[4] A victim who does not pursue legal actions that they justifiably feel might harm them can be more easily portrayed as tacitly accepting the abuse that they are subjected to, so these systems can actually worsen discrimination.
[4] By criticizing the foundations of anti-discrimination laws, Bumiller questions the efficacy of civil rights legislation that does not alter the structure of legal remedies for discriminatory abuses.
[8] Analyzing two prominent gang rape trials, the New Beford gang rape case and the Central Park jogger case, Bumiller argues that these highly publicized efforts by criminal justice allowed the state to portray itself as a force that helps keep sexual violence contained, in a mechanism called expressive justice, and that these efforts helped develop the harmful idea of a good victim.
[9] Bumiller notes that criminal justice efforts directed at suspected perpetrators of sexual violence have taken government money and resources away from grassroots work that aims to support victims.
[10] Bumiller connects this trend to a consistent process of privatization in neoliberalism, and notes that many of the state powers that were expanded in response to activism that seeks to reduce violence against women were ironically parts of the government that have been historically criticized by feminist activists.