Connection, Healing, and Patriarchal Disruption in a Community of Women Responding to Sexual Violence

Abstract This chapter examines a recently published young adult (YA) novel that features women coming together to challenge patriarchy as a source of sexual violence, focusing not only on voicing and healing but critiquing and responding to the system that allows such violence to happen. It examines, through the theoretical lens of community, The Gilded Ones (Forna, 2020), a speculative story that offers space to surface ideologies of sexual violence and patriarchy, disrupt them, and invite alternatives in the development of relationships that connect and empower women (and men) acting in community. Exploring the construction of patriarchy, the creation and role of a community of women, the position of men in a community of women, and potential challenges to community, the chapter demonstrates how The Gilded Ones offers a particularly inventive vision of change that can happen when people act together.