The Politics of Sexual Violence

DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0001
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0001
 The Politics of Sexual
Violence: Rape,
Identity and Feminism
Alison Healicon
Independent Researcher, UK

DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0001
© Alison Healicon 2016
‘ˆ–…‘˜‡””‡’”‹–‘ˆ–Š‡Šƒ”†…‘˜‡”͝•–‡†‹–‹‘ͥͣͤ͜͢͞͝Ǧ͝Ǧͣ͟͝Ǧͣ͢͠͝͝Ǧ͝
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First published 2016 by
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www.palgrave.com/pivot
doi: 10.1057/9781137461728

DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0001
 Contents
1 Sexual Violence 1
2 Identity 16
3 Credibility 40
4 Responsibility 62
5 Agency 86
6 Practice 109

Bibliography 123
Index 134

DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0001 v
 1
Sexual Violence
Abstract: Chapter 1 outlines the purpose of the book
which is to examine the obvious and obscure processes
of compartmentalisation and categorisation that define
what sexual violence is and who ‘rape victims’ are, with
particular focus on Rape Culture in its trivialisation
of rape and the psychological discourse of harm which
sensationalises the ‘rape victim’. To set the parameters
of the book, sexual violence is defined in relation to
compartmentalisation, the methodology is outlined, and
participants are presented.

Healicon, Alison. The Politics of Sexual Violence: Rape,

Identity and Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015. doi: 10.1057/9781137461728.0002.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0002 
 The Politics of Sexual Violence

My experiences with the term [victim] almost universally involve

revealing to someone relatively uninformed that I’ve been raped
by someone not known to me ... One memorable response was
‘oh, so it was a stranger rape then?’ The tone of the conversation
changed completely from that moment. She wanted to know the
details. Would it help me to talk about what he did, she wondered?
The voyeurism was dripping from every single word. Don’t get me
wrong, I’ve had conversations where I’ve experienced the sigh and
the ‘oh, one of those’ reactions when you say the man who raped
you was someone close to you as well. There’s usually no voyeurism
there – just a strained sympathy underlined with the implication
that, well, that doesn’t really count then, does it? What I’d like to be
better understood is that neither of these reactions is the right one.
Neither is supportive. Neither is what we want women to receive
when we talk about rape. We can get so caught up in our anger at
the lack of acknowledgement and denial of the seriousness of rape
that it almost seems like the ‘shock and awe’ reaction must be one to
envy. It isn’t. It’s based on an entirely mythical conception of what
the harm of rape is, and the nosiness and voyeurism surrounding
something people believe to be horrific but rare. It’s the cliff edge
where the conversation changes from one involving you as a living,
breathing person, to one about a myth in someone else’s mind.
(Lyra)

Recent media interest in historic childhood sexual abuse and rape, perpe-
trated within institutions and by celebrities, has promoted an awareness
of sexual violence and its psychological impact. However, this particular
cultural framing of sexual violence is problematic because it regurgitates
rape mythology and pop psychology misrepresenting sexual violence
and those who have experienced rape. This book, therefore, investigates
and critiques the obvious and obscure processes of compartmentalisa-
tion and categorisation, which define what sexual violence is and who
‘rape victims’ are, particularly within Rape Culture and the psychological
discourse of harm (O’Dell 2003). Contemporary Rape Culture normal-
ises and therefore trivialises male sexualised violence, compartmentalis-
ing and ranking ‘types’ of rape according to assumed severity and rarity.
The psychological paradigm sensationalises the supposed symptoms

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 Sexual Violence 

of the traumatised ‘rape victim’. In a process of categorisation, through

pathologisation and diagnostic criteria that provide the psy-professional
with tools to assess her credibility and ascertain her complicity, she is
(re)produced as disreputable and diminished. Both Rape Culture and
the psychological paradigm rely on a fixed and inevitably gendered
essentialism that denies female agency and blames women for their
own victimisation. The individualism of victim-blaming also absents
from critical analysis those who are really responsible for orchestrating,
perpetrating, ignoring, and excusing sexual violence.
The processes of compartmentalisation and of categorisation are
problematic, as Lyra suggests, because both preclude the possibility of
continuing as a ‘living, breathing person’. In rape, Winkler (2002) asserts
the ‘victim’s’ sense of self is destroyed so she no longer recognises the
person she was and is. In the aftermath of rape, this dehumanisation
is reproduced in secondary encounters with others’ expectations and
judgements (Brison 2002). Standing on a metaphorical ‘cliff edge’ the
individual is either recognised as legitimate, a ‘proper victim’, and invited
into the ‘rape victim’ identity position, or rendered unbelievable and
excluded from categorisation (Butler 2004). The type of sexual violence
she experienced contributes to her assessment as credible. Whether
recognised or not, she is defined in relation to myths and presumptions.
In order to advance an alternative account that might sustain her as a
‘living, breathing person’, this research is grounded within the concerns
of 12 women who have experienced rape either as a child and/or as an
adult. Their priorities are supported in a supplementary review of reports,
policy, memoirs, and media debate. The nuance and detail in women’s
accounts challenge the oppositional politics of compartmentalisation
and restrictions of categorisation, which inhibit the accurate reflection
of experience. The subtleties within these accounts highlight the need
for a social and political, rather than psychological, response that avoids
pathologisation, trivialisation, or indeed sensationalism.
The approach pursued in this book prioritises women’s accounts and
engages critically with feminist theory and practice. Feminism is histori-
cally and practically significant as an alternative and political response to
sexual violence (Jones and Cook 2008) in spite of episodic backlashes that
propose its irrelevance (McRobbie 2009) and state interventions into the
feminist voluntary sector that tend towards its depoliticisation (Matthews
1994; Whittier 2009). However, the processes of compartmentalisation of
sexual violence as either serious or trivial, and the categorisation of ‘rape

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

victims’ into credible or responsible, are challenged as they appear within

the feminism of Roiphe (1993), Herman (2001), Brownmiller (1975), and
MacKinnon (1995) as well as the activism of SlutWalk. Offered instead is
an attempt at an ethical approach that both rejects the essentialism of the
enduring and inevitably female victim, and locates trauma within the
context of power dynamics and structural inequalities. Drawing from
women’s accounts, feminism is both critiqued and reiterated as crucial to
the possibility of living differently.

Compartmentalising rape

Defining rape is both complicated and unequivocal. Academic and

fieldwork definitions have changed over time and are inevitably limited.
For example, within feminism, sexual violence encompasses rape, sexual
assault, and childhood sexual abuse, but locating experience within
structural and gendered inequalities demands the addition of a range of
oppressive sexualised behaviour such as ‘forced marriage, sexual harass-
ment and stalking, trafficking and sexual exploitation, crimes of honour
and female genital mutilation’ (Coy et al. 2007: 4). The sex and gender
of the perpetrator and ‘victim’ matters too. In terms of scale alone,
feminism suggests it is mostly men who sexually victimise mostly girls
and women. Within policy and the caring professions, though, rape and
sexual violence are not gender specific but the product of faulty or disad-
vantaged families (Healicon 2012; Doyle 2006). Disparate definitions and
explanations contribute to the compartmentalisation of sexual violence
and the categorisation of the ‘rape victim’. For example, within policy
women who have been raped and were drunk are questionably credible
(Itzin 2006), and those with unspent criminal convictions are excluded
from claiming criminal injuries compensation (May and Featherstone
2011), suggesting some women are more deserving ‘victims’ than others.
Fundamentally, rape as it is documented in UK legislation (National
Archives 2003) is the non-consensual penile penetration of the vagina,
mouth, or anus. Consent, recently defined in the 2003 Sexual Offences
Act, is the freedom and capacity to choose to have sex. The ‘victim’
is incapacitated and therefore unable to make this choice if there is
violence, the threat of violence, if she is unlawfully detained, asleep
or unconscious, or was unable to communicate her consent through
physical disability or drugs. It is stipulated that under 16s do not have

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 Sexual Violence 

the capacity to consent. Within the confines of this specific statutory

definition, there is no requirement for physical violence, or to establish
the relationship between the individuals, or to evidence how they pre-
sented themselves. Ideological and practical matters obstruct cultural
access to the legal definition and the embodied experience of rape. Rape
mythology and victim blaming, implicit within institutional practices,
obfuscate experiences of sexual violence, polarising interpretation. There
is a chasm between the lived experience and the cultural articulation of
rape.
For example, Marhia (2008) found the media was highly selective in
its reporting of rape, with a disproportionate representation of the most
violent and aggravated stranger rapes, cases leading to conviction, or
rapes involving underage girls. Furthermore, rape is depicted as isolated
incidents resulting from individual pathology rather than a pattern
within the wider social and political context. Polarisation of experience,
as a motif, demonises perpetrators and further victimises ‘victims’. In
the representational sphere, the malicious ‘girl who cried rape’ is pitted
against the falsely accused and ‘wronged man’ (Marhia 2008). These
tropes are especially prominent in the reportage of recent historical
sexual abuse trials involving celebrities in the wake of the Jimmy Savile
investigation, but with an additional polarisation: our more knowledge-
able and proactive present is contrasted with the collusive and ignorant
past. In policy, criminal justice remedies are prioritised (Phipps 2010),
consequently accentuating the most recent, violent, or evidential of cases
so that women who do not report are perceived as a criminal justice
problem rather than requiring different services. In the sexual violence
field, Lyra anticipates different responses depending on whether she is
speaking of intimate partner or stranger rape.
The gap between the representation and experience of rape, evidence
of the process of compartmentalisation, is similarly exaggerated within
the feminism of Roiphe’s (1993) early critique of the concept of ‘date rape’,
which had catastrophic consequences for feminism’s authority to define
rape and ‘rape victim’ identity (described further in chapter two). In her
article, Date Rape’s Other Victim Roiphe (1993: np) suggests that rape has
become a catch-all definition, that ‘has stretched beyond bruises and
knives, threats of death or violence to include emotional pressure and
the influence of alcohol. The lines between rape and sex begin to blur.’
Disregarding the acknowledgement of emotional coercion as a precur-
sor to rape, as the misguided and scaremongering ideology of ‘rape crisis

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

feminists’, her main concern with this ‘blurring’ is for date rape’s other
victims: those women victimised by a feminism that does not differenti-
ate between victims of rape jokes and rape, and takes ‘struggle’, ‘power’,
and ‘pursuit’ (Roiphe 1993: np) out of female sexuality. Moreover, to
insist on the harm of ‘date rape’, the ‘gray [sic] area in which one person’s
rape may be another’s bad night’ (Roiphe 1993: np) undermines the sig-
nificance of real and ‘brutal’ rape. Indeed, Roiphe (1993: np) suggests, ‘if
we are going to maintain an idea of rape, then we need to reserve it for
instances of physical violence, or the threat of physical violence’.
Although Roiphe attempts to articulate personal lived reality, which
she feels is misrepresented in feminist definitions of sexual violence, her
writing purposefully opposes ‘bad night’ and ‘brutal rape’. Within both
public and some feminist debates, then, the articulation of rape relies
on this process of compartmentalisation, the organisation and ranking
of certain behaviour and experiences through trivialisation and sensa-
tionalisation. For Mardorossian (2014) this does more than excuse the
perpetrator and blame the victim, as it is only in the most exceptional
and violent cases that the perpetrator-as-monster is deemed responsible.
Indeed, this particular process functions to reproduce structural inequal-
ities. Mardorossian (2014) suggests the structural, rather than biological,
positions of hegemonic masculinity and feminised ‘other’ are imposed
in rape. This reproduction of structural oppression is exacerbated in
sensationalising and thereby legitimising physically violent rape as the
defining experience. The gap is extended further in the trivialisation and
denial of most other rape encounters. These polarised and ranked expe-
riences lose depth and complexity (Phipps 2015), validating the gap, as
alternative and nuanced experiences are excluded, but which are noticed
within accounts from women:
And you can look at it as just one person’s act against one other person
and I guess especially in recent years, media coverage always hones in on
these very extreme cases ... where it is really easy to just kind of take that
individual perpetrator and really vilify them and turn them into something
that is so evil and non-human and different to us as ‘normal’ people who
don’t do things like that. But really we do and it’s happening all the time,
everywhere to lots and lots of people. (Violet)
There was a sort of a feeling ... if it had been sink estates and working class
families we wouldn’t be shocked but because you are painting a picture of
people that wear Marks and Spencer clothes and drink gin and tonic and go
abroad on their holidays, that’s messing with our heads. (Caitlin)

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 Sexual Violence 

But there was an element of somebody who you trusted doing that to you.
Who then could you trust? ... Whereas if it was outside, I’m not saying it’s
worse in or out, but in your own home where you are supposed to be safe
and with my children in ... . (Eliza)
... she said ‘I know how you feel because I was sexually abused when I was
12’, but that just made me feel awful because I thought that’s so much worse
than what’s happened to me. (Ruby)

In these accounts women both identify, and are affected by, cultural
assumptions that bear little resemblance to their experiences of rape. It
is presumed sexual violence is confined to disadvantaged communities
or is the product of an evil individual, and that stranger and child rape
are worse than adult rape by someone known. However, in their asser-
tion of difference from these cultural presumptions, women recognise
their exclusion. In trivialisation and sensationalisation not only are these
extremes of experience reduced and ‘flattened out’ (Phipps 2015), but
women judge themselves and are ranked, silenced, and excluded from
debates and services. Roiphe intended to take rape seriously, so rightly
questioned the denial of an active female sexuality and the inevitability
of traumatisation, themes prioritised in this book. However, in deploying
compartmentalisation to argue women’s responsibility and trivialise the
violence of language, Roiphe reproduces rather than challenges a cultural
representation of rape that precludes the material reality of women’s
experiences. Gay (2014: 135) challenges this insistence on the difference
between the representation of rape and real experiences of rape to suggest
conversely that ‘[w]e cannot separate violence in fiction from violence in
the world no matter how hard we try.’ It is not about judging severity
in order to assess the legitimacy of the experience and the individual.
Rather, certain language and representations are deployed to trivialise
and conceal the real meaning and experience of rape, so although ‘we
talk about rape ... we don’t talk carefully about rape’ (Gay 2014: 132).
An ethical exploration of sexual violence is required. One that respects
women’s experiences without excusing the perpetrator. For Cahill (2001:
112) ‘women’s experiences must be articulated and respected’; otherwise,
the implications of rape are more easily denied.
In an attempt to write sexual violence ‘carefully’, a note is required on
the terminology employed in this book. As the study considers the con-
temporary categorisation of the ‘rape victim’, priority is given to women’s
experiences of rape that occurred on one or more occasion, at any point
in their lives, as it is legally defined. Although not all participants in this

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

study named their experiences as rape, it was agreed that ‘rape’ is an

accurate description. However, whilst ‘sexual violence’ and ‘childhood
sexual abuse’ are deployed to denote a variety of sexualised behaviour
including rape imposed upon a non-consenting adult or child, when
associated directly with participants these terms signify rape. This is
not to obfuscate the experiences of rape, but rather to avoid repetitive
writing. ‘Abuse’ is recognised as problematic, both obscuring the dehu-
manisation and objectification of a person, and acknowledging a broader
range of behaviour not limited to physical violence. ‘Re-victimisation’ is
also problematic, and when used here it denotes a pattern of systematic
rape rather than suggesting that she is prone to repeated incidents.
Unless otherwise stated, the perpetrator is male, and because of the way
in which the cohort was recruited, all participants are female. This is not
to deny sexual violence against boys and men nor the perpetration of
abuse by women, but rather to recognise that within this contemporary
historical and social context, sexual violence is articulated as a gendered
relation.

Situating the research

Twelve women chose to become involved in this research in order to chal-

lenge the compartmentalisation of sexual violence and the categorisation
of the ‘rape victim’ identity position. They felt their embodied reality was
constrained by others’ assumptions, ignorance, and judgements. Making
sense of their experiences of sexual violence is a moral and ethical issue
(Rowntree 2009), and in spite of the difficulties of speaking out loud,
women offered to articulate publicly the nuances of their lives. Not only
to counteract stereotypes and labels, but also, in providing a personal
resource for those working in the field (Jordan 2008), women who par-
ticipated in this research hoped to educate others in order to improve
organisational response. For example, Eliza says:
I told (my sister) that you was coming tonight and I regret saying I’d do (the
interview). That was just for a moment. She said ‘You’re bloody stupid you.
Will that make you feel any better?’ so I said ‘well yes it will after’. Because
I feel like I might make some small contribution to help other women. Not
personally for me. But it is for me, cos it makes me (feel better). Maybe if
she just takes one sentence that I’ve said. If she takes a sentence out of what
everybody says, that’ll add up won’t it?

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 Sexual Violence 

Eliza overcame her fear of disclosure because she wanted her account
to help others feel less stigmatised. It matters to women who have
experienced sexual violence and those working in the field that they are
typically unheard or misconstrued; therefore, an ethical and responsible
research approach is imperative. Woodward (2000) identified three
significant responsibilities that became apparent as researcher of written
narratives of childhood sexual abuse. Hearing personal experiences of
trauma is an especially privileged position, and representing the voices
of others requires not only the accurate reflection of content and mean-
ing, but also an articulation of the researcher’s agenda and methods.
For, as Coffey (1999) suggests, research concerns mutuality and the co-
construction of on-going interaction and interpretation. In documenting
other’s experiences, the researcher speaks from a position of authority,
on behalf of women, and as such some discussion of her suitability to
this task is required.
Woodward highlighted the importance of locating the author in the
research process, but Eliza suggests another important responsibility: to
make a difference in people’s lives. Kelly (1988: 73) summarises it thus:
feminist research insists upon, ‘a commitment which includes not con-
doning abuse explicitly or implicitly, seeing the purpose ... as increasing
understanding in order that more appropriate responses can be devel-
oped, and wanting to contribute to a long term goal of ending violence
in the lives of women and children’. In recognition of the inequitable
context in which sexual violence takes place, ethics demands that writing
becomes ‘a job of justice’ (Winkler 2002: 13) that avoids sensationalising
and trivialising, compartmentalising and categorising, and offers the
possibility of transformation. Each of the four responsibilities identi-
fied are considered here in order to make myself visible as a reflexive
researcher (Shacklock and Smyth 1998). My starting point, therefore, is
to suggest my suitability for this work and my legitimacy as an inter-
mediary are crucial to legitimate my representation of the accounts that
were entrusted to me.
After years of working as a feminist activist within the UK domes-
tic and sexual violence voluntary sector, my role in this research was
primarily to facilitate the publication of nuanced experiences of sexual
violence in order to realise Eliza’s hope of contributing to change. I have
not been raped, but my political motivation is the need to restate in
different arenas experiences that are still not heard. As an intermediary,
then, I could offer a practitioner’s perspective and another opportunity

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

to disseminate these alternative accounts in addition to the variety of

pathways participants already utilised such as blogs and teaching as well
as in their daily encounters with others.
Personal experiences could provide a researcher with a familiar con-
nection to the participant, one that is unavailable to me and which I
can only grasp vicariously. And of course morally, there are two main
problems with a researcher who does not share experiences with their
participants. Firstly, I cannot claim to know what rape is like, so how can
I really understand something I have not experienced myself? Secondly,
I aim to privilege others’ accounts, but there may be occasions when my
analysis is different to that offered by the participant (Fine and Weis 2010).
The essence to both is a claim to truth that originates in experience that
ethically requires careful consideration and prioritising. It also signifies
the potential to abuse an authorial power, not rooted in experience, to
make ignorant, political points. However, rather than adopt an objective
and dispassionate approach that eliminates the need to acknowledge
any personal interference by the researcher at all, I decided it was more
ethical to celebrate co-constructed dialogue. I determined to evaluate
my presumptions and continually check, refine, and review, alongside
the participant, the joint research enterprise. I believe those of us who
do not share these experiences are morally obliged to listen and strive to
understand and identify processes and commonalities; otherwise, there
is no possibility of change.
To further elucidate my role as facilitator, considered here are the
interview and interpretative processes. As a practitioner in the field of
sexual violence, I appreciate the privilege of hearing intimate histories.
In recognition of the difficulties in speaking about experiences of sexual
violence, and in order to reduce the potential distress that interviews
might provoke, attempts were made to prepare participants beforehand
with information about the project and myself, ensure confidentiality,
and create a safe environment. Most of the participants knew me as a
friend, as a colleague, or as a worker and put themselves forward for
interview on that basis of prior familiarity. Others were invited to par-
ticipate by their counsellor, who also knew me. Good practice guidelines
were consulted and implemented (Campbell et al. 2009; 2010). For
example, I was patient and respectful, and responded with warmth, com-
passion and understanding. I prioritised participants’ emotional wellbe-
ing. Rather than prepare questions, the participant was invited to relate
her own narrative. As Woodward (2000: 39) suggests, ‘what was most

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 Sexual Violence 

beneficial to my participants was the fact that I wanted to know about

their experiences: I believed them, and felt that they had something
valuable and worthwhile to say. I had created a space where they could
tell their story.’ Furthermore, as an informed and political practitioner,
participants knew that I was already and unconditionally on their side
and could hear and bear what they experienced as unbearable. So, all
interviews were audiotaped, and transcriptions returned for comment
and amendment. Maya prepared a written account instead, and we met
regularly to discuss the research and my findings. Agatha and Lyra were
not interviewed but contributed personal and critical comments in their
on-going review of draft chapters.
The interview process felt secure and ethical because it was founded
in developing relationships of mutual respect that continued through
informal conversations and the sharing of transcripts and draft chapters
up until publication. The longevity of these relationships facilitated the
removal of the academic distinction between researcher and researched
(Skinner et al. 2005). Over time as the participants became more familiar
with me and the research process, confidence in their contribution and
critique flourished, equalising my power as author. Indeed I was reli-
ant on their on-going critical evaluation to verify that I had accurately
heard, and represented, key themes. Drafts also provided an opportunity
to engage further in debate as participants challenged, supported, or
adjusted the political points I attempted to hone. Choosing particular
extracts from the depth of emotive and eloquent transcripts was a dif-
ficult task, but it was informed by a combination of the priorities noted
by participants, issues apparent within my work situation, and the aca-
demic and theoretical context. Out of these accounts arose the themes of
trivialisation, sensationalism, categorisation, and compartmentalisation.
Each quote is wonderfully expressive and simultaneously contains dif-
ferent sentiments, but rather than attending to every detail or emotion,
I decided to pursue the prioritised theme, leaving the reader to make
further considerations. Although ultimately I had authorial control, as
a reflective practitioner I strove to make the research I produced remain
accountable to the participants and to the field.
The purpose of this book is to make a difference in the lives of women
and in fieldwork, a crucial component of feminist research. Implementing
a process similar to the participatory action research spiral (Kemmis and
McTaggart 2000), participants were involved in reflection, research and
action, in order to effect change. Having someone take seriously their

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

experiences reduced stigma. Reading their own transcripts, and being

introduced to theory and practice responses, created opportunities to
re-evaluate themselves within the context of inequalities. My role in dis-
semination of the research enabled the participants to connect through
their narratives with other women and agencies, creating educative
opportunities and raising awareness. It could be argued that change on
such a small scale does not equate with the traditional notion of social
transformation and that focusing on these minutiae of resistances trivial-
ises the need for systemic social change (Kelly and Radford 1998). Indeed
Bourke (2010: 430) would claim that such a focus dilutes the meaning of
transformation to where ‘passivity itself became a defence mechanism’.
However, in a society that renders women responsible for the violence
perpetrated against them, such personal and organisational transforma-
tions ought to be recognised as a significant stage of an incremental and
long-term process.

The participants

It has been a privilege to hear experiences of women who volunteered to

participate in this study and to have their continued support and involve-
ment in the writing process. I did not attempt to find a representative
group of women but instead relied on women putting themselves forward
for interview. This felt more respectful of their decision to contribute.
Rather than present life histories of each interviewee, the brief accounts
provided here focus on capturing and representing the predominant
feeling or concern expressed by the individual. All accounts contained
elements of similar themes, but each narrative had a different emphasis,
which became more apparent with each re-reading of the transcripts.
Caitlin was keen to challenge the category victim. Rather than suffer
the indignity of victimhood, Caitlin engaged in the work of recovery to
transform herself away from the victim in constant crisis to the unre-
stricted and agentic survivor in control of her life. Eliza recounted the
shame she felt once she decided to report her ex-boyfriend to the police.
It was imperative that Eliza should keep control of her narrative in order
to prevent further encounters with shame. Amy’s account focused on the
difficulties of her current life. Her physical impairments and the emo-
tional distress she often felt in the present were attributed to her experi-
ences of childhood sexual abuse, which at the time and since have been

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 Sexual Violence 

compounded by the continuous lack of available and accessible support.

Central to Donna’s narrative was complicity. She felt herself responsible
for two experiences of rape and two sexual assaults because at the time
she had been ‘stupid, drunk, and vulnerable’. Dawn felt herself dimin-
ished as a result of her experience and completed her narrative without
naming the incident as rape, an issue that remained significant to her in
her comments on the drafts.
Victoria was struggling with recovering memories of childhood sexual
abuse which she felt prevented her from knowing the truth about what
happened. Her partner Elaine also wanted some resolution to the pain of
remembering, and their attempts to take back control in their lives were
curtailed as outsiders within an unfamiliar culture. Ruby expressed her
gratitude to all her friends and her therapist who had supported her since
she was raped. Ruby was more angry towards the two men who observed
her rape than towards the man who raped her, whom she refused to
categorise as a rapist. Maya felt that, whilst women’s organisations could
deal with her ‘seeking’ out sexual abuse as a child, as a previously prosti-
tuted woman, in their eyes her status as victim was jeopardised. Violet’s
account highlighted feminism as a political tool with which to explain
and reconsider her experiences of childhood sexual abuse. Agatha was
concerned with the stigmatisation and perceived difference attributed
to the ‘rape victim’, and Lyra disputed both the compartmentalisation of
sexual violence and the categorisation of the ‘rape victim’.

Outline of the book

The aim of this book is to provide a nuanced account of the priorities

that matter to women who have experienced sexual violence. In spite
of a proliferation of stories, particularly in the aftermath of the Jimmy
Saville investigation, sexual violence is articulated only in formulaic pro-
scriptions that tend to compartmentalise experience and categorise the
‘victim’. It is imperative to return to women’s accounts, located within
systemic oppression, to provide the details and complexity, encountered
in experience outside of the criminal justice system, and missing from
mainstream media representation. Therefore an apparent openness to
this once taboo situation in actuality has not extended society’s under-
standing of sexual violence, and there remains a fear of disclosure. This
book interrogates contemporary ‘rape victim’ identification from a

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

feminist and therefore political perspective, drawing on themes impor-

tant to the women interviewed. Chapters focus on identity, credibility,
responsibility, and political agency. It is offered as a resource to better
understand sexual violence articulated by women and to improve our
responses.
Chapter 2 considers women’s accounts of sexual violence to expose the
contemporary categorisation of the ‘rape victim’ as an inherently vulner-
able and careless, discreditable and tainted woman (Mardorossian 2014).
Caught within shame, the individualism of therapy culture, and the
oppositional politics of ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’, women describe a judged
and restricted life. To offer the possibility of agency and transformation,
in order to reassess subjectivity without categorisation, it is proposed
that identity is not fixed and singular, but rather complicit and resis-
tive (Foucault 1991; 2007), and emerges in ethical relations with others
(Butler 2006) and within language, power, and social structures.
Chapter 3 focuses on credibility assessment as a mechanism of cat-
egorisation. In the psychological discourse of harm (O’Dell 2003) the
‘rape victim’ is articulated therapeutically as inevitably and enduringly
damaged and stigmatised. So prolific is this discourse that it has become
the measure of women’s credibility and therefore their claim to truth.
Within women’s accounts a ‘credibility conundrum’ (Jordan 2004b) is
identified that presents clearly the heavily policed and often impossible
path to credibility. However, standing on the metaphorical cliff edge of
disclosure, opportunities arise in strategies such as silence and avoidance
to circumvent the inevitability of victimhood.
Chapter 4 questions victim-blaming presumptions. Originally, femi-
nism attempted to absolve women of their responsibility but denounced
their agency. Women’s accounts of ‘complicity’, mothers’ denial, and
female perpetration necessitate a more robust engagement with female
sexual agency particularly. Kelly’s (1997a) theorisation of relative pow-
erlessness offers an alternative that does not trivialise, sensationalise, or
excuse female-perpetrated abuse, but situates female agency within dif-
ferential power relations. However, women’s accounts spotlight the role
of others and the usually invisible perpetrator, so this theory is extended
to recognise the responsibility of wider society in the reiteration of sexual
violence.
Chapter 5 considers the contemporary feminist articulation of respon-
sibility and female sexual agency in SlutWalk. Two features of neolib-
eralism, the risk-aware and responsible citizen (Anderson and Doherty

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 Sexual Violence 

2008) and the commodification of experience (Phipps 2015), disrupted

SlutWalk’s celebration of ‘slut’ as the essential, active female sexuality. In
mainstream media feminism was blamed for sexualising young children.
In feminism pro-sex and victimising feminists became entrenched
and polarised positions. Therefore, returning to women’s accounts of
sexuality after sexual violence, it is proposed that female sexual agency is
neither passive nor free, but nuanced and irreducible to the presence or
absence of male sexuality.
The concluding chapter attends to the demands of feminist research
to improve practice response. In order to assess the study’s contribu-
tion, therefore, a summary of the concerns highlighted within women’s
accounts is provided, as they challenge the categorisation and essential-
ism of victim identity, and expose secondary harm that blames the vio-
lated woman and denies social responsibility. Evaluating this particular
and careful (Gay 2014) representation of rape highlights the limitations
of the research and raises further issues for practice. Recommendations
for practice are suggested.
Focusing on women’s accounts, the following chapters contribute to
existing knowledge pertaining to the impact of sexual violence. Also
offered are details and analysis of the secondary harm caused in our indi-
vidual and organisational responses, in order to identify and then remedy
our complicity within processes of categorisation and compartmentali-
sation. The summative recommendations suggest that whoever we are,
when we really listen to women who have experienced sexual violence,
we do so without differentiating between experiences, or assessing for
credibility or harm. That we acknowledge trauma, without it becoming
a defining presence, and we take seriously our responsibility to alleviate
sexual violence as a manifestation and reiteration of inequality.

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 2
Identity
Abstract: Chapter 2 considers women’s accounts of sexual
violence to expose the contemporary categorisation of
the ‘rape victim’ as an inherently vulnerable and careless,
discreditable and tainted woman (Mardorossian 2014).
Caught within shame, the individualism of therapy culture,
and the oppositional politics of ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’,
women describe a judged and restricted life. To offer the
possibility of agency and transformation, in order to
reassess subjectivity without categorisation, it is proposed
that identity is not fixed and singular, but rather complicit
and resistive (Foucault 1991; 2007) and emerges in ethical
relations with others (Butler 2006) and within language,
power, and social structures.

Healicon, Alison. The Politics of Sexual Violence: Rape,

Identity and Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015. doi: 10.1057/9781137461728.0003.

 DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0003
 Identity 

You can accept what happened and it was horrible, but it didn’t kill
me ... it’s part of what happened to me, but it is not everything that
happened to me and I can’t change it so I’ve just got to get on with it
(Agatha)

Those experiences [of childhood sexual abuse] are so kind of

formative that you can’t get away from it, you just can’t. You know I
was really young and I can’t think of myself as anything, then, d’you
know as someone who has suffered from abuse ... and obviously
who I am as a person is kind of because of that. Or not because but
that is always going to be part of it ... It’s not just like, d’you know a
physical pain or an emotional trauma or for whatever amount of
time, but you need to kind of recognise how much it affects people’s
lives, (Alison: the impact) the impact it has. Having said that I would
really not be happy, say somebody describing me as ‘damaged’. I
mean I might say it, jokingly, ‘oh well, I’m damaged goods anyway’
but I don’t like it. Whilst I do think you have to acknowledge the
impact it has, you also need to acknowledge that people do get over
it and people do get on with it and it doesn’t necessarily mean that
you are struggling forever now. It’s almost like a victimising thing,
like turning you into that eternal victim when really I don’t want to
see myself as that. I am certainly not that anymore in any shape or
form.
(Violet)

Agatha and Violet suggest that childhood sexual abuse is both horrible
and formative, but assert that these particular experiences contribute
to, rather than determine, their overall identity, one that continues
to change and develop with time. Whilst acknowledging the impact
of abuse, which in the West is perceived as inevitably and enduringly
catastrophic, Agatha and Violet resist the terminology and inherent
permanence of damage implicit in ‘victim’ categorisation. Indeed Violet
infers that victimisation is not solely located in the albeit formative
experience of rape necessarily, but also in the social expectations that
constitute and produce the ‘rape victim’ as an identity position in the
aftermath of rape. The need to articulate the events of sexual violence
as separate from victim identification indicates two problems with the
contemporary framing of the sexually violated victim: sexual violence

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

is understood as a special kind of gendered relation that is inevitably

damaging and precipitated by the inherent vulnerabilities of the female
victim; and such a victimised and victimising identity position denies
the possibility of female agency.
Extrapolating from the commentaries of women who have experienced
sexual violence, this chapter considers Mardorossian’s (2014) assertion
that the sexually victimised and blamed woman is a specific and rela-
tively recent identity categorisation. In locating this particular identity
position within the contemporary cultural context, Mardorossian chal-
lenges the essentialism of the ‘rape victim’ as inevitably and deficiently
female to promote instead a subject who is structurally rather than bio-
logically derived. In so doing she severs the presumed link between the
‘rape victim’s’ vulnerabilities and her responsibility for rape, and offers
the possibility of female agency. However, just as Agatha and Violet
suggest, the appropriation of ‘rape victim’ as an identity position in its
current configuration is problematic as it galvanises the operation of
category construction that delimits women’s lives. In order to critically
engage with categorisation of the ‘rape victim’, then, rather than pursue
the psychological notion of the inevitably fixed and damaged individual,
the aim here is to consider a range of theories that emphasise intersub-
jectivity. Supplementing the work of Mardorossian, it is argued that rape
victim identity is an intersubjective categorisation, constituted within
the intra-actions of bodies, social spaces, structures, language, and
matrices of power where distinct practices are deployed to monitor and
regulate. Intersubjectivity therefore signifies the importance of rape, not
as a women’s issue or of concern to specific women, but to society as a
whole (Mardorossian 2014). Furthermore, acknowledging human inter-
dependence as fundamental to normative existence demands a more
ethical relation with the other (Butler 2004), and this has implications
for practice and political transformation.

Identity in accounts of sexual violence

The following accounts, from interviews with women who have expe-
rienced sexual violence, convey meaning in excess of that extricated
for the purposes of this argument and have been selected because they
communicate particularly contradictory and competing ideas about
the contemporary articulation of the ‘rape victim’ as a specific identity

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 Identity 

position. Together the impact of sexual violence is clearly demonstrable.

Additional excerpts have been identified in each section.
I am not just this broken, fragmented person, I am a human being ... .
Because it would just be this emptying out, wouldn’t it, of, well it would be a
world view of being defined by what’s happened to me, rather than I existed
before any of it happened to me. (Caitlin)
it’s hard to live a normal life because you kind of think you are not normal.
(Elaine)
I remember telling somebody and she said ‘oh and you’re so normal’ ... What
do people think you are going to be and it is so common, you probably know
three other women who ‘are normal’. (Agatha)
There is always going to be a difference between your friends who haven’t
had that experience. (Ruby)
What happens when rape ... or abuse happens, you feel your body betrays
you ... you are cut off from your body, cut off from your anger. (Elaine)
(the police officer) asked if she could interview the children (as they had
been in house when she was raped), and I said ‘no you can’t.’ I said ‘I want
them to have a childhood ... I don’t want them thinking of their mum in that
way.’ (Eliza)
And that’s another thing, don’t ever call me a survivor or a victim. I hate
both of those words it makes me feel even weaker. I did get out of the situa-
tion but I got out of the situation in a very passive way ... . These labels should
not be used to define us, because of a single (or multiple life event) ... I am
first a human being and then a woman, a lesbian, a civil partner, a lover,
a daughter, sister, aunt, almost a mother, a carer, a friend. I am all these
things and many more and in no particular order, because it is the sum of
whom I am that defines me as unique. (Dawn)
It just changed who I was ... . I felt really pathetic and you know that victim
thing. (Ruby)
And the sense of respect that I get from her is not ‘poor you, all the things
you’ve been through’. It’s survivor in the right sense of the word. I think
what an amazing resilience that you have to survive all of that and be work-
ing through this now and I think that’s the positive use of the word survivor
isn’t it, that when you realise that it is life endangering events that we have
survived, that just being alive is an achievement. But just because you’ve
achieved that it doesn’t mean you can’t go and achieve more. (Caitlin)
Because if you are a victim and life is shit, it always will be. Well we might
as well give up and go home straightaway, hadn’t we? I think that is worse
than the original abuse, isn’t it? Because whatever happens to us, the awful

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

stuff that happened to me ... . That can’t determine my life. It is what I am

doing now that determines it, my choices that determine my life, isn’t it? I
think that’s too much within that kind of discourse of the victim. (Caitlin)
we have to look at it in the context of the system we live in which is kind of
restricting the way we can kind of think about things, or the terms you use
and people try to overcome it but it is really difficult to break out of that.
(Violet)

The dehumanising and objectifying process of sexual violence is ‘an

attempt to murder our identity (Winkler 2002: 36), to shatter and rede-
fine ‘out of existence’ the victim’s sense of self (Brison 2002: 45). In these
excerpts women speak of being broken and fragmented, of losing them-
selves, of suffering irreparable damage, and feeling disconnected from
their bodies. In the perpetrator’s denial of corporeal boundaries, she
becomes dispossessed of her body and mind, and differentiated from the
‘normal’. Brison and Winkler articulate this difference, as being branded,
stigmatised, victimised: For example, Brison (2002: 49) suggests that,
‘such an attempt [to distance one’s self from the degradation] is never
wholly successful and the survivor’s bodily sense of self is permanently
altered by an encounter with death that leaves one feeling ‘marked’ for
life’. Similarly, Winkler (2002: 100) observes that ‘[f]riends have defined
[her] now as rape traumatised and tattooed emotionally, and those
branded marks of pain, for them, would remain forever. The attack
permeated all of [her] existence, or so they thought, and left everything
about [her] damaged.’ Infiltrated by his violence, she is contaminated,
isolated in her difference and her potential to contaminate others.
It is clear from these excerpts that the destruction of the self in sexual
violence occurs, and is reproduced, in relationships and connections
with others. As noted in Winkler’s comment, it is her friends, family, and
supporters who sustain the belief in the permanence of stigmatisation.
For Bourke (2010: 7), ‘[r]apists literally invade and attempt to conquer
the sexual terrain of their victims, and through transforming her ‘no’
into a ‘yes’ strive to triumph over their social territory too.’ Whilst Brison
(2002) would argue that certain community is nurturing and neces-
sary for healing, in the above excerpts where demands are made to be
recognised as human, social proscription is rejected. Labelling, catego-
risation, and the resultant expectations are resisted as a further form of
violence. Identity descriptors such as survivor and victim are deployed
in the writing of Brison, Winkler, and Bourke with particular purpose,
to articulate the devastation caused and the effort required in recovery.

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 Identity 

But the excerpts expose such terminology especially as problematic in its

insistence on categorisation.
The need to avoid categorisation is reasonable though, given that the
‘rape victim’ is framed within contemporary Western culture as a blame-
worthy woman. Mardorossian (2014) argues that previously ‘victim’
referred to a person affected by tragic or criminal event(s) beyond and
unconnected to the individual’s psyche. However recently, victimhood,
epitomised in the ‘rape victim’, has come to denote a woman who, due to
her own carelessness or inherent vulnerability, is weak, overwhelmed, or
manipulated by an external source. Moreover, despite his perpetration, it
is the ‘victim’ who becomes the repository of taint and responsibility. As
an identity position, then, Mardorossian suggests that the ‘rape victim’
is not a fixed categorisation but one that is constituted within particular
social and historical contexts. Whilst Mardorossian is not suggesting
a fluid or fleeting subjectivity either, she does engage with identity as
disentangled from the biologically sexed body. The anti-essentialism
pursued by Mardorossian is considered here as it offers the possibility
of female agency and change whilst acknowledging a subjectivity tied to,
but not fixed within, social structures. Agency and change, as noted in
the accounts, are important themes for women whose lives are circum-
scribed by this categorisation.
Mardorossian (2014) suggests that contemporarily, the passive, weak,
and inevitably female rape victim is constituted in opposition to the
valorised autonomous, self-possessed, and agentic male. Unlike other
theories, which propose the gendered binary causes sexual violence in
the expression and enactment of aggressive masculinity and victim-
ised femininity, Mardorossian suggests that sexual violence sustains
this gendered polarity. She argues that an insatiable will to dominate
defines hegemonic masculinity and requires repeated performances of
supremacy through acts of violence since the dominance of masculinity
is only ever achieved and confirmed in the feminisation and subjugation
of the other. However, the subject position of hegemonic masculinity
and feminised other are structurally rather than biologically derived.
That is, Mardorossian (2014: 3) suggests that ‘dominant masculinity can
be occupied by either men or women, while structural femininity is a
position that may define and subordinate men, minorities, and other
marginalised groups just as effectively as it does the category women’.
These acts of violence are not necessarily sexually violent per se, but
by virtue of the event affirming the masculinity of the perpetrator and

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

the feminisation of the subjugated other, it is sexualised violence. As

Mardorossian suggests (2014: 17), it is not the case that every form of
violence is rape ‘but that rape is paradigmatic form all violation takes in
a culture where all violence is sexualised and where normative subjec-
tivity is produced through a reliance on an economy of dominance and
violation’. Although the gendered binary is separated from the biological
body, it requires sexualised acts of violence to sustain it. Therefore, in the
insistence of the centrality of the will to dominate in hegemonic mascu-
linity, sexual violence is intrinsic to the formation of gendered and other
marginalised subject positions.
Mardorossian asserts the primacy of rape in the constitution of race,
class, and gender to offer a theorisation that prioritises a relational identity
and recognises the necessity of a political response. If, as Mardorossian
suggests, sexual violence reproduces the gendered binary through the
imposition of dominance of hegemonic masculinity and structural femi-
ninity in sexualised acts of violence, then the contemporary rape victim
identity has significant implications for living a ‘life that counts’ (Butler
2004). Firstly, contemporary rape victim identity is sustained both by
its historicity and a kind of contemporary momentum. Secondly, the
presentation of the gendered self, and the ‘rape victim’ especially, is
severely restricted; and thirdly, articulating agency, especially a gendered
agency, within structural and discursive limits is possible but remains
experientially and theoretically problematic. Whilst Mardorossian
situates the inevitability of the female rape victim within this particular
historical and cultural context, and decouples victimhood from women
and dominance from men, the presentation of this categorisation, and
female agency, require further consideration. The restrictions and resist-
ances to rape victim identity as a categorisation constituted relationally
within this specific social and historical context are explored in relation
to themes identified from within women’s accounts.

Dissociated and damaged

[Childhood sexual abuse or rape] changes who you are. And maybe you
have a memory of who you were before and it’s really silly to think that you
can just be who you were before because you cannot be. But if you have a
memory of who you were before and you want to get back to yourself, get
pieces of yourself together ... you will have a question ‘who am I?’ and ‘what
do I want to do with this?’ (Elaine)

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 Identity 

The notion that identity is singular, rational, and fixed is challenged

within accounts from women who describe their experiences of sexual
violence in terms of dissociation, a feeling of separation from the inci-
dents, the body, and memories. The traumatised and splintered self offers
an opportunity to reconsider subjectivity that incorporates resistance to
categorisation that defines and delimits the rape victim as ‘damaged’.
Drawing on Furedi’s (2004) exposition of therapy culture, this section
considers identity in its contemporary expression to explore the limits of
psychology as the defining discourse for understanding the construction
of the self and the ‘rape victim’ in particular. Foucault’s (1991) theorisa-
tion of ‘disciplinary power’ is then considered to further identify the
constitution of the subject within particular and contradictory discourse
and relations of power that privilege certain knowledge and practice. In
order to pursue the possibility of agency, Foucault’s (2007) ‘acts of free-
dom’ are also considered in relation to a gendered normative subjectivity
as it is constructed in the dominance of hegemonic masculinity and
structural femininity.
In the excerpts above, dissociation, intrusive memories, and paralysing
fear have come to signify an identity position that solidifies with every
response and imposition of cultural expectation. The entanglement of
the self in relation to others in a process to ‘rape victim’ identification
is apparent in Brison’s (2002: 8) description of the forensic examina-
tion that took place after she was raped: ‘For about an hour the two of
them went over me like a piece of meat, calling out measurements of
bruises and other assessments of damage, as if they were performing
an autopsy. This was just the first of many incidents in which I felt as
if I was experiencing things posthumously.’ In the dehumanising attack
Brison was left for dead, her sense of self shattered and dissociated, but
these encounters with metaphorical death in others’ responses affirm
and reproduce dehumanisation and dissociation, leaving her continually
doubting who she was. Professionals – doctors, psychiatrists, academics,
legislators – categorise the self, arbitrarily define, assess, and monitor
according to cultural standards of normality (Burman 2003) or behav-
iour expected of the rape victim (Warner 2003). Her interpretation or
presence is not necessarily required. In categorisation, the individual
affects of sexual violence are re-articulated in psychological terminology,
the primary sense-making rhetoric. Expression of violation, therefore, is
not testament to social injustice, but psychological problems she has to
manage. However, it is apparent in the excerpts above that this framing

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

of rape victim identity is contested. For Brison and others, the destruc-
tion caused in the aftermath of rape necessitates rethinking identity as
a fixed reality and especially in relation to others within the culturally
accepted explanatory framework of psychology.
In contemporary Anglo-American societies, Furedi (2004) argues,
therapeutic culture has become the most important signifier of mean-
ing in everyday life. The proliferation of therapeutic culture occurred
alongside the neoliberal preoccupation with individualism, risk, and
responsibility, at a time when individuals are severed from strong ideo-
logical commitments to communities and politics, and uncertainties in
life are transformed into high risk encounters. As such, Furedi suggests,
structural inequalities are explained away as personalised, psychological
problems; everyone is positioned as vulnerable; and everyday situations
are turned into tests of emotional resilience. Despite the appearance of
self-enhancement, therapeutic culture in actuality impoverishes and
denigrates the individual. Furedi (2004: 21) claims that the therapeutic
imperative

posits the self in distinctly fragile and feeble form and insists that the
management of life requires the continuous intervention of therapeutic
expertise, therefore, therapeutic culture has helped construct a diminished
sense of self that characteristically suffers from an emotional deficit and
possesses a permanent consciousness of vulnerability. Its main legacy, so
far, is the cultivation of a unique sense of vulnerability.

This diminished self is personified in the concept of the victim.

Legitimate emotions are pathologised, people identify themselves
through their illness, and virtuous disclosure marks the management of
people’s emotions. Therapeutic culture not only produces vulnerability,
but it justifies particular interventions. Counselling provides meaning
but only because it is subsumed within a therapeutic ethos embodied in
social institutions.
The project of the self as a contemporary priority has been debated
widely, and although Furedi only alludes to sexual violence, the thera-
peutic construction and ‘treatment’ of the diminished self is clearly rel-
evant to the recent framing of the ‘rape victim’. His criticism suggests
a particular enclosed and self-fulfilling societal imperative that not
only creates and sustains victims but forecloses any alternative mode of
understanding. More specifically, Furedi’s analysis of therapeutic culture
suggests the rape victim is situated within localised discursive practices.

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 Identity 

Whereas previously, women might express their distress as physically and

economically ruinous (Clark 1987), Bourke (2010) contends that within
therapeutic culture the act of sexual violation has become an identity
position entirely articulated as devastating psychologically. However,
Furedi’s critique is primarily motivated to highlight his concern that
therapeutic culture justifies state intervention into the private sphere.
Implicating feminism in this process, he argues that the home is increas-
ingly promoted as dangerous particularly for women and children, and
everyday conflict is recast as abuse, turning routine experience into a
source of emotional distress. In spite of this trivialisation of feminist
praxis, it is useful to extrapolate from two of Furedi’s points. Firstly,
psy-science established itself as the authority and primary definer of
childhood sexual abuse and rape, eliminating both alternative explana-
tory approaches and political engagement with power and control. And
secondly, given that these discursive practices are historically and cultur-
ally located, there are opportunities for change and resistance.
Furedi blames feminism for the displacement of attention away from
public behaviour to private, internalised identities, compounding the
exclusion of alternative critiques, and provoking societal depoliticisa-
tion. However, O’Dell (2003) suggests feminism is implicated differently,
in the proliferation and conservatism of the therapeutic imperative. For
O’Dell, feminism’s original theorisation of sexual violence as a manifes-
tation of patriarchal power was instrumental in political and collective
responses that were discredited and sidelined as psy-science claimed
expertise in the 1970s. Rather than operating to foreclose other discur-
sive practices, feminism was the excluded radical alternative, a process
that also involved transformation of feminist organisations through state
funding obligations and restrictions (Jones and Cook 2008). Moreover,
in order to legitimate the seriousness of sexual violence, feminism
adopted the psychological model of trauma (albeit problematically).
In the appropriation of therapeutic language, exemplified in feminist
therapy, that required individual rather than social change and recogni-
tion of the psychologically damaged but innocent victim, Becker (2005)
suggests feminism relinquished its political impetus. The move away
from political action to therapy, along with the assumed feminist insist-
ence that all women are victims (Roiphe 1993), fuelled a backlash that
accused feminism of victimising. According to Mardorossian (2014) the
political correctness discourse of the 1990s further delimited the victim
as one who rejects that status. Victimhood no longer signified innocence.

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

Rather, its taint necessitated immediate disconnection, and significantly

within feminist praxis ‘survivor’ became the preferred identity. Within
this contemporary therapy culture then, feminism was sidelined and
accused of creating victims, individual identity management was pri-
oritised above social and political action, and together, the ‘rape victim’
became entrenched as a stigmatised identity.
Furedi was clear about the dangers of therapy as a practice and dis-
course to the contemporary manifestation of the self. For women who
have experienced sexual violence, this framing of the rape victim is
particularly limiting, but not totalising, as it is located within a specific
history and context that suggests the possibility of change. In his concep-
tion of ‘disciplinary power’ (1991) and ethical practice (2007) Foucault
offers a theorisation of historically and culturally located subjectivity that
accommodates both profound limitations and opportunities for agency.
Foucault’s self emerges by virtue of inhabiting and incorporating social
norms legitimated within matrices of power and truth that are invested
in discursive fields. The self is not an established core that exists prior to
action, but instead is borne out of perpetual (re)invention through prac-
tices that are simultaneously constraining and transforming. Foucault
(1991: 177) describes constraining and disciplinary power as that which is
not ‘possessed as a thing, or transferred as a property; it functions like a
piece of machinery.’ Disciplinary power is exercised pervasively, silently
through observation, detailed scrutiny, and constant surveillance. Whilst
disciplinary power operates discreetly, the constantly observed are
brought out into the open and therefore maintained in their subjection.
Through documentation such as case notes, the subject becomes objec-
tified in codes and classifications, which Foucault (1991: 190) suggests
is ‘the first stage of “formalisation” of the individual in power relations’.
Certain knowledge is privileged and taken up as truth. So, Mardorossian’s
rape victim, constituted within disciplinary power and established truths
of science, medicine, and policy, is recognised, defined, and categorised,
but her visibility requires that she is monitored and treated.
Alongside the more obvious and punitive operations of power Foucault
(2007: 154) suggests there are ‘technologies of the self ’ which ‘permit
individuals to perform, by their own means, a certain number of opera-
tions on their own bodies, on their own souls, on their own thoughts, on
their own conduct, and this in such a way that they transform themselves,
modify themselves and reach a certain state of perfection, of happiness,

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 Identity 

of purity’. Such technologies, exemplified in confession or psy-science,

inculcate compliance, an abdication of state responsibility, as individu-
als participate in their own regulation. However, Foucault also offers an
ethical self-transformation that challenges the boundaries of knowledge
and truth but remains contained within the permissible. ‘Acts of freedom’
as ethical practice extend or critique social norms. Rather than revolu-
tionise discourse, though, within matrices of power and truth, Foucault
(2007: 45) asserts ethical practice is necessarily ‘the art of not being gov-
erned quite so much’. Drawing from Foucault’s theorisation of subjectiv-
ity, therefore, the ‘rape victim’ emerges within discursive practices and
relations of power that are both obvious and self-actualising. Constraints
and limitations are not totalising but ambivalently negotiated.
Furedi and Foucault provide tools with which to consider the
(re)formation of ‘rape victim’ identity within contemporary administra-
tive, therapeutic, and scientific neoliberalism where sexual behaviour and
identity are subsumed. It could be argued that Furedi’s polemic details
the implications of therapy as a technology of the self, whilst Foucault’s
wider theorisation encompasses the constitution of subjectivity within
the operation of power and truth. Proposing identity as relational and
ambivalent, rather than fixed and determined by the social norms of the
specific historical context, Foucault and Furedi facilitate the possibility
of agency and social change important to Mardorossian. It is not that
an autonomous subject has Rape Culture imposed on her. Instead the
‘rape victim’ emerges within matrices of power and privileged truth,
an ambivalent relation involving negotiation and critique. Moreover, it
is worth noting that gendered power relations are further constructed
within codes of morality which, Foucault (1997: 263) suggests, involve
distinguishing ‘between the code that determines which acts are permit-
ted or forbidden and the code that determines the positive or negative
value of the different possible behaviours’. To live a life that counts, the
individual does not only abide by the codes that determine what is per-
missible but in relation to the value placed upon these authorised behav-
iours. Encountered on this narrow path to a liveable life is shame which
further evidences the significance of relational identity. Hegemonic
masculinity necessitates the subjugation of the other epitomised in
sexual violence and becomes re-inscribed in practices that affirm and
reproduce dehumanisation of the ‘rape victim’. Consideration of shame
suggests that is not a simple acceptance.

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

Different and contaminated

I felt that it had affected me irreparably, psychologically, you know, and I
used to worry if I have children, will I have issues that I will just pass onto
my children. (Ruby)
you don’t want to tell anyone, because people have the idea that ‘oh people
who have been abused, become, they abuse people don’t they’. (Agatha)
I feel like I am being tortured, eaten and swallowed and tortured again by
shame. All the memories about everything come back ... and I can’t switch
it off ... . With fear it is easier to deal with, an anxiety attack can be talked
through, but shame is excruciating. (Victoria)

It has been argued so far that the negligent and enduring female
‘rape victim’ is a culturally and historically specific identity position.
Contemporary morality is reiterated through discursive practices
constituted in the ‘rape victim’, who is revealed as inherently flawed.
In the previous excerpts this flaw, and the possibility that her badness
could be exposed, is expressed as difference and contamination. Much
like Goffman’s (1963: 11) still relevant ‘discreditable identity’, women’s
accounts suggest that great effort is required to manage situations and
information about their failing, so that this flaw, not immediately percep-
tible to others, remains undiscovered. The fear of being found deficient
or of contaminating others is not only severely limiting but makes shame
a primary possibility. Shame is further compounded in a society which
is affronted by the intimate and sexual manifestation of power in sexual
violence and privileges particular knowledge that presumes the cycle of
abuse. However, whilst shame feels excruciating, it functions at a funda-
mental level to connect the individual with society. Indeed, for Probyn
(2000a), disgust and shame ought to be recognised, not for the paralysis
they induce, but for the disruption they can cause to a culture of blame.
Mindful of the above excerpts, the writing on shame of Ahmed (2004),
Bartky (1990), Guenther (2012), and Probyn (2000a; 2000b) is consid-
ered to explore this intersubjectivity that necessitates a re-evaluation of
identity not as essentially gendered, but rather as the presentation and
critique of contemporary morality that holds the possibility for change.
Indicative of contemporary morality and relevant to this discussion
on shame is the cycle of abuse theory, a predominant and influential
explanation for both the perpetration of sexual violence and re-vic-
timisation. This theory, encompassed in national policy in the UK and

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 Identity 

accepted widely in practice, suggests sexual violence is attributable to an

impoverished or abusive childhood that renders deficient the identity
of the ‘victim’, resulting in a gendered reproduction of abuse. Boys go
onto perpetrate violence, whilst girls continue the pattern of repeated
victimisation. Furthermore, whilst abused men are excused of their
perpetrating behaviour, victimised women are held responsible for their
re-victimisation. Furedi (2004) is particularly critical of the inevitabil-
ity of abuse as permanently damaging because he fears this discourse
justifies state intervention into the private sphere. However, a more
ambivalent relationship to inevitable damage is suggested in the above
excerpts, and shame is central to appreciating both the acceptance of and
resistance to stigmatisation. Supplementing the framing of the careless
and blameworthy rape victim, the cycle of abuse theory not only taps
into, but authorises the shame that women feel and – combined with the
hatred contained in the perpetrator’s words, deeds, and thoughts – infil-
trates her mind and body in sexual violence. She feels contaminated and,
although she attempts to conceal the stigmatisation, she feels branded,
an obvious and targetable victim. She fears she contaminates (children)
through behaviour that others may deem inappropriate, with the bad-
ness that she conceals and cannot expel nor contain. She fears she might
traumatise others in the words and images she employs to articulate who
she has become. Moreover, if it is not expelled or controlled, then this
latent contaminant could jeopardise any future relations with others.
Shame therefore involves a painful and critical reappraisal of self in rela-
tion to the judgements of others and a contemporary social morality that
supports rape mythology.
In his classic phenomenology, Sartre (2003) suggests that shame is
bound up with how the self feels about itself, a sense of personal inad-
equacy and failure, experienced usually before an actual or idealised
other. This feeling of exposure introduces something irreversible into the
self ’s perception of itself. In light of the exposure the self is renegotiated
in relation to how the other beholds it, ‘passing judgement’ on itself as an
object as it appears to the other, therefore grasping knowledge of itself
through the medium of the other. In shame the self recognises itself as it
is seen by others, a ‘being-for-others’ which challenges how the self was
originally regarded and contests the position of mastery of the self of itself.
The exposed self does not have immediate access to its appearance in the
moment, unlike the seeing and knowing external other, and so the self is
transformed in recognition of the other’s judgement. Sartre (2003: 296)

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

describes this double movement as such: ‘I am ashamed off myself before

the Other.’ For Ahmed (2004: 104), unlike pain and disgust,
[t]he bind of shame is that it is intensified by being seen by others as shame.
The bad feeling which in pain is related to the object, in shame it is attrib-
uted to oneself. In disgust the subject gets filled up by something bad but
this badness gets expelled and sticks to the bodies of others, but in shame,
I feel myself to be bad and so to expel the badness, I have to expel myself
from myself. In shame, the subject’s movement back into itself is simultane-
ously a turning away from itself in shame. The subject may have nowhere
to turn.

The excerpts above demonstrate the intensity of shame and Sartre’s

account elucidates the internalisation of society’s negativity and disap-
proval, to suggest shame is potentially deeply disempowering. But as
Guenther (2012: 61) argues, shame ‘intersubjectifies; it attests to an irre-
ducible relation to others in the midst of one’s own self-relation. However
painful shame may be, it confirms this relationality of the subject, and
could not arise without it.’ In this interrelation shame both exposes and
challenges contemporary morality. Before detailing shame’s relational-
ity, considered here is the possibility that shame, in its ambivalence, is
productive.
For Bartky (1990) shame is not only profoundly disempowering but
affects women particularly. Regardless of shameful encounters, the
presumption of an equality that is in fact absent causes an inherent
inadequacy in women that produces shame. Indeed for Bartky (1990: 98)
shame compounds the oppression of women in that ‘the oppressed must
struggle not only against more visible disadvantages, but against guilt
and shame as well. The experience of shame may tend to lend legitimacy
to the structure of authority that occasions it.’ Similarly Ahmed suggests
the shame that is felt in the failure to live up to an ideal is a way of taking
up and internalising that ideal. Despite the need to negate the feelings
left by shame, it confirms a love for, and commitment to, such ideals in
the first place and shame’s necessary place in moral development, since
shame is an acceptance of society’s censure. Ahmed (2004: 106) suggests
that ‘shame is the affective cost of not following the scripts of normative
existence ... . The role of shame is therefore to secure the (hetero)norma-
tive.’ Shame produces an agonising yet authentic conformity which for
Bartky is detrimental to women. For Ahmed, however, excruciating
conformity suggests an equivocation, both compliance and resistance,
that is potentially productive.

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 Identity 

Feminist identity politics and pride movements such as Reclaim

The Night and SlutWalk provide opportunities to challenge the visible
disadvantages of oppression Bartky identifies through the reclamation
of shame. For Probyn (2000b: 128) ‘[t]he logic of pride movements
reproduces an antagonism between “us” the shamed and “them” the
guilty. This is especially effective when bodies who have been shamed
group en masse to return the shaming epithets: “shame at your attitudes
– feel guilt at your aversion.” ’ Whilst Furedi’s (2004) criticism of identity
politics concerns the recognition of pain and shame as reproducing a
diminished and fragile subjectivity, Probyn (2000a: 128) argues that
‘[s]uch tactics ... bypass any individual avowal and recognition of dis-
gust.’ The problem with pride movements is not that they celebrate the
shamed subject but rather the need to transform and relinquish shame
immediately forecloses detailed analysis of shameful events, leaving the
guilty admonished rather than shamed. Feeling guilty is not productive.
Probyn (2000a: 57) suggests that shame can be employed,
as a switching point re-routing the dynamics of knowing and ignorance.
Unlike empathy, shame does not permit any automatic sharing of com-
monality, it is that which poses deep limits to communication. Shame can
be made to insist on the specific nature of the acts that caused it: it can be
made to mark the awesome materiality of its own condition a possibility.

Relating Probyn’s argument to sexual violence specifically, the radical

potential of shame, therefore, lies in the details. Detailing disgust and
analysing shame exposes the perpetrator’s strategies and secrets to
problematise the categorising of the disgusting and the actions of those
who position others as disgusting. Shame is productive because it causes
us to acknowledge that it is the perpetrators and rape supporters who
are shameful. Perpetrators unable to circumvent shame are motivated to
reflect on their actions.
Examination of perpetrator strategies that induce shame is funda-
mental in challenging stigma and difference, as is locating the onus of
sexual violence with the perpetrators and questioning societal excuses.
However, Guenther’s (2012) article particularly resonates with shame in
sexual violence because she focuses on the intimacy of the interrelation-
ship between the oppressed and the oppressor. Even in situations where
perpetrators lack shame and refuse to accept responsibility, or society
exonerates their actions, Guenther suggests that her shame keeps open
the possibility that things could be different. Indeed she emphasises

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

shame as the mark of being human, a resistance to the dehumanis-

ing other rather than an excruciating conformity to social values. For
Guenther (2012: 64) ‘the capacity for shame attests to a remnant, however
small, of interhuman relationality ... . This is why shame can function as
a site of resistance, a feeling for justice even in the midst of radical injus-
tice: because it confirms the root of responsibility in our relations with
others.’ This indestructible humanity is defined not by subjectivity but in
the process of difference. Guenther (2012: 70) suggests that
this alterity can be violated, denied, degraded – but it can never be utterly
destroyed, because it cannot help addressing itself to the other whom it
seeks to annihilate ... . Thus subjectification occurs in spite of the project of
desubjectification ... . In order to desubjectify you, they still have to single
you out, and in singling you out, they undermine the very project of effac-
ing your singularity.

In sexual violence, shame signifies resistance to the absolute attempt at

dehumanisation. In the very process of degradation, the subject-other is
reaffirmed and her shame testifies to this defiance which in its detailing
and the politics of pride movements becomes a more collective move
to justice. Although this theorisation of shame suggests this aspect of
subjectification is constituted in the inhumanity of another – that is,
in this instance, identity is defined in relation to the persecutor – the
‘project of desubjectification’ articulates the process of sexual violence
described in women’s accounts. However, Guenther’s insistence on the
significance of an indestructible humanity defined in processes of dif-
ference, rather than in essential subjectivity, offers the possibility that
shame both presents and challenges contemporary morality and the
social values that condone sexual violence. It also offers the possibility
of understanding shame as both acceptance and rejection of difference
since stigmatisation is borne out of degradation and resistance.

Victim and survivor

I still hate this description [of survivor] for all sorts of reasons not least
because it just doesn’t make sense to me. What exactly have we survived?
Life? And can labelling yourself a ‘survivor’ really be a source of pride to
counteract the shame? (Violet)
This makes me wonder about my attitude to disclosure. I still feel strongly
that I should disclose, that I should be transparent and open (‘be the change

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 Identity 

that you want to see in the world’), that it is a political act. However, does it
actually benefit me or others? Does it change the situation? Is it worth it? Or
does it just lead to me continuously reaffirming the object/victim status?
(Violet)

In sexual violence shame necessitates the recognition of a contaminated

identity as it is judged within social norms and morality that presume
women’s culpability. However, in the intimacy of violation, shame also
signifies defiance, and subsequent disclosure exposes the perpetrator’s
wrong-doing, creating opportunities not only for individual retribution
but also social change. Identity politics support the process to justice but
often subscribe to the cultural obligation to accept victim positioning
in order to either facilitate recovery or promote difference and equal-
ity, and for Mardorossian, the classification of victim is so tainted it
requires immediate transformation. Outlined in the excerpts above,
and within feminism, victim-survivor categorisation is contested. This
debate is considered here because it matters that women claim neither
to be victims nor survivors of sexual violence, defying the operation of
erasure and legitimation that identity categorisation involves, and this
has implications for practice. The victim-survivor binary is examined in
relation to Butler’s (2006) notion of cultural intelligibility, as it describes
the demarcation of a liveable life. Butler also offers a theorisation with
which to reconsider categorisation altogether, and therefore challenge
the essentialist duality of subjugated femininity and hegemonic mascu-
linity that is sustained in sexual violence as noted by Mardorossian. It
has been argued that subjectivity is the reiteration and rejection of cul-
tural categorisation within social interrelationships, exemplified in the
shame of sexual violence, and Butler suggests that when we recognise
our interdependence as it is exposed in loss and vulnerability, a shared
ethical and political project begins.
It has been previously suggested that as psy-science claimed expertise
within the sexual violence field, feminism appropriated the terminology
of victim to convince the public and professionals of the seriousness of
the trauma rape produced and testify to innocence and truth within
women’s experiences. However, categorisation of the pathologised rape
victim is problematic, not only in the depoliticisation of a social issue and
the assertion of passivity, but in the construction of an entire establish-
ment that constrains and reproduces this diminished identity position.
To verify that sexual violence took place, and to determine the severity
of it, an individual is expected to manifest trauma proportionately. To

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

be recognised as innocent, therefore, agency is relinquished, victimhood

accepted, and recovery secured; otherwise, the risk is social castigation.
Indeed after Natascha Kampusch escaped from being held captive in
2006, public response soon turned antipathetic because she defied
victimhood conventions (Van Dijk 2009). Questioning terminology,
Lamb (1999) argues that ‘victim’ is overused and doubly controversial. If
elements of feminism suggest all women by virtue of membership to an
oppressed group are victims, then the term does no justice to victims of
abuse. Simultaneously, there occurs an over-purifying of victims so that
only the very tortured are entitled to claim victim identification. Lamb’s
solution to the inherent passivity of victimhood, and to emphasise the
‘specialness’ of sexual victimisation, is to recognise agency in the respon-
sibility that women own in sexual violence. For when others ignore her
assertion of fault and insist she is blameless, it presumes they know more
about her agency than she does. It is deeply troubling that women are
assessed as real or fake, and that professionals think they know more
than the individual about ‘rape victim’ identity or, indeed, that there
is a perceived difference between professionals and ‘victims’. However,
rather than accept victim blaming implicit in the prioritisation of her
responsibility, it is argued here that the process to categorisation requires
interrogation theoretically and practically. For the rape victim is not the
only problematic identity position.
‘Survivor’ is perceived as the better proposition as it signifies agency,
defiance, and progress. Especially as Mardorossian (2014) suggests the
‘rape victim’ is no longer defined in relation to innocence alone and has
become further delineated as disreputable, negligent, and stigmatised,
an identity position that necessitates immediate dissociation. That is,
to identify with, rather than as, a victim is preferable. However, in an
online blog, Lyra (2014) argues that ‘survivor’ is similarly encumbered in
its inevitable connection with dehumanising incident(s) and because it
implies an inherent bravery rejected by women who feel they have been
complicit, collusive, or passive (as Violet and Dawn suggest in the above
excerpts). Of particular concern for Lyra (2014: np) though, is the defini-
tive and swift recovery:
it still shocks me the extent to which there’s a palpable shift in my rela-
tionship with some women, where the way in which they speak to and
look at me has fundamentally changed. The pressure to ‘transform’, to
‘become a survivor’, to go to counselling and stop talking about it in such
an uncomfortable, angry, raw and realistic way has been extreme. It feels as

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 Identity 

though there’s something so stigmatised about the idea of being a victim

that women must instantly transform – ‘make something good’ out of our
suffering, ‘move on’.
If, and that’s a huge if, we are ever able to speak about our own experiences
‘as professionals’, we must be ‘survivors’. We must have learnt and grown,
and ultimately realised what we could do better.

Survivor identity may suggest a more dynamic subjectivity, but Lyra is

confronted with social demands to transform away from the stigmatised
victim into the dutiful survivor, no longer troublesome, but contained,
managed (Warner 2003), and prerequisite of professional practice.
Survivor identity then, for Lyra, functions to both sanitise sexual violence
and harm women’s relationships with other women. In her recovery,
the survivor is cleansed of the horror; she is tracked and monitored and
provided with personal strategies protecting others from such knowledge
and distress. This ‘recovered’ survivor is pitted against other women who,
according to Lyra, ‘haven’t gone through this “process” in the way we per-
ceive has been helpful for us to feel better’. Considering the consequences
of a ‘them and us’ approach, Lyra asks (2014: np): ‘How do we face the
knowledge that some women don’t really feel better? Do we blame them?
“Teach” them how to become “survivors” or “thrivers” like us?’
Lyra’s critique of survivor categorisation highlights three significant
and interrelated themes. Firstly, compartmentalising rape into opposing
experiences conceals an implicit and symbolic violence that operates
within language. According to Zizek (2009: 52) the symbolic violence
of language is, in its simplification of the thing, ‘reducing it to a single
feature. It dismembers the thing, destroying its organic unity, treating
its parts and properties as autonomous. It inserts the thing into a field
of meaning which is ultimately external to it.’ That is, in its capacity to
define, language is inherently violent because essential truths (of the
thing or indeed identity) are diminished or destroyed and can only be
made meaningful within discursive constraints. Zizek (2009: 57) suggests
there is also a ‘fantasmatic dimension’ to language which further delimits,
in this case, the articulation of abuse. The fantasy of the ‘innocent’ victim
overdetermines the way in which this identity position is perceived by
the individual and others. So universal is the fantasy image that it exerts
a ‘performative efficiency’. To paraphrase Zizek (2009: 62), ‘it is not
merely an interpretation of what [victims of sexual violence] are, but an
interpretation that determines the very being and social existence of the
interpreted subjects.’ ‘Innocence’ as it is expected within contemporary

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

mores and norms, contained in categorisation determines the existence

of the ‘rape victim’ and ‘survivor’. The antagonism of the victim-survivor
binary itself, though, further destroys the facility to articulate anything
other than that which is innocent. Identity in relation to sexual violence
is either victim or survivor, and both are assessed for innocence. Within
practice Lyra is concerned that the vocabulary of sexual violence in par-
ticular is experienced as violent, as causing harm. Breaking the silence is
both perceived of as personally re-traumatising and productive of oth-
ers’ vicarious trauma. So damaging are descriptions of sexual violence
that trigger warnings are required. Unlike women who have experienced
sexual violence, the reluctant hearer can choose not to listen in order
to stave off any potential damage. Following Zizek’s argument, though,
the construction of such accounts as violent speech further delimits the
articulation of abuse. To focus on the subjective violence of such descrip-
tions is in actuality a smokescreen obscuring the underlying violence of
categorisation.
Secondly, further consideration of the violence of categorisation is
required as oppositional identities legitimise specific socially sanc-
tioned behaviour and erase that which does not conform. Butler (2006)
explains that the parameters of cultural intelligibility, the process by
which a subject is recognisable as capable of living a life that counts, are
reiterated within restraints of the (heteronormative) discursive matrix.
Cultural intelligibility relies on counter processes of erasure which occur
through abjection, or discursive omission. That is, discourse dehuman-
ises or derealises in its failure to name. Oppression, therefore, operates
not just through explicit prohibition but also covertly, exerting a norma-
tive violence through abjection, that which is rendered unthinkable and
unnameable. Since such bodies do not figure in reality, it is impossible to
register violence against the abject. In relation to sexual violence, then,
cultural intelligibility is facilitated within the limits of the moral frame-
work of victim-survivor duality. Albeit problematic, violence exerted
against women who identify as victim-survivor is recognisable because
they are named and defined within these categorisations. However,
erased are experiences that lie outside the confines of victim-survivor
identity, that are not recognised as ‘innocent’, and where definitions are
rejected.
Fundamental to the affirmation and elimination of the subject is
Butler’s concept of recognition, a process emphasising the self as always
in relation with others, and which marks the site of both intelligibility

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 Identity 

(or abjection) and of ethical practice. In naming and defining, recog-

nition calls into existence a particular and viable subjectivity. Drawing
on Hegel’s notion of ek-stasis, the moment of standing outside of
oneself during a rage or in a passion, Butler (2006: 4) argues that the
self, experienced as others perceive it, is invited problematically into
categorisation:
I may feel that without some recognisability I cannot live. But I may also
feel that the terms by which I am recognised make life unliveable. This is
the juncture from which critique emerges, where critique is understood as
an interrogation of the terms by which life is contained in order to open up
the possibility of different modes of living.

Recognition is important to Butler because categories such as victim-

survivor allow the possibility of a liveable life, but definitional constraints
conversely make life unliveable. It is also the point at which an ethical
relation is established. Exposed in ek-stasis is our vulnerability in con-
nections with others. For example, Butler (2006: 22) suggests that loss
is a form of dispossession and in grief and mourning ‘something about
who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to
others, that shows us that these ties constitute who we are, ties or bonds
that compose us’. The subject’s susceptibility to the other is the basis of its
vulnerability and also its ethical responsibilities. The prospect of viola-
tion and the need for attachment and dependency prompts an ethical
response. However, for the abject, who are not hailed into actuality, there
is no recognition at all. They remain under the radar, unrecognised and
illegitimate.
Thirdly, given the significance of intersubjectivity and recognisabil-
ity, how ethical a response is feminist practice that, in its assumption
of the primacy of the survivor identity, compartmentalises experience.
‘Survivor’ functions as a regulatory ideal (Worrell 2003) that demands
borders are policed and symbolically reproduces victim categorisation.
Women’s behaviour is judged and their experiences pitted against each
other. Compartmentalisation is also evidenced in the conceptualisa-
tion of rape as non-violent. For women who encounter violence it is
understood only as accidental (Lyra 2014), as different from the usual
experience of rape, rather than illustrative of the colonising intent of
all perpetrators. And for Lyra, practice that emphasises the expertise
and resilience of certain professionals operating within the confines of
the therapy room encloses male violence within confidentiality clauses

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

and places perpetrators out of the reach of retribution or responsibil-

ity, thereby separating the ‘private’ experience of rape from public and
political debate. This is not to suggest that feminist-based praxis and
competence is irrelevant. Feminism is vital to question, rather than
contribute to, the assessment and grading of women speaking from
experience. Required is an ethical feminist praxis that is both critical
of categorisation and embraces vulnerability. Otherwise any thorough
analysis of violence per se is obfuscated and sexual violence is contained
within boundaries that determine how it is experienced, and to whom,
what, where, when, and how it can be communicated.

Conclusion

The embodied reality of sexually violent events is subsumed, pre-

dominantly through the language of psy-sciences, into a damaged and
stigmatised identity. The contemporary representation of ‘rape victim’,
an inherently vulnerable and careless woman, is so morally discreditable
and tainted, that immediate transformation is required (Mardorossian
2014). However, in accounts from women who have experienced sexual
violence there is evidence of an ambivalence in their negotiation of this
particular subject position. Whilst the devastation of sexual violence
necessarily impacts on her self-perception and her relations with oth-
ers, any imposition of categorisation is frustrated. Moreover, in the
articulation of shame and the operation of oppression, an alternative
consideration of subjectivity is detailed. Rather than pursue identity as
fixed, rational, and developmental, where rape is forced upon an already
formed self, accounts suggest the complicit and resistive subject emerges
in relation with others and within social structures, language, power, and
moral codes. Furthermore, an indestructible human interrelation that
always involves the possibility of the other renders impossible absolute
dehumanisation. This theorisation of the self has three significant impli-
cations explored further in the following chapters.
Firstly, categorisation symbolically and actually delimits the life
of women designated credible victims of rape as well as those who
are not judged believable. To be recognised and called into the ‘rape
victim’ identity position suggests a visibility that demands monitoring
and evaluation, leaving the path to credibility narrow and treacherous
for women whose experiences have become noticed. However, this

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 Identity 

identity positioning also relies upon unrecognisable and abject subjec-

tivity. Of concern then is the sexually violated women who remain invis-
ible and unnamed. Secondly, this theorisation of the self incorporates
an articulation of female agency that is both complicit and resistive. It
is suggested here that agency is not the female appropriation of male
sexual assertiveness albeit limited in its expression for women by social
constraints. Nor is it defined as different for women, so that personal
acts of resistance and moments of passivity are re-evaluated in terms of
agency (Mardorossian 2014). Rather, to avoid naturalising its association
with masculinity, agency is an ethical self-transformation that challenges
the boundaries of knowledge and truth but remains contained within
the permissible. And thirdly, subjectivity
b constituted in dependence and
vulnerability demands an ethical response. Although over time femi-
nism has been superseded by psychology, diluted by funding cuts and
financial restrictions, and publicly judged obsolete, in practice feminism
offers an alternative and persuasive response to sexual violence, a politi-
cal praxis rooted in self-determination that acknowledges vulnerability
and accommodates varied experiences.

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 3
Credibility
Abstract: Chapter 3 focuses on credibility assessment as a
mechanism of categorisation. In the psychological discourse
of harm (O’Dell 2003) the ‘rape victim’ is articulated
therapeutically as inevitably and enduringly damaged
and stigmatised. So prolific is this discourse that it has
become the measure of women’s credibility and therefore
their claim to truth. Within women’s accounts a ‘credibility
conundrum’ (Jordan 2004b) is identified that presents
clearly the heavily policed and often impossible path to
credibility, limited by the harm story. However, standing on
the metaphorical cliff edge of disclosure, opportunities arise
in strategies such as silence and avoidance to circumvent
the inevitability of victimhood.

Healicon, Alison. The Politics of Sexual Violence: Rape,

Identity and Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015. doi: 10.1057/9781137461728.0004.

 DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0004
 Credibility 

I’ve got this thing about lying and my integrity and it was all to do
with me and people’s opinion of me, feeling unworthy, feeling I
couldn’t do me job, feeling dirty, feeling misunderstood.
I have this fear of not being believed.
(Eliza)

The fear of not being believed, of being cast a liar, is significant enough
to silence women who have experienced rape and/or childhood sexual
abuse and inhibits attempts at seeking advice, support, and justice.
Women who have experienced sexual violence position themselves in
relation to rape myths and victim blaming ideology, to both question
the severity and reality of their experiences, and to assess how they are
presenting themselves to others. Each encounter with family members,
friends, and the wider community is problematic and risky as it contains
cultural presumptions and judgements confirming the self-blame and
shame she may already feel. Being believed, which is integral to personal
integrity and identity, and derivative of shame, self-worth, and blame,
is negotiated subjectively, in relationships with others, and within con-
textually specific and often contradictory discourses and is inextricably
linked with credibility. Whether she is believed or not is felt to indicate
something about who she is as a human being, an articulation of the
value of her essential character. It is this evaluation of her personhood,
the assessment of her credibility, that is prioritised over scrutiny of
incidents of abuse and the role of the perpetrator in them. If deemed
credible and therefore believable, then sexual violence took place and
she is legitimated as a victim of abuse. If not, then she is castigated as a
liar. Either way, the implications for her sense of self are significant.
This chapter considers some of the different ways in which credibility
or incredibility is signified and assessed to understand the processes of
categorisation and consequences for individual identity. Particularly
focusing on feminist involvement in the ‘harm story’ (O’Dell 2003), a
narrative that suggests sexual violence always causes psychological
damage, this chapter considers the cost to the individual that victim
plausibility is measured in terms of an appropriate expression of inevi-
table harm. The harm and trauma discourse as appropriated by feminist
praxis is outlined first to suggest that the identity of the sexually violated
woman is narrowly defined and actively exclusive. Then in order to

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

consider nuance and contradictions to counter the inevitability of harm

within this discourse, accounts from women interviewed which focus
on the continual navigation of credibility are evaluated. This process to,
and negotiation of, credibility suggests that within the discourse of harm
and trauma, certain experiences are sensationalised, rendering those
with different experiences deceitful. But for those few whose experi-
ences are accepted as credible, as a category, the legitimate victim is also
problematic.

The story of trauma and harm

Inherent within the story of trauma and harm (O’Dell 2003), a particu-
larly prolific psychological discourse, is the notion of inevitable and long-
term emotional damage caused by the physical, sexual, and psychological
corruption of an innocent child or child-like victim (Reavey and Warner
2003). In its appropriation of the scientific language of neurobiology, this
story suggests that childhood sexual abuse devastates the hard wiring in
the brain, not only causing psychological problems but also definitively
interrupting the psychological maturation of the child. As such she is
always different from, and deficient to, her ‘normally’ developing coun-
terpart (Burman 2003). Although adult women may not have their sense
of self stunted, but fragmented, their experiences are similarly couched in
psychological language of stress, dissociative and personality disorders,
trauma, and damage. So totalising is this discourse that any absence of
trauma response is attributed to denial, implying an eventual incapaci-
tation as trauma manifests itself unexpectedly. The medicalisation and
pathologisation of the effects of sexual violence and the sexually violated
individual within this discourse necessitates specialist psychological and
sustained intervention. Prominent therapists such as Batmanghelidjh
(2006) and Rothschild (2000) suggest that in order to reconnect the
synaptic breakages, the individual requires not only long-term psycho-
logical and therapeutic support but also on-going care with which active
engagement is imperative. For it is in the acknowledgement and verbali-
sation of abuse within therapy that the individual actively participates in
her own recovery to manage symptoms and process trauma.
The harm story is encapsulated and politicised within the feminism of
Herman’s (2001) book Trauma and Recovery, which is renowned within
the field of sexual violence. Herman incorporates the experiences of

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 Credibility 

sexually violated women into an analysis of the psychological damage

sustained in terror and manifested in symptoms of trauma to situate her
diagnosis of ‘complex post-traumatic stress disorder’ within the social
context. In the detail of the effects of trauma, as an expression of a legiti-
mate response to oppression and the misuse of male power, the severity
and impact of abuse is undeniable. Once diagnosed, Herman (2001: 1)
proposes a staged approach to recovery that involves ‘(r)emembering
and telling the truth about terrible events’. The political act of processing
trauma through speaking out facilitates the possibility of personal and
social transformation. Although trauma and shame render problematic
attempts at remembering, within the safety of the therapeutic environ-
ment, incoherent memories can be analysed to regain control stolen in
rape and trauma. This engagement with therapy is not only significant
for the recovery of the individual but, in detailing the truth contained
in memory, the social conditions in which sexual violence is tolerated
are exposed. In naming and detailing the experience of the trauma of
oppression, Herman (2001: 209) suggests a ‘victim’s’ ‘life story is a gift to
others’.
There is no doubt that the feminist appropriation of the harm story
provides a common language with which to describe and make sense
of the devastating impact of abuse. It offers a coherent explanation,
substantiated through science, to counter disbelief and justify previously
misunderstood reactions to sexual violence. For example, Siegel’s (1999)
‘Window of Tolerance’ model, employed in some feminist therapeutic
practice to enable women to integrate tolerable rather than traumatic
experiences, legitimises the necessity of flight and freeze reactions. That
is, there are physiological responses to traumatic events that challenge
the idea that women should fight back. Feminist reformulation of the
discourse of harm offers a framework for psychological interventions
and strategies for healing and provides an ethos linking individual expe-
riences to wider social practices. In voicing these culturally marginalised
experiences within the confines of the therapeutic situation, she asserts
her agency and takes control of her recovery, and accurately representing
the social context necessarily challenges misogyny within institutions
that support male violence.
However, Herman’s prescriptive and therapeutic approach relies on,
and sustains, a categorisation of trauma that alludes to, rather than
thoroughly engages with, concepts of truth, memory, and transforma-
tion. Indeed, Herman’s exposition of trauma is indicative of a feminist

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

involvement in the trauma story that paradoxically reified medical cat-

egorisation (O’Dell 2003) and operates to constrain women’s behaviour
because it frames the criteria on which credibility is assessed. This dis-
course presumes the necessity of a prescribed and therapeutic recovery,
defined in the move away from victimhood as an identity position to that
of survivor, further compartmentalising and categorising experiences of
rape. Utilising safety as justification, this discourse confines the articula-
tion of sexual violence to the therapeutic relationship that is managed by
experts and bounded by confidentiality. In the following sections, truth,
memory, and transformation as critical concepts are problematised
and considered from the viewpoint of women’s accounts because they
are implicated in processes to credibility. Feminism has campaigned
systematically to have all sexual violence acknowledged independently
of credibility criteria, and yet within this discourse certain women and
certain types of sexual violence are seen as more credible than others,
and it limits what women say and do. In buying into a specific discourse,
it is argued here that complexity and contradictions cannot be easily
accommodated and so experience outside of the credible is left not only
unexplained but to have experiences rendered incredible is particularly
painful.

Telling the truth

It is in the judicial system that ascertaining and extricating the truth
from an individual is procedurally necessary. Having credibility, signified
in an inherent believability and truthfulness, involves complex cultural
criteria not only about the incident(s) of sexual violence, but also around
the innocence and culpability of ‘victims’ that is particularly apparent
within, but not exclusive to, encounters in criminal justice systems. As
research on attrition in the UK (Kelly et al. 2005; Myhill and Allen 2002)
and on attitudes to rape complainants in New Zealand (Jordan 2004a;
2004b) suggests, certain experiences of sexual violence are assessed as
more serious and therefore more genuine than others based on their
proximity to ‘real rape’ (Estrich 1987). The further away the experience
was from physically violent and evidential stranger rape, the less cred-
ibility the incident of sexual violence was perceived to have. Indeed
women often trivialise their experiences in comparison with ‘real rape’
criteria and so exclude themselves from the reporting process. Even

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 Credibility 

though these studies argue that proportionally stranger rape is relatively

rare in comparison to sexual violence by someone known to the victim,
the truth about sexual violence is located in ‘real rape’, the criterion
with which others are judged and inevitably found unbelievable and
incredible.
However, the truth of sexual violence and therefore the credibility of
the sexually violated woman are not only situated in ‘real rape’ criteria.
There are also categories of women who report their experiences of
sexual violence to the police and are deemed less credible and indeed
incredible. For example, these studies found that women who were in
a relationship with the perpetrator, or who had been drinking, were
prostituted, had mental ill health, were learning disabled, and/or had
previously reported experiences of sexual violence (i.e., had been re-vic-
timised), were likely to have their cases ‘no further action-ed’. Whether a
reported rape is pursued in the criminal justice system continues to rely
on the assessment of the individual ‘victim’s’ morality and credibility.
Such police practice assumes that being drunk or prostituted are symp-
tomatic of an irresponsible and questionable character, whilst women
who have mental ill health, are learning disabled, or are re-victimised are
unable to articulate what happened or confused because of their ‘limited’
mental capacities. Women who have had a sexual relationship with the
perpetrator are similarly culpable because their character rendered them
incapable of exiting the relationship sooner.
Moreover, a recent report (Coffey 2014) suggests such credibility crite-
ria that attribute sexual violence to the deficiencies in women are utilised
in assessing children’s entitlement to support or justice. Evaluating the
scale of child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester, Coffey high-
lights major concerns with organisational decisions. For example, Coffey
(2014: 98) suggests, the language used to justify
cases unfit for further action by the CPS, ... included the fact that the girl
wore cropped tops. ‘The victim is known (as highlighted by social workers)
to tend to wear sexualised clothes when she is out of school, such as cropped
tops.’
In one case the file read: ‘Because of her record and her unsettled back-
ground ... she is far from an ideal victim.’ In another: ‘I note her father has
referred to her to a social worker as being a slag, saying she is responsible
for what has happened.’

Criteria to assess her believability and credibility, to identify the ‘ideal

victim’, therefore involve attempts to ascertain her innocence, morality,

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

and ability to produce a coherent account of the event(s). It is argued

here that this assessment is not restricted to the criminal justice proc-
ess, or to adult women, as the harm story also exacerbates, rather than
eradicates, the assessment of credibility.
This body of research has documented the systematic exclusion of
certain experiences of sexual violence and certain categories of women
by the police, and Jordan (2004b) suggests that pervasive beliefs about
women as intrinsically deceitful colour practices that actively undermine
the credibility of the complainant. Specifically Jordan (2004b) identifies
a ‘credibility conundrum’ where police doubt a woman when she alleges
rape but believe her retraction. Within the trauma and harm story truth
is a fundamental construct on which the credibility of the individual
is assessed because telling the truth opens the door to support, justice,
and recovery. So, here a similar credibility conundrum emerges. If a
woman appears unhurt by her experiences of sexual violence, then she
is not believed. Her credibility is questioned as it is assumed she would
be seriously and visibly affected. However, if a woman is consumed by
trauma and unable to maintain any control over trauma symptoms, she
is also rendered incredible as she becomes pathologised, psychiatrically
labelled, or, if perceived as beyond treatment, abandoned by the medical
establishment.
Ultimately Jordan (2004b) argues that within the constabulary there is
a presumption that women lie when they report rape. That is, credibility
is based on assumptions which suggest a woman’s essential disposition
is questionable, that it is in her very nature to lie. Her character is both
deficient and deceitful, and this is apparent in accounts from women
interviewed about their encounters with others outside of the criminal
justice system. In these excerpts, the process by which truth is negoti-
ated is demonstrably complex, and they suggest that credibility is rarely
approved and difficult to secure. The consequences are that telling
becomes too difficult but both identity positions, victim and liar, are
equally resisted. The following excerpts focus on the moment of disclo-
sure and contain meaning in excess of the point argued here. However,
they are chosen to suggest that in these moments of telling credibility is
called into question and simultaneously a space is created in which the
dilemma of being victim or liar is negotiated, accepted, or refuted.
(On telling her first psychologist) I think they were just gobsmacked at first,
I think it was just unbelievable because they couldn’t believe what I’d been
through. And it took them a while to get it out of me. (Amy)

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 Credibility 

The act of telling someone ... was weird and always the hardest part but it
was like a real catharsis, kind of thing. I didn’t tell anybody for years what
had happened to me and I was totally in denial, like basically it’s not worth
commenting on, it’s not worth telling anybody ... although I really hated tell-
ing people I started to tell different close friends, people I hadn’t told before,
because it was a way of ... acknowledging that something had happened and
feeling that you are not just going mad. You know it sounds almost a bit
indulgent but you’d get that attention off somebody and that sympathy for
that period of time you get that intense shock and sympathy and you think
‘oh alright, it is a thing, I’m allowed to feel’, you know? ... You minimise it
so much yourself, you kind of want somebody to take the responsibility
away from you of having to acknowledge it, ‘oh well if they think it’s bad I’m
allowed to feel like it is.’ (Ruby)
I actually don’t think I realised until I said the words ... how I felt. I honestly
don’t remember feeling it at all until the night I told her (friend) and I can
remember it so clearly and the second I said it, it just flooded, this realisa-
tion that what I was saying was real because I remember thinking in my
head, as I was telling her the words, I had a voice in my head saying ‘you’re
lying, you’re lying, this isn’t true’ but I knew it was true and you know she
was really upset. But it’s been really weird, I’ve only ever managed to tell
people, say if I was staying at a friend’s and certain situations, you know
I wouldn’t be able to just tell them if we went for a drink, you know it’s
strange. (Ruby)
I went to university when I was 19 and I was in my second year and I had a
breakdown completely out of the blue and I found myself wandering around
not knowing why I was there or what I was doing. Friends would say that
I would sit rocking and staring into space and at the time I put it down to
stress. You know I was working really hard. And a lot of students do a lot
of very odd things and so on. And I was desperately ashamed of going from
super-competent to super-incompetent and that re-evaluation of myself, I
did what I could to get out of that. And I had some memories at the time
of abuse that kind of came out of nowhere and that I really thought I was
making up. I remember watching myself tell my tutor that my granddad
had abused me and thinking ‘why are you saying that?’ It’s like ‘you liar!’
(laughs). Really that sense of being out of body, watching yourself say it and
thinking ‘you are in so much trouble now for making that stuff up. Such an
evil thing to do.’ But evidently somebody, I was watching another part of
me, me, asking for help really. And I sort of pushed it all down again and
carried on. (Caitlin)

These excerpts identify the point of disclosure as a convergence of the

harm discourse, and an internalised struggle with truth and credibility

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

in the process of recognition and identification. Within the trauma and

harm discourse the sexually violated woman is subjected to bodily leak-
ages and impulses, which compel her to reveal a truth hidden not only
from others but also from herself. The revelation of truth as it escapes
in flashback, nightmares, body memories, and then through the spon-
taneous articulation of experience, is evidence of the impact of abuse as
described in the harm story. But its significance isn’t fully recognised as
it is assessed in accordance with stereotypical credibility criteria of ‘real
rape’ and their understanding of their personal deficiencies. The risk
involved in disclosure is that the sexually violated woman metaphori-
cally stands on a precipice where her identity is potentially transformed
into either innocent victim or liar. Although victimhood would facilitate
the absolution of responsibility and their legitimate claim to the pain
of abuse, women in these interviews acknowledge their deficiencies,
whether that is being unbelievable, unworthy, or incompetent. So since
victimhood is ascribed only to innocents, those with no deficiencies and
with experiences that correspond with ‘real rape,’ the only alternative is
to be a liar, to have made it up.
If as Jordan (2004b) suggests it is assumed that all women have an
essential propensity to lie, then innocence as truth, the main compo-
nent for assessing credibility, is inevitably unobtainable. In the harm
story innocence remains present in the psychologically damaged child
victim, different from her ‘normally’ developing counterpart and forever
defined in relation to her experiences of sexual abuse (Burman 2003).
Woodiwiss (2009: 19) explores this ‘status of innocence’ to suggest that
it relies on a particular narrative of abuse which renders victims entirely
passive and where acts of resistance are omitted. As such, Woodiwiss
(2009: 20) suggests that ‘passive acquiescence is the circulating narra-
tive framework necessary for the victim to avoid blame’. Entitlement to
the status of innocence excludes the sexually violated adult woman by
virtue of her deficient character and essential deceitfulness and is denied
to those individuals who either exchange favours for abuse or exercise
any control. Even children, deemed complicit in this way, have their
status rescinded, and all are then subject to blame. For example, Coffey’s
(2014) report suggests that in the 2013 review of child sexual exploitation
in Rochdale, the children involved were defined as child prostitutes, the
sexual abuse they experienced was therefore determined as self-inflicted,
and so due to their perceived lack of innocence, they were excluded from
victim status. In denial and postponing engagement with trauma, these

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 Credibility 

excerpts indicate that women here are reluctant to be defined in relation

to such limiting yet pervasive categorisation and so stave off blame, even
if it is only temporarily.
Disclosure signifies a moment in identity positioning where the
discourse of harm converges with victim blaming mythology located in
gendered assumptions about the deceitfulness and character deficiencies
of women. The inevitability of harm renders possible only an identity
position that involves negotiating perpetual difference and continual
assessment of credibility because the main criteria, innocence and truth,
are out of reach. Furthermore, these accounts demonstrate that the
jump into the abyss of continual credibility assessment is not inevitable,
and disclosure offers a space where innocence and deceitfulness can be
avoided.

Memory, truth, and credibility

It has been argued so far that disclosure threatens an individual’s identity
as it marks the beginning of her participation in a process of continual
assessment of her credibility. On disclosing abuse she measures herself
and gauges her behaviour, and is assessed by others, in the social pro-
duction of the sexually violated woman as defined in the harm story
and victim blaming mythology. In the following accounts truth and
credibility are further compounded because of the unpredictability and
unreliability of memory. Given that credibility is evaluated in terms of
a coherent presentation of an essential truth, women interviewed were
acutely aware of the limits to, and gaps in, their memory of significant
events. Memory was discussed as slippery and confusing and not entirely
trustworthy but, simultaneously, revealed an embodied and sometimes
elusive truth. The trauma and harm discourse valorises the problems of
unreliable and fragmented memories because they testify to the distress
caused in the traumatic event. However, these accounts demonstrate that
in order to get to the truth hidden in trauma, and to secure recovery,
ultimately, memory required deciphering through the storying of the
event. Again, these excerpts are profound in their scope and only an ele-
ment of meaning is utilised.
With me it started at the age of 5 with me dad molesting me. Me mum was
beating me black and blue with a belt that I have no memory of but it’s in
my file. (Amy)

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

But then I come up with memories. It’s really difficult because it’s like where
have I got this memory from? Why suddenly have I got this memory? ... It
was terrible because I just felt it was another abuse that I had not come to
terms with. And it’s like ... how many more are going to pop into my head
and how many more people have been at me that I don’t remember because
I have been through too much. (Amy)
Victoria: I feel like the memories are here, for example, I am walking
around the shop and suddenly I see the picture of when I was six and I see
this house or that forest ... I feel I am walking there and then I try to grab it
and it goes ... . It’s a strange desire to want to know the truth, to get rid of the
mould from my mind. I want to feel it but I can imagine it to be horrible.
Alison: So it’s something about knowing the truth then
Victoria: Feeling it and knowing it. I remember something, all these flash-
backs, all these strange feelings but I don’t know how to get there. I don’t know
how to get to that moment, how many times it happened, because sometimes
it’s one, two, or three times and the places I remember and I want to get at it.
I was tortured with electric shocks and things like that and I would feel
that in my body, that acid feeling suddenly in my veins, so, so often, and
that was particularly connected to the injunction not to tell anybody, and so
whenever I told somebody part of my story, I mean for a couple of years it
was nobody apart from (my husband) and my therapist, and then in another
situation I told somebody, the first time I’d ever told somebody outside of
that group, and that night I was up all night in absolute agony with this
torture pain flooding through me that triggered it again, but I didn’t have
the memories of that properly then, and that started that narrative flowing.
Those memories have come out, I verbalised them, put them into a kind of
historical context, and amazingly the physical pain has lessened. It is amaz-
ing and such a relief. (Caitlin)
In terms of the amnesia of having a baby (as a result of ritual abuse) when I
was 12 years old, I had a narrative of myself with the doctors and nurses and
people generally that I had not ever had a baby. And then when you recall
that you have had a baby, that is weird when you sit with the doctor and the
doctor says, for a coil fitting or something like that, ‘oh your notes say you
haven’t had a baby’ and you say ‘well I kind of have’, and they’re looking at
you ‘well either you have or you haven’t, which is it?’ and you think, well I’ve
got memories of having had, but I didn’t used to have memories of it and
it’s not been on my medical records and there’s that whole uncertainty, and
you think ‘well have I or haven’t I?’ Everything from the symptoms and the
flashbacks and the memories and all your alters telling you ... you definitely
had a baby and yet your medical notes don’t say you had a baby, you know?
(Caitlin)

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 Credibility 

The validity of the notion of recovered memory, as a mechanism to elu-

cidate a credible truth, is theoretically and practically contentious. The
harm story relies on a theorisation that suggests extreme trauma severs
the link between memory of the event and the event itself yet truth is
recoverable through careful therapeutic interpretation of escaped frag-
ments of memory that are triggered over a number of years. Credibility,
and therefore truth, in these fragmented accounts, are located in the
understanding that trauma produces a profound and devastating effect
on memory. However, the credibility of recovered memories as the expo-
sition of truth, so central to the harm story, was seriously undermined
with the introduction of False Memory Syndrome (Haaken 1998). A
politically motivated movement championing False Memory Syndrome
suggested it was induced through inappropriate therapeutic practice
that would infer from vague memories experiences of abuse that could
never be clearly articulated nor corroborated. As such, False Memory
Syndrome overwhelmingly impacted on personal and collective experi-
ences of abuse because it reasserted the application of the ‘storehouse’
model of memory (Campbell 2010) which relies on the articulation of
an incontrovertible and objