Women's self‐defense and sexual assault resistance: The state of the field

Public attention to sexual assault has increased dramatically over the last decade, spurring questions about how it can be prevented. One approach that has received scant attention is women's self‐defense training (sometimes known as sexual assault resistance training). This neglect is curious because empowerment‐based women's self‐defense (ESD) training is so far the only approach that has produced substantively significant decreases in victimization rates. In this article, I review the research evidence on women's self‐defense training. Does resisting a sexual assault affect the outcome of sexual violence? Does self‐defense training further reduce women's risk of violence? What are the other consequences of self‐defense training? How does self‐defense work for different groups of women—for example, those who have survived prior victimizations? Are the critiques of women's self‐defense training valid? Finally, what do we still need to learn about women's self‐defense? Overall, I argue that this evidence presents a compelling case that women's self‐defense training should be central to any efforts to prevent sexual violence.     

Law,campus policy,social movements,and sexual violence: Where do we stand in the #MeToo movement?

In the last 8 years, activist pressure has increased attention to sexual violence at universities. Most recently, the #MeToo movement has widened the conversation about sexual violence. This increased public attention has coincided with changes in federal guidelines, state laws, and campus policies on sexual violence as well as social movement activity by survivor‐activists and emerging counter‐movements. I argue that sociologists—specifically researchers who study gender and/or law and society—are uniquely situated to contribute to the study of sexual violence on campus. I synthesize a growing sociological and interdisciplinary literature on sexual violence—legal changes, policy effects, and social movement struggles—in order to advocate that sociologists study laws, campus policies, and social movements simultaneously.     

Working with Women Associated with Bikie Gangs: Practice Dilemmas

Abstract

Much has been written about bikie gangs, but there is little about the women and children who are part of gang life. The present paper describes domestic violence agency social workers’ ethical practice dilemmas when assisting women who have left bikie gangs to search for a new, safer lifestyle away from the gang culture of drug use and violence, in particular sexual violence. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ethical processes and issues in resolving such practice dilemmas.     

Comparing gang and individual rapes in a community sample of urban women

Little research has compared victims of gang and individual rapes, with only a few studies of college and police samples. This study compared gang (e.g., multiple offender) and individual (e.g., single offender) rapes in a large, diverse sample of female victims from the community. Comparisons of trauma histories (e.g., child sexual abuse), assault characteristics (e.g., offender violence) and outcomes (sexual acts, physical injuries), and current functioning (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder, lifetime suicide attempts) showed that gang rape victims were worse off overall compared with victims of single offenders. In terms of help seeking, there were few differences in informal support seeking, but gang rape victims perceived their social networks more negatively. Gang rape victims reported to police, medical, and mental health sources more often than single-offender victims and received more negative social reactions from those they told about their assaults. Suggestions for future research and intervention with gang rape victims are provided.     

“I Am Not a Prostitute”: How Young Black Women Challenge Street-based Micro-interactional Assaults

ABSTRACT

Few scholars have examined the collective experiences of young African American women living in the inner city and their strategies for navigating daily life there. I draw on nearly two years of field research in Central East Oakland, CA, to provide an ethnographic account of the daily experiences of poor young black women in urban public space¹. I uncover a particular and routine type of public encounter, street-based micro-interactional assaults, that follow a pattern and are shaped by an act or a threat of sexual violence. I also examine how poor black women feel about and negotiate these events while trying to maintain their own safety.     

Comparisons of sexual assault among older and younger women

This study examined the nature and extent of coercion, violence, and physical injury among older victims of sexual assaults (55 years and older) and compared these with the sexual assault victims of mid-age (31-54 years) and younger women (15-30 years). The results of this investigation reveal that older victims of sexual assault are more likely to be living alone at the time of the attack. In addition, older victims of sexual assault tended to report higher rates of vulnerabilities such as psychiatric and cognitive disabilities than did younger female victims. In contrast to younger victims, elder sexual assault victims are also more likely to be assaulted in their own home and one-quarter of older victims require ambulance involvement. Although the use of weapons was most likely in the sexual assaults of younger women, the use of physical violence and restraint was common and equally likely among all three groups. Similarly, vaginal penetration and the presence of physical trauma were just as likely in elder victims as in younger victims of sexual assault. These results reveal new information about the nature and extent of violence and coercion in elder female sexual assaults. The vulnerability of the older victims illustrated in this investigation raises a number of research questions about these women's prior history of victimization and future safety.     

Violence,rape, and sexual coercion: everyday love in a South African township

This paper presents findings of an anthropological study among pregnant adolescents in Cape Town, South Africa. The inquiry focuses on the sexual dynamics within adolescent relationships. The study reveals widespread male coercion and violence within sexual relationships. Informants describe assault as a regular feature of their relationships. In South Africa, power relations between men and women are commonly manifested as and imposed through sexual violence and assault. Men use physical assault to force sexual contact, beating their female partners if they refuse to have sex, are suspected of sexual infidelity, or are found to be using contraceptives. Moreover, women experience abuse such as gang rape. Yet, health promotion interventions fail to acknowledge sexual encounters as instances in which unequal power relations between men and women are expressed. It is these power relations which determine women's ability or inability to protect themselves against sexually transmitted disease, pregnancy, and unwelcome sexual acts. This study underlines the need to consider gender power issues in the design and impact assessment of HIV/AIDS and reproductive health interventions and in challenging male violence.     

The Universal King? Memory,Globalization, and Martin Luther King,Jr.

This article examines how Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered and represented by journalists in Ghana, South Africa, and Mexico, looking at coverage of “critical discourse moments” from King's life and legacy (1963–2016). I argue that representations of King vary in terms of local resonance—how well foreign figures or events align with local myths, values, and expectations—and global salience—the perceived world historical importance of a past figure or event. I then propose a new typology of global memory reception.     

The tears have not stopped,the violence has not ended: political upheaval,ethnicity, and violence against women in Indonesia

The view of women as the sexual property of men becomes heightened during periods of political unrest. The rape of Chinese-Indonesian women in Jakarta, Indonesia, during the May 1998 student demonstrations confirms this observation. This article describes interviews with Jakarta rape victims conducted by Volunteers for Humanity--a coalition of nongovernmental organizations established after attacks on the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party in 1996. By July 1998, Volunteers for Humanity had documented 152 rapes in Jakarta and 20 rape-related deaths. The result of this fact-collecting was formation of the National Commission on Violence Against Women. Women's groups originally established to address violence against women are now incorporating racism into their campaign agendas. National publicity of these assaults led to further reports of violence against minority-group women perpetuated by the military, paramilitary forces, or civilian men in powerful positions in other areas of the country (e.g., Aceh, East Timor, and Irian Jaya/West Papua). In recent months, a backlash has developed, with official denial that any rapes occurred and intimidation and threats of sexual violence against potential witnesses. Future responses must involve multiethnic, multireligious groups to prevent further isolation/victimization of Chinese-Indonesian women.     

Mentoring,Sexual Harassment,and Black Women Academics

ABSTRACT

The #MeToo Movement both within academia and popular culture has largely been seen as an issue for white women (and men). While the phrase Me Too was originally coined by Tarana Burke in 2006 to raise public awareness of sexual harassment, violence and assault experienced by women of color, the Movement has largely been whitewashed by primarily depicting victims and survivors as white women. Black women academics, like myself, also experience sexual harassment. By highlighting the ways that race-based sexual harassment further marginalizes already underrepresented groups in political science, I use my personal story to elucidate how a gender-only lens misses the complexities of Black women’s experiences with power inequities in academia. Throughout this narrative I underscore the importance of mentorship, professional networks, and the ability to harness scholarship as a vehicle to combat the pervasiveness of sexual harassment, violence, and assault for Black women in political science.     

Perpetrator or Victim? Relationships Between Intimate Partner Violence and Well‐Being

In national surveys, around half of intimate partner violence perpetrators are also victims of partner assaults. However, data on intimate partner violence victimization and perpetration are rarely examined together. This study examines the relationships between perpetration, victimization, and three psychosocial variables—depression, self‐esteem, and substance abuse—that have been constructed in prior research as both causes and consequences of partner violence. Results indicate that associations between substance abuse and self‐esteem and partner violence perpetration are mediated by controlling for victimization, but depression is associated with both victimization and perpetration. Associations between mutual violence and depression and substance abuse are greater among women than men, supporting the position that gender symmetry in reported violence perpetration does not imply symmetry in outcomes.     

Katabasis,adult betrayals and liminal identities in China Keitetsi’s Child Soldier: Fighting for My Life

In Child Soldier, China Keitetsi recounts her experiences as a child and a soldier during Yoweri Museveni’s guerrilla war against then Ugandan president, Milton Obote. Drawing on key debates on literary representations of katabasis, this paper examines Keitetsi’s portrait of adult betrayal and parental abuse of children at home, and as child soldiers. I argue that Child Soldier is a text that lends itself to a katabatic analysis, and that Keitetsi is a katabasist who frames her experiences as a child and a soldier “within the narrative structure of a descent into Hell and return” . I argue that “hellish” elements in the memoir are more than just incidental: they point to a world where tenderness and love have long given way to cruelty and cynicism, and where madness and violence and despair are the order of the day. I also draw on Sigmund Freud and Homi Bhabha’s notions of the unhomely, to suggest that the memoir introduces interesting parallels between the unhomeliness in the home and that brought on by the civil war. Subconsciously, then, examining the memoir under the tropes of katabasis and the unhomely allows us to view her life as floating in-between the child she wishes she should have been and the abused and rejected young woman she becomes.     

Transnational sexual and gendered violence: an application of border sexual conquest at a Mexico—US border

Drawing on transnational and postcolonial feminism, we discuss the phenomenon of border sexual conquest to highlight structural sexual and gendered violence that is exacerbated by the subjugation of local place and by the global political economy. While we have gained important insights from the literature on gender and transnationalism, the processes of sexual violence and gendered violence are underdeveloped. We focus our analysis on the Mexico—US border cities of Cuidad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, USA. We argue that what we call border sexual conquest confronts the feminicides in Juárez and the female proletariats on both sides of the border. Moreover, while structural violence approaches under theorize struggles over power, the perspective of border sexual conquest highlights how processes of conquest intertwine with women's resistance.     

WEAPONS OF SEX,WEAPONS OF WAR

Recent international attention has focused on designations of rape and sexual violence in conflict zones. The most formative debates on this issue centre on the 1990s-era conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which also involved heated debates amongst feminists over designations of rape as genocide. While the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda case, the Prosecutor v. Akayesu, resulted in the first formal charge of wartime rape as genocide within international criminal law, the first case to charge wartime rape as genocidal occurred in US federal court. This project looks for the overarching social and political meaning of the contemporary international legal focus on rape and sexual violence. It examines why, how, and to what extent US and transnational feminist legal academics and activists transmitted and secured their understandings of the relationships between sex, violence and ethno-religious difference within the international legal arena. In doing so, I argue that their participation in the contemporary recognition and narration of sexual injury in a global context both retreads and reconfigures the heated 1980s-era US Sex Wars debates on the workings of gender, sex, race and power.     

Drawing Boundaries or Drawing Weapons? Neighborhood Master Status as Suppressor of Gang Violence

Criminological scholarship on gangs has documented that attempts to take over territory and drug markets under the control of another gang is a primary motivation of inter-gang violence. However, little is known about situations where competition over territory and drug markets comes from within the territory, or about instances where gang competition does not lead to violence between criminal groups. Drawing on over 140 interviews and over nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in Canada’s oldest social housing project—Regent Park—this article describes and analyzes the changing nature of the neighborhood’s gang landscape as a result of neighborhood redevelopment. In particular, it examines why the emergences of a rival gang within Regent did not incite violence as the literature would expect. The article outlines how the emergence of a new rival gang within a territory previously dominated by established criminal groups did not result in the type of violence, in part because the two groups shared a “master status” of being Regent residents, which served to buffer inter-gang violence. Further, it argues that instead of drawing weapons, the established criminal groups expressed their frustration with the loss of their territorial monopoly to emerging groups by morally distinguishing themselves from the new groups. This article concludes by casting a scholarly spotlight on the means through which boundary work develops between criminal groups, and how cultural contexts affect identities and discourses in physical space.     

Contested Concepts in Violence Against Women: ‘Intimate’, ‘Domestic’ or ‘Torture’?

Abstract

Ritualistic, overwhelmingly violent bikie gang or cult-inflicted abuse of women, entrenched by co-opting third party cult or gang members, has been referred to as ‘domestic violence’, ‘intimate violence’ or ‘intimate partner violence’. The present article questions the aptitude of these terms to convey the realities of this violence, in light of the experiences of women attending a South Australian domestic violence service, all of whom were escaping violent partners who were members or associates of bikie gangs and cults. The paper asks, ‘is torture an appropriate term for such violence?’ and discusses the impact of social, legal, organisational and human rights parallel states that collaborate to make it almost impossible for these women to escape this violence and make it difficult for social workers to work effectively with them. The paper concludes that the State needs to adopt a human rights rather than legal focus when addressing the issue of violence against women.     

Language,Violence, and Queer People

Summary

The lives of queer people are too frequently filled with violence—physical attacks, social discrimination, and hate-filled verbal assaults. Language serves multiple purposes in the violence that is directed at queers. While the words themselves become instruments of psychological harm, they, in turn, are used to rationalize or justify acts of physical violence and social discrimination (Pierce, 1990). To analyze the issues regarding queer people, social discourse, and violence, this essay addresses: communication rules about queers and a formula for change in the discourse; the history of changing labels and meaning; enforcers of the dominant discourse and its rules of communication; and the role social workers should play in challenging and shaping the discourse.     

Fear of acquaintance versus stranger rape as a "master status": towards refinement of the "shadow of sexual assault"

Using a sample of 1010 women from a southeastern state university, we explore whether associations between fear of sexual assault and other crime-specific fears vary based on presumed victim-offender relationship. More specifically, we assess the extent to which fear of stranger- and acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assaults differ in the extent to which they are correlated with fear of other crime victimizations. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that both fear of stranger-perpetrated sexual assault and fear of acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assault were positively associated with nearly all other crime-specific fears under examination. However, associations were particularly strong between fear of sexual assault by a stranger and fear of other stranger-perpetrated crimes. Findings have significant implications for how academic institutions should comprehensively address direct and indirect negative influences of violence against college women.     

The assault on the self: Stages in coping with battering husbands

From interviews with women who have left battering relationships, we learn of their shifting definitions of the situation and their changing responses to their husbands' assaults. While some women may be more at risk for victimization than others, we see that victimization is a gradual process rather than an inherent quality of individual women. The process involves five stages: entering a violent relationship, managing the violence, experiencing a loss of self, re-evaluating the violent relationship, and restructuring the self. As the stages are discussed, variations in the definitional work of these women are also explained.     

War and security,women and gender: an overview of the issues

This article addresses the gender division of war and the significance of men and masculinity in processes of militarisation. Three phases of the continuum of war are considered. In periods of war-readiness, societies see a diversion of spending from social provision to the armed forces, accompanied by an increase in patriarchal ideology and authority. The actual waging of wars calls for the delivery of extreme but disciplined violence, and combat training shapes masculinity to this purpose. Armed conflict often involves a massive sexual assault on women. Women have recently intervened internationally to argue that if peace is to be more than a mere cessation of hostilities, ‘security’ must be redefined to mean the satisfaction of human needs, including comprehensive safety for women. Women's peace movements, worldwide, are theorising that gender power relations are significant among the causes of war, and transformative change in how we ‘live’ gender can be a significnt resource for peace.