Browsing by Subject "Sexual violence"

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"A place where every decent guy will find himself eventually" : delineating the friend zone as a site of sexual violence
(2017-12) Shields, Giorgia Lake; Heinzelman, Susan S.
Since emerging in the mid-1990s, the nature of the friend zone has solidified around a common social trope: oblivious and/or manipulative women relegate men to this platonic space, callously disregarding the entitled but unsatisfied male desire they have provoked. Due to the proliferation of this trope, particularly among the millennial generation, it is apparent that the friend zone has become part of a pop culture lexicon through which adolescents and young adults learn to experience and perceive cross-gender relationships. The purpose of this report is to delineate and critically consider the conceptual components of the friend zone by which it has become an intelligible cultural construct. These concepts include cisheteronormativity, ambivalent sexism, sexual mythology, and masculinity policing behaviors in male homosocial spaces. Examining these conceptual features as they work with and through one another reveals that the friend zone is underpinned by patriarchal myths about gender and sexuality that, in turn, sustain status quo beliefs about cross-cisgender relationships. These beliefs work to affirm and perpetuate the misogynistic logic of a culture that normalizes sexual violence against girls and women, further exacerbating their already disproportionate vulnerability to such violence. This report also serves as a starting point for future empirical research into the complexities and intersections of the friend zone discourse.
An evaluation of the effects of mandatory reporting on students’ likelihood of disclosing sexual violence
(2021-11-29) Sears, Mackenzie Alexis; Meston, Cindy M.
In the United States, employees of federally funded universities are mandated to report knowledge of any nonconsensual sexual experiences (NSEs) to their universities under Title IX. Few studies have assessed students’ opinions or likelihood of disclosing sexual violence to someone at their university under these policies and they returned mixed results. The NSE literature indicates that people with NSE histories are less likely to disclose sexual violence with mandatory reporting (MR) policies in place. Additionally, there are discrepancies in likelihood to disclose even without the presence of MR policy; people who do not identify their NSEs with sexual violence labels (e.g. rape) are less likely to disclose their experience than people who do use those labels. The current study aims to (1) evaluate students’ likelihood of reporting to someone at the university by introducing a manipulation of the presence of MR policies while (2) evaluating how NSE identification rather than NSE history impacts that likelihood. 184 undergraduate students at UT were randomized into two groups, one given language indicating the presence of MR policies and the other given language about confidential reporting. Each student was shown four gender-neutral vignettes, two describing penetrative assault and two non-penetrative assault with alternating professor and student perpetrators. After each vignette, the students were asked how likely they would be to tell a professor at the university about the event if they were the student in the vignette. Students also completed the Non-Consensual Sexual Experiences Inventory to assess NSE identification (NSEI; Kilimnik et al., 2018). Results from a mixed factor repeated-measures ANOVA indicated that there were significant differences in likelihood to disclose between the vignettes (p <0.01), but not between conditions or NSE identification groups (p= 0.44; p=0.71). Though there is concern in the field about the impact of MR policies based on previous NSE literature, these results indicate that MR policies do not decrease disclosure likelihood. Future research should further evaluate this relationship to determine replicability of these results
Cultivating community : socially responsible pedagogy in the devising process
(2015-05) Thomas, Emily Aguilar; Schroeder-Arce, Roxanne; Dawson, Kathryn; González-López, Gloria
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, statistics show that young people are experiencing sexual violence at the hands of adults and often do not tell anyone about their experiences ("Reporting of Sexual Violence Incidents"). Weaving research and practice in sexual violence and Applied Theatre, this case study explores the process of building community among participants while learning through and about these key content areas. Through a devising process that worked toward creating an original Applied Theatre program for young audiences, the researcher interrogates how enacting socially responsible pedagogy informed the process and nurtured a learning community. Enacting a critically-engaged pedagogy, this document invites artists, practitioners and pedagogues to consider how a feminist pedagogy might shape a socially-engaged art-making process and incite participants to take constructive action in their communities.
