Presenting violence against women as an urban issue examines this form of violence as a spacial, location-based issue rather than a systemic one. Violence against women occurs at high rates regardless of location, race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, and therefore operates as a systemic issue. I took issue with assigning gender-based violence an urban brand, because of the way that hierarchies of power and control that feed violence against women exist on individual levels as well as societal ones, regardless of physical location. Additionally, posing rape and sexual assault as an urban issue suggests that these crimes exist because of the structure of a city, that there are more dangers to women and more rapists in places with higher populations and more anonymity. This feeds into the false narrative that a person is more likely to be a victim when exposed to circumstances like dark city alley ways, when in reality most rapes are committed by an acquaintance or intimate partner. I do not think that the existence of an urban setting enables the act of rape more than a rural or suburban setting. 

However, our discussions in class proved that there is value in examining violence against women from the urban lens to see the ways in which the state fails to resolve such a widespread crime and perpetuates the social control that rape and assault create. Asking the question of whether cities are safe for women proves useless because women aren’t fully safe anywhere, but it is useful to ask what ways are cities marginalizing to women specifically. Based on our conversation in class, the existence of the slut walk movement in response to victim blaming by authorities, and the widespread mistreatment and neglect of rape evidence, it is clear that the urban structure marginalizes victims of assault. While this could certainly mean men and non-gender conforming individuals too, a high percentage of sexual assault victims are women, making this widespread neglect by the authorities a gendered issue.  

I use the term “neglect” intentionally. In response to my own expert question of whether the untested rape kits were an act of neglect rather than a resource problem, I believe that it certainly represents state perpetuation of violence against women and is deliberately neglectful. Of course, the department in Detroit “did not see the accumulation of untested rape kits as a problem” (Campbell, Shaw, and Fehler-Cabral, 157), meaning they did not publicly recognize their complicity in the act of neglect. One police officer commented that the uproar following the discovery of the rape kits was “just a big broo-ha-ha about nothing” (Campbell, Shaw, and Fehler-Cabral, 157). This impression differs dramatically from the conclusions of the investigative team, which stated that, “Based on their analysis of 400 randomly sampled kits, it appeared that the overwhelming majority of the SAKs in police property had never been adequately investigated, the survivors had been treated in retraumatizing ways by police personnel, and the community needed a long-term plan for change” (Campbell, Shaw, and Fehler-Cabral, 154). While the existence of such a problem is in itself a form of neglect and systemic violence against the victims of these assaults, it is also distinctly problematic that the department did not even recognize the issue. Perhaps they were simply deflecting the criticism by diminishing the issue. But the possibility of the department genuinely failing to see the problem in neglecting the evidence of 11,000 cases of assault speaks to a hegemonic violence against women that is thoroughly normalized in society.  

I also think it is important to look at the difference in response to crime against women versus other forms of crime. The police department in Detroit blamed the problem partly on a lack of resources. As JP Hughes commented in class, it is surely possible to gather enough resources to test rape kits regularly, as exemplified by the police department in Georgia that he mentioned, who mobilized the resources to test all their kits after a backlog of kits. Thinking back to the ways in which police departments in cities handle other forms of crime, particularly crime associated with low-income, Black and Latinx men, the excessive use of resources to incarcerate these men discredits the argument that the authorities are hurting for resources. Sociologists Victor Rios, Alice Goffman, and others demonstrated that the hypercriminalization of these men meant that extensive amounts of resources were expended by urban police departments across the country to enable the mass incarceration of men of color. Regardless of the triviality of the offenses committed by these boys and men, the system called for punishment, in ways that appear deliberate. Why do the authorities treat gender-based violence so dramatically differently?  

Furthermore, does the state have interest in the continuation of gender-based violence? This is a radical statement, but it is important to examine how the established neglect of the state could be completely intentional. Is the widespread neglect of evidence for assault cases a similar political act as the hypercriminalization of low-income Black and Latinx men? Are the authorities mistreating rape cases deliberately? This posits that the state is actively engaged in perpetuating gender-based violence, rather than passively aiding in its existence. If this is the case, how do we fight back against a culture of violence when the state is deliberately supporting it?  

