to open a path for development, learning, and transformation, sexualised violence should be understood as a kind of “boundary object” (Star 2010) between social movements and society.
The theoretical explanations are based on in-depth interviews with individuals who have experienced sexualised violence within social movements in Germany and undergone some form of transformative justice process.