Erased, hidden or missing: understanding Black women's experiences in the fight against college campus sexual violence
(2022-05) McCarty-Harris, Yulanda L.; Reddick, Richard, 1972-; Ovando, Martha N.; Smith, LaToya C.; Graces, Liliana M.; Burnette , Colette P
Sexual violence continues to be a pervasive problem on college campuses and for Black college women research shows a history of racialized trauma – one that dates back to slavery that continues to bear witness to psychological harms of fear, self-blame, and guilt - that forces them to remain silent. Yet college administrators continue to respond to sexual violence from an identity-neutral and dominant narrative that leaves women of color erased, hidden, or missing in the fight against campus sexual violence. Several studies have focused on sexual violence against women in college; however, there is a lack of diversity in the samples. To fill this gap, this qualitative case study sought to illuminate Black women’s voices as they described their sexual violence experiences and reflected on the ways, if any, their intersecting identities (i.e., race and gender) impacted their sexual violence experiences while attending a historically White institution. Findings indicate that Black women described their sexual violence as psychologically impacting, socially isolating, overwhelming to report or seek help, faith evoking, compounded by social media and COVID-19, and leading to manifesting resilience. Findings, also, suggest that Black women’s intersecting identities related to gender and race affected their experience and led them to adhere to a culture of silence, evoke racial consciousness, and be viewed as hyper-sexualized. Based on the study findings, recommendations are offered for college administrators who address, respond to, and direct initiatives to prevent sexual violence. Student services personnel are also strongly encouraged to employ an intersectional lens that includes disaggregation of pertinent data by identity factors. Given the focus and nature of the current study, areas for further inquiry are also highlighted to continue to enhance our understanding of sexual violence on campuses as well as discover effective strategies to support Black women.
Genealogies of trauma : the inheritance of hysteria
(2017-05-08) Morgenstern, Hayley Anne; Richardson, Matt, 1969-; Cvetkovich, Ann; Doty, Philip
This thesis explores the ways that sexual violence becomes perceptible through the body. While we are often unable to assimilate trauma into language, we maintain other corporeal systems in which to understand, respond to, and discern it. Looking backwards at historical representations of hysteria opens up new languages, metaphors, and systems of thought when we take seriously the gestures of hysteria as corporeal responses and adaptions to the experience of sexual violence. The excess of performances of hysteria,the coughing, screaming, quaking, and crying, become a means to archive and make visible a violence thought of as unspeakable. The first two chapters of this thesis focus on historical representations of hysteria through the photographs of Louise Augustine Gleizes of the Salpêtrière Hospital, and Ida Bauer, the women behind Sigmund Freud’s Dora. The gestures and ‘symptoms’ of their hysteria are read alongside their experiences of sexual violence. This reading takes seriously the effects of hysteria as a source of embodied knowledge regarding how the body responds to sexual trauma. The third chapter brings this hysterical understanding of the body into the contemporary work of the queer writer, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, who makes use of the hysterical body both to make visible unacknowledged sexual violence and trauma, and as a modality for seeing and connecting with other queer survivors of trauma. The repertoire of hysterical gestures becomes an avenue for queer people, gender variant people, and survivors of sexual violence to articulate and express both desire and pain in ways that do not present recovery from trauma as an endpoint or static moment to be achieved, nor as a precursor to fulfilling physical and sexual intimacy. The performativity of queer hysteria makes itself visible on bodies through stylization, adornment, and biological and physical gesture. These corporeal gesticulations are created and perceived through and in relation to one’s own experience of trauma. Queerness appears not as a utopian solution to and trauma, but a means to use these experiences with a difference.
In a feminist state? : sexual violence and gender equality in Sweden
(2022-05-09) Carroll, Caitlin P.; Williams, Christine L., 1959-; Gonzalez-Lopez, Gloria; Rudrappa, Sharmila; Glass, Jennifer; Busch-Armendariz, Noel
According to the World Economic Forum, Sweden ranks as one of the most women-friendly countries in the world and has been called a “gender equal utopia” (Fiig 2009: 199). Yet at the same time, Sweden has one of the highest reported rates of sexual violence in the world. What explains the paradox of Sweden’s high reported rate of rape and high level of gender equality? By engaging in multi-method fieldwork inspired by Dorothy Smith’s institutional ethnography, I illuminate the ways in which sexual violence is framed and addressed from a socio-legal perspective. My findings suggest that the high reported rate of sexual violence in Sweden is not necessarily a paradox, but rather a reflection of a commitment to gender equality: Swedish state institutions incentivize reporting of sexual violence, encouraging victim-survivors to disclose and seek help. In this dissertation, I look to three state institutions to illuminate how the Swedish state incentivizes reporting. First, I write about the political sphere, where a 2018 legal reform was hotly contested but ended with a “feminist victory.” Second, I examine the criminal justice system, where victim-centered policies and practices have been implemented to improve the experience of victim-survivors who report. Finally, I turn to the welfare state, including the healthcare system and the education system, where government-funded programs address sexual violence treatment and prevention. Through a transformation of these state institutions, Sweden provides accessible services and possibilities for justice. Thus, I argue that a high reported rate of sexual violence does not necessarily reflect the high occurrence of rape and sexual assault, but in the case of Sweden, may reflect the successful work of feminist activism and a state commitment to gender equality through institutionalized support for disclosure and reporting.
