The Violence Against Women Act and Ambivalent Alliances

Chapter 4 examines the Violence Against Women Act and the ambivalent alliance that led to it. The chapter shows the influence of feminist organizations on the legislation and traces how support from conservative elected officials formed alongside opposition from conservative activists outside the state. Conservatives and many liberals in Congress sought to be tough on crime and protect women from domestic violence and rape, while feminists sought to reduce the systematic victimization of women and improve the response from law enforcement and others. Congressional testimony promulgated a frame about violence against women as a gendered crime that could be understood in different ways by different sides. The chapter shows how this frame promoted VAWA’s success but feminist advocates’ intersectional goals for immigrants, women of color, and LGBT people were marginalized. The chapter shows how, by 2011, conservative activists’ influence on Congress through the Tea Party movement and feminists’ ongoing push to strengthen VAWA’s intersectional dimensions destabilized agreement on VAWA. The chapter addresses feminist criticism of VAWA as a case of carceral feminism, showing how VAWA’s discourse and legislation promoted both carceral, non-carceral, and intersectional frames and outcomes. VAWA reflects both unprecedented feminist legislative influence countervailing conservative influence.