Sociologist Elijah Anderson speaks directly to the community saved framework, which demonstrates that to regenerate community in urban spheres, humans seek to organize around networks of kinship and common values in active constructions of community. He asserts that “cosmopolitan canopies” have developed in opposition to the “blasé attitude” (15) and distinct social barriers to connection and community strength that characterize the modern city. Cosmopolitan canopies, which Anderson discusses as products of community revitalization, are neutral social settings where diverse people can interact and enjoy the space.

I think it is interesting viewing how the community saved framework operates through a structural functionalist lens, which allows us to view modern community spaces and social groups as serving a greater function for the larger urban setting by cultivating resources and weak ties through which important needs are met. Spaces constructing community seem to serve vital functions for their participants, as well as existing as social and entertainment spaces. In Anderson’s description of The Terminal, a space he deems a cosmopolitan canopy, he demonstrates that the civility and relative diversity of the space allows people to “engage in folk ethnography and formulate or find evidence for their folk theories about others with whom they share the public space” (21). Therefore, the space serves a function of allowing people to consciously learn about each other. Aside from being a space of leisure and consumption, Anderson writes that “when diverse people are eating one another’s food, a social good is performed for those observing. As people become intimate through such shared experiences, certain barriers are prone to be broken”. (17) Therefore, his argument hinges upon the diversity of a space as central to its functionality.

Given this, how do we contend with spaces that lack such diversity, but still operate in line with the community saved framework? One example of this is the nightclub, “The Spot”, which sociologist Marcus Hunter discusses in his piece, The Nightly Round: Space, Social Capital, and Urban Black Nightlife. People used “The Spot”, both for entertainment and partner selection, and to access a network of weak ties that provided a variety of resources and opportunities to fulfill their basic living needs, demonstrating the complex hierarchy of functionality described by the community saved framework. He writes that “The nightly round–a process encompassing the social interactions, behaviors, and actions involved in going to, being in, and leaving the club–is used to mitigate the effects of social and spatial isolation, complementing the accomplishment of the daily round” (166). However, The Spot is used by predominantly black populations, which does not represent the diversity that Anderson spoke about in his description of cosmopolitan canopies. It is clear how this type of community illustrates the community saved framework in that it is actively constructed and utilized by its participants to fit their needs, but would it be considered a cosmopolitan canopy? Is a cosmopolitan canopy even necessary for community revitalization? The Spot doesn’t suggest it is.

In what ways does Anderson’s definition of a cosmopolitan canopy limit which spaces can serve the function that cosmopolitan spaces provide? As I contend with Anderson’s discussion of the neutrality of places like the Terminal, I struggle with whether a non-judgmental, truly liberated, and neutral space can exist. The Terminal may appear diverse, but it also has the potential to be a white space masquerading as a diverse canopy, in which class and racial divides still exist subtly. Are marginal identities inherently mapped on to individuals regardless of the setting, particularly in diverse spaces? Perhaps the cosmopolitan canopy Anderson describes serves to allow white individuals to learn more about people of other races and ethnicities, but I question whether it serves a similar function for non-white individuals in the space. It merely seems to put the onus of educating and sharing on people of color existing in the space.

Similarly, does there have to be some semblance of homogeneity for a community to fully function? The community saved framework shows how community revitalized through a shift towards active and need-based communities. Based on the examples through the readings, it seems that there must be a certain level of homogeneity within the community for it to operate in its true form. The nightclub was racially homogeneous, the Terminal economically homogeneous. Even the community of pigeon flyers, from Colin Ferolmack’s The Global Pigeon, demonstrated homogeneity in the gender identity of the flyers. Based on this analysis, Anderson’s theory of the cosmopolitan canopy seems incomplete in its lack of discussion about the need for a common source of connection.

Are there ways that diverse communities can form that represents heterogeneity in a genuine light? Is this important or necessary moving forward?