Justice is healing : an indigenous approach to sexual trauma
(2017-12) Ringland, Valerie; Busch-Armendariz, Noël Bridget; Cole, Allan; Cubbin, Catherine; Faulkner, Monica; Marder, Michael
This dissertation brings indigenous perspectives on trauma and healing into academic literature in an effort to expand the Western scientific cultural understanding of trauma due to sexual violence, offer alternative causes and tools for healing. The term “Western” refers to a culture principally based on Judeo-Christian and scientific thinking that is predominant in the United States today, and is the culture out of which the modern field of social work was founded. Though the term “Indigenous” may refer to a cultural group whose beliefs, traditions and ways of living originated with connection to a specific place, “Indigenous” refers more generally to people with a medicine-wheel-based perspective on life, see the world as cyclical and have a conscious awareness of an inherent inter-connectedness of being (Cervantes & McNeill, 2008). Concepts such as justice and healing differ by culture, and are both topics of focus in the field of social work. In indigenous thinking, justice is synonymous with healing. Within an indigenous cosmology, this dissertation explores healing of sexual trauma through three projects: (1) a theoretical approach to healing trauma generally and sexual trauma in particular, with simple tools for social work practitioners and everyday people to use; (2) use of the indigenous healing tool empathic dialogue as qualitative research interview for people within the roles of sex offender, family member and victim; and (3) a Bayesian network analysis using indigenous theory to illuminate behaviors suggesting that adolescents are carrying trauma from childhood.
Mapping the landscape : intervention services for child sexual abuse in Lima, Peru
(2018-10-08) Panepinto, Lynn Anne; Gulbas, Lauren E.
In this project, I explore challenges related to providing and receiving support services after a child has experienced sexual violence. My research aims centered on mapping the landscape of existing services for child sexual abuse (CSA) in the Lima province; identifying providers’ perceptions of the beliefs and attitudes that shape CSA service delivery; and eliciting a family’s narrative regarding their experience in seeking support after CSA. Employing a qualitative research design and exploratory, descriptive approach, I interviewed twelve service providers with diverse professional backgrounds as well as one caregiver who had sought services after her daughter had experienced CSA. Upon analyzing my data, I discovered a variety of themes and grouped them into three categories: causes, or why participants believe that CSA happens; services, or how organizations intervene after CSA has occurred; and philosophy, or what drives the services that organizations provide. I also collected recommendations from service providers regarding the ways that they believe CSA intervention services could be improved. My findings reveal the interconnected nature between providers’ beliefs about what causes CSA, the services they develop to address CSA, and the organizations’ philosophies for providing services. My data also show that cultural distance exists between providers and clients because they typically come from different racial, socioeconomic, educational, and linguistic backgrounds, which impacts service delivery. Cultural distance leads providers to “other” the clients and communities they serve, believing that CSA occurs because of problems within the communities themselves. Organizations, in turn, focus on educating community members and promoting healing and justice primarily through seeking harsh penalties for perpetrators. As I learned from my caregiver interview, though, the cultural distance between providers and clients can create a disconnect between what providers believe is important and what children and families truly need after experiencing trauma. Based on participants’ recommendations along with the aforementioned findings, I posit that it is necessary to involve community members and to honor the unique experiences of each child and family in order to develop culturally informed and effective CSA services.
Ni domésticas ni putas : sexual harassment in the lives of female household workers in Monterrey, Nuevo León
(2012-05) Siller Urteaga, Lorena; González-López, Gloria, 1960-; Williams, Christine C.
