In-Person Book Event: IMPERFECT VICTIMS by Leigh Goodmark

Join us for an in-person reading and discussion about IMPERFECT VICTIMS: CRIMINALIZED SURVIVORS AND THE PROMISE OF ABOLITION FEMINISM by Leigh Goodmark. For this event, Leigh will be in conversation with Rachel White-Domain.

Please note: Pre-registration for this event is required. By pre-registering, you are verifying that you are fully vaccinated and will wear a mask throughout the entirety of the event.

A profound, compelling argument for abolition feminism—to protect criminalized survivors of gender-based violence, we must dismantle the carceral system.

Since the 1970s, anti-violence advocates have worked to make the legal system more responsive to gender-based violence. But greater state intervention in cases of intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and trafficking has led to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration of victims, particularly women of color and trans and gender-nonconforming people. Imperfect Victims argues that only dismantling the system will bring that punishment to an end.

Amplifying the voices of survivors, including her own clients, abolitionist law professor Leigh Goodmark deftly guides readers on a step-by-step journey through the criminalization of survival. Abolition feminism reveals the possibility of a just world beyond the carceral state, which is fundamentally unable to respond to, let alone remedy, harm. As Imperfect Victims shows, abolition feminism is the only politics and practice that can undo the indescribable damage inflicted on survivors by the very system purporting to protect them.