Still Carrying This Weight

The Current Gender Violence Situation in the United States’ Universities

Abstract

This article offers a panoramic view of several cases of gender violence in US universities, starting from the complaints made in 2015 in the documentary film The Hunting Ground [El Coto de Caza, in Spanish; A Coutada de Caça, in Portuguese] to the present. From a feminist and decolonial hemispheric perspective, I question the emergence of more cases of gender violence, the complaint process, institutional procedures, impunity for the attacker, the re-victimization of survivors and the generalized failure of existing reparation and prevention measures. Based on Sara Ahmed’s theorizing in Complaint! (2021), I indicate what are the main current impediments that I observe in the current panorama of gender violence in universities in the United States and conclude for the imperative need to reform the current system. This analysis includes express reference to the materialization of the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people in academic spaces, which are often ignored or made invisible in the specialized literature. Finally, I emphasize the possibilities of care pedagogies and complaint collectives, and I mention alternative ways of preventing gender violence on campus, such as Theater for Social Justice.