Sexual violence and in particular sexual harassment is an unfortunate reality in the lives of millions of Mexican women. We encounter this problem in all areas of our life: on the streets, within our families, and at work. Interestingly, some women's experiences of sexual harassment are less visible than others. This is the case of women in the occupation of paid household work. In Mexico, the fact that women household workers are sexually harassed or raped by their male employers has been silenced and at best kept as an open secret. In addition, researchers who have studied the lives of household workers barely mention it. Consequently, this master's thesis answers the following research questions: (1) Are women domestic workers vulnerable to sexual harassment? Why? and, (2) What are the social and cultural factors responsible for such vulnerabilities? I engage with these research questions by exploring the life histories of 11 women from Monterrey, Nuevo León and who have at least 5 years of working experience in the occupation, through in-depth interviews. Based on what the women shared with me I offer a collection of individual life stories followed by a feminist informed analysis of their experiences. Each story is unique and presents their views and perceptions of sexual harassment in the occupation and elsewhere. The analysis is divided in five mayor themes, which emerged in all of the interviews and explain the problematic. Although they enter the occupation knowing there are potential risks, one of which is sexual harassment, they are unable to change occupations due to limited work options. I argue that their social positionalities stemming from their gender, race, and class puts these women in a vulnerable position vis-a-vis their employers. As working class women, some from indigenous backgrounds, their employers engage in different types of discrimination, all of which construct women household workers as the other and their bodies as rapeable. At last, women blame themselves and others who have been targets of sexual harassment while freeing men from any type of accountability.
Orphans' or Veterans? Justice for Children Born of War in East Timor
(The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, 2006) Harris Rimmer, Susan
All over East Timor, one can find “orphans” whose parents still live, and “wives” who have never been married. These labels mask an open secret in Timorese society—hundreds of babies were born of rape during the Indonesian occupation from 1974 to 1999. In juxtaposition, as a result of the 2004 UNFPA-conducted census, there is finally data available on the current population of East Timor and it has unexpectedly revealed a baby boom, perhaps in response to the emotional losses of the occupation. The fertility rate was found to be the highest in the world, at 8.3 babies per woman.1 The baby as the symbol of both wound and healing is clearly at play in Timor at the present time. Nonetheless, there is official silence on the number and treatment of the children born of conflict, a lack of attention in the transitional justice mechanisms in place in Timor in regard to the human rights violations that produced their situation, and no official policies to deal with the needs of these children or their mothers, or the discrimination they may face. The challenge posed by these children and women to the social fabric of Timor reveals important gaps and silences within the international human rights law framework which might nonetheless be addressed by some fairly straightforward policy innovations. In this paper, I argue that status of the mothers socially and legally, as it impacts on the well-being and ability of the children to claim their rights, needs to be more fully addressed in transitional justice debates. Within Timor, there is a definite ambivalence about the idea of these women as contributors to independence during the occupation, and discomfiture regarding their status as so-called “wives” of Indonesian military. This cultural construction is both exacerbated and challenged by the ambivalent influence of Catholic teachings on East Timorese society. Nonetheless, social currents also exist that, if strategically used to reconstruct the image of these children and women, could more effectively reframe their trauma in transitional justice discourse, and contribute both to their well-being and the long-term process of reconciliation in East Timor. The paper proceeds in two sections. First, I first provide an overview of the situation of sexual violence survivors and their children in East Timor. In the second section I discuss current approaches to the children and their mothers within the transitional justice mechanisms available in East Timor at this time. I aim to shift the current approach to children born of war in Timor from covert welfare assistance by the Catholic Church and NGOs, to a rights-based framework, where the affected children are publicly accepted with valid claims on the Government, rather than seen as by-products of a crime or sin. From this analysis it becomes clear that creative policy and legal options are required that would assist these families with integration, status and financial security. I conclude with one such proposal to improve the situation of these families: re-characterise the affected women and their children as “veterans” of the conflict, with the same status as the former Falintil guerrillas.
