“They need to get a new program”: Experiential frictions with the gender of care in the 12 step program for ethnically Mexican women

Abstract

Using gender as an analytic, I parse out how the historical gendered, classed, and racialized roots of the 12 Step Program remain present in its therapeutic model, even in global contexts beyond its original formulation. These foundations continue to shape therapeutic logics and experience within the Program, in positive and negative ways. I outline several key experiential points of friction with the 12 Step Program for women in one residential drug rehabilitation center in the United States‐México border zone, demonstrating the gender of this therapeutic model's framework. Clarifying the Program's gender of care helps make sense of why so many women find this therapeutic model inadequate, without discounting the very real support 12 Step Programs have provided to both women and men around the world. Attention to these frictions with structures (in this case a therapeutic model) illuminates the implicit frameworks that organize our world and direct our attention to developing novel frameworks/institutions.