Queer imagined communities in diasporic Caribbean literature
(2020-03-19) Pérez, Gabriela, Ph. D.; Arroyo, Jossianna; Salgado, Cesar; Dominguez Ruvalcaba, Hector; Moran Gonzalez, John
National communities have historically been imagined through heteronormative discourses. In Latin America, foundational fictions often center on the (non-consensual) sexual union of a European man and a woman of color, figuring the nation as their biological offspring. Also prevalent is the national emblem being a virile, white, hyper-masculine male (such as the Cuban hombre nuevo or the Dominican tigre). The logics of purity that undergird these constructions lead to the marginalization and expulsion of queer people. The last 50 years in publishing have meant a growing platform for previously silenced voices in, amongst other topics, the imagining of national communities. What happens when community is imagined from the vantage point of a body that is female, or black, or fat, or raped, or gay, or migrant, or (almost always) marginalized by an assemblage of these factors? My dissertation begins to answer this question through an analysis of contemporary texts by diasporic Caribbean authors. I find that not only do these texts launch poignant critiques of the violence of nationalisms, but they also suggest new models for imagining community and relating to one another. In my first chapter, two novels by Haitian-American women, Edwidge Danticat and Roxane Gay, help throw into relief the tacit sexual violence of foundational fictions, and propose new ways of relating to one another based on shared experiences of vulnerability and trauma, on practices of companionship and caretaking. In the second chapter, a performance piece by Josefina Báez and a novel by Junot Díaz queer the national macho (specifically the Dominican tigre) while also boldly calling for more of that seemingly cliched, coopted, unsexy but nevertheless radical affect: love. Lastly, in my third chapter, carnivalesque novels by Cuban Roberto Fernández and Puerto Rican Eduardo Vega Yunqué enact a literary drag of the romanticized national constructions particularly prevalent in diasporas, offering instead a queer portrait of their respective diasporas. This dissertation points to a hope from and for diasporas and their queers. It highlights new voices and new ways of imagining who we are that have not been looked at as the queer foundational fictions that they are.
Reconciling contradictory feminism Law & Order : Special Victims Unit and the queers who love it
(2016-05) Hicks, Helen Logan; Livermon, Xavier; Khubchandani, Kareem
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is a locus of the production of feminist anti- rape discourse as well as messages promoting carceral justice. These contradictory ideologies are somehow reconciled by queer viewers of the show. I use interdisciplinary methods and a variety of feminist and queer theories to investigate this peculiar reconciliation. First, I analyze the narrative of an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit through a queer critical lens of reading media. Then I examine the fans and the industry players of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in the context of the show’s problematic messaging. The conversation between the contradictions of the show and the populations who are fans of the show but who also suffer under the same conditions I criticize in my narrative analysis is important to the larger feminist conversations about rape culture, capitalist media enterprise, and queer and feminist self-identification and community building.
Reflection : a dream : a visual exploration of sexual trauma and healing
(2018-05) Pendell, Lirit E. O.; Mickey, Susan E.
Reflection: a dream is a creative project combining live performance, movement, photo stories and installation work to explore the images the subconscious brings up in processing and healing from sexual violence. This paper is focused on both the art and performative aspect of my thesis, and the neurological reality of complex trauma disorders stemming from sexual assault.
“Salía de uno y me metí en otro” : a grounded theory approach to understanding the violence-migration nexus among Central American women in the United States
(2015-07-27) Heffron, Laurie Cook; Busch-Armendariz, Noël Bridget; Armour, Marilyn; Padilla, Yolanda C; Snyder, Susanna; Torres, Rebecca M
The Northern Triangle of Central America is the bridge to North America – a bridge on which human crises wrought by violence and exploitation make indelible marks on migrating women. Women fleeing violence and abuse in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras face trauma and adversity during the journey through Mexico and into the U.S. Motivations to find safety and economic security are woven into the vulnerabilities and the strengths of migrating women. Research has not adequately explored how domestic and sexual violence impact and are impacted by migration, how women respond to risks, nor the role of motherhood in the face of violence. Grounded in feminist and transnational frameworks, this study used constructivist grounded theory to explore the violence-migration nexus. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 adult women recently migrated to the U.S. from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Findings include textual accounts of women’s motivations to migrate, migration decision-making, travel logistics, and exposure to danger. The study yielded rich description of multiple types of violence encountered by women, as precipitating factors for migration, during border-crossing, and following arrival in the U.S., including sexual, domestic, gang, and state violence. These data reveal ways that types of violence are interconnected across multiple categories of violence and throughout migration. Findings also include thematic analysis of ways women weigh risks of migrating, resistance and shared survival strategies, in addition to motherhood in the context of violence. Analysis and interpretation of interactions among thematic elements result in a provisional theoretical framework to describe the violence-migration nexus encountered by Central American migrant women, reflecting a series of attempts to escape danger only to land in a new dangerous situation, with new backdrops of micro, meso, and macro-level factors of violence and new landscapes of solidarity and resistance strategies. This study fills gaps in the depth of our understanding about the violence-migration nexus as it pertains to Central American migrant women and provides scaffolding with which to continue improving policy, practice, and advocacy responses to women and families, in the context of ever-changing dynamics of migration and shifting political landscapes.
The sexual climate of secondary schools : adolescents' attitudes towards victims of harassment and abuse
(2011-12) Boldt, Leanne Oteka; Sherry, Alissa René; Wood, Teri
This paper is a report on the condition of rape myth acceptance and rape supportive attitudes among adolescent boys and girls. Students in secondary schools are at high risk for becoming victims of not only sexual violence, but also of secondary victimization at the reaction of peers and professionals. The paper discusses common risk factors for rape myth acceptance, along with suggestions for counselors practicing in a secondary school setting.
Suelen callar : the institutional perceptions and treatments of the sexuality and sexual abuse of people with intellectual and psychological disabilities in Guatemala
(2011-08) Serrano, Samantha Lynn; Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, 1957-; Dom�nguez Ruvalcaba, Hector
The understandings and treatments of the sexual rights of people with intellectual and psychological disabilities vary in different societies. However, one issue that is common in most societies is that this group of people experiences the highest rates of sexual violence and is regularly a-sexualized. Much attention has been paid to the increasingly visible issues of sexual violence in Latin America in a gendered and racial context, however recent scholarship has neglected to look at sexual violence in the context of people with disabilities. In this text, I aim to uncover how the human rights, and more specifically, sexual rights, are understood and treated for this highly marginalized group of people in Guatemala, a country that has endured heavy amounts of violence and trauma both contemporarily and historically. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted at institutions for disability services in urban Guatemala, I paint a picture of how the contemporary social and political climate involving violence, nearly complete impunity for crimes, culturally engrained patriarchal norms and neoliberal policies affect this group of people who are often depoliticized through patronizing portrayals in media and the public arena. Using in depth investigations of Guatemalan law and observational work and interviews conducted in public government-funded institutions, NGOs and non-profit organizations and human rights organizations, I seek to reveal the paradigms within the disparate types of institutions for understanding and treating people with disabilities. By questioning the institutional perceptions and treatments of the sexuality and sexual abuse of people with intellectual and psychological disabilities, I seek to examine the different ways cognitive disability has been socially constructed in Guatemala and the different reasons behind this group's social abandonment and high rates of sexual violence towards them. This work problematizes medical and charity models utilized for understanding disability that have been implemented through law, institutional and public policies, and societal misconceptions. This research also challenges Western disability policies and conceptions that have been imposed in developing countries like Guatemala, and questions the possibility to create spaces of local disability rights activism in spite of high risk factors for violence and neoliberal policies that limit political protest.
Unofficial Accountability: A Proposal for the Permanent Women's Tribunal on Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict
(The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, 2005) Terrell, Fleming
The ongoing sexual violation of women during recent conflicts stands in sharp contrast to increasing recognition that rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual violence in armed conflict violate international law. This paper argues that State-based fora cannot adequately hold individual perpetrators and State sponsors of such violence accountable. Accordingly, it posits that “unofficial” mechanisms---created by private individuals without authorization from any State---be considered as means to eliminate impunity for sexual violence committed during armed conflict. To that end, it evaluates the “people’s tribunal” format, in which proceedings similar to a judicial trial are organized and carried out by private individuals. The paper traces the historical development of people’s tribunals, focusing on their use by the international women’s movement. A close analysis of the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery during WWII illustrates the potential effectiveness of the format for addressing sexual violence against women during armed conflict. Based on this example, the paper argues that a people’s tribunal could serve not simply as a last resort for victims denied justice in other fora, but rather as a lasting compliment to established international legal institutions. Accordingly, the paper concludes by proposing the creation of a Permanent Women’s Tribunal for Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict and describing the attributes that would best enable the Tribunal to serve as a legitimate source of justice for victims, while also having a progressive influence on State-based legal institutions and society as a whole.
Using narratives to explore the role of gender-based violence and inequality on the reproductive health and disease status of HIV+ African immigrant women
(2013-08) Learman, Joy Allison; Busch-Armendariz, Noël Bridget; Davis, King E.
The United Nations Population Fund has identified gender inequality and gender-based violence as two of the main threats to women's reproductive health. In fact, researchers have estimated that between one quarter and one half of all women with sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, have abusive partners. Given the pervasiveness and far-reaching effects of these phenomena, it is essential to take steps to mitigate the possible negative consequences on women's reproductive health, including HIV status. This exploratory qualitative research study was designed to gain further insight into the contextual factors and personal experiences of HIV positive African immigrant women, with the goal of informing the development of contextually-tailored HIV risk reduction strategies. This study, guided by a theoretical framework based on Feminist Theory, Critical Race Theory and the Theory of Gender and Power, utilized in-depth interviews with six HIV positive African immigrant women. Narrative analysis was used to explore the women's narratives on the role of gender-based violence and inequality on their disease status. The main overarching theme revealed in the women's narratives was that marriage is a vulnerable status that can actually put women at risk for contracting HIV. This vulnerability is based on social norms that state once women are married, they: 1) should not say "No" to sex with their husbands, 2) should not ask their husbands to use a condom, and 3) should not divorce husbands for having concurrent sexual partners. The women's narratives showed how the gender norms and decision-making process they observed in their families of origin, and in the larger community, affect their sexual decision making in their intimate relationships. Their narratives also introduced us to their experiences of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, as well as physical and emotional neglect. Finally, listening to the narratives of HIV positive African immigrant women educated us on the stigma and silence around HIV in their community, in addition to paving the way for recommendations on preventing the spread of HIV in their communities in the United States, as well as abroad. Implications for social work practice and policy, as well as future research are discussed.
What are we rehearsing? : transforming the carceral logic of drama-based interpersonal violence prevention
(2022-02-27) Looney, Rowan Kairos; Bonin-Rodriguez, Paul
Get Sexy Get Consent’s temporal limitations prevent systemic change. UT Austin boasts the interactive performance, Get Sexy Get Consent, as the crown jewel of Theatre for Dialogue, its campus interpersonal violence prevention program. Each Get Sexy performance follows a precise formula that adapts Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner and theorist Augusto Boal’s forum theatre exercises. However, the Get Sexy performance formula upholds a linear, hypothetical framework for understanding sexual violence. Over the course of an in-depth interview process with Theatre for Dialogue facilitators, trainers, and employees, I determine ableism and carceral feminism are chiefly responsible for Get Sexy’s limited understanding of sexual harm. In place of Get Sexy’s current structure, I argue for the program to transform its conceptualization of individuality and linearity. Chapter 1 identifies the key interventions Get Sexy makes. Chapter 2 conducts a social movement historiography on the Get Sexy Program. Chapter 3 imagines how a temporal shift would open the Get Sexy program up to support greater healing.
‘What I have to say is important’ : including youth voices in conversations about sexual violence
(2018-05-03) Buchanan, Taylor Marie; Sylvie, George
Sexual violence – rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse – impacts youth at an alarming rate. One in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Youth are also at risk for dating violence. Twenty-one percent of girls and 10 percent of boys experience dating violence while in high school, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But adults have created a culture that discourages youth from saying #MeToo. In determining whether and how to have conversations about sex, some parents and teachers stay silent, others talk too much. Both approaches prevent youth from asking questions about healthy relationships, reporting sexual violence and seeking support if their boundaries are crossed. In such conditions, sexual violence becomes tolerated and normalized. Youth are eager to have their voices heard. Following the Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 students and staff inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, survivors vowed #NeverAgain. These high schoolers took to the streets to speak openly against adults failing to protect them from gun violence. Against this backdrop of youth activism, a group of teenagers stepped on stages across Austin, Texas, this spring. They devised a play about healthy relationships and consent, based on their own experiences with sexual violence. From February to April 2018, they performed their play, “Just Ask” 22 times in nine middle schools. Their work as student activists offers a window into one form of peer-led prevention with potential for change. Sexual violence is preventable. Youth do not have to grow up in a culture of shame and silence. To get there, a holistic approach is needed. Talking about it won’t fix the problem altogether. But empowering youth to be active participants in these conversations, seen and heard, is a promising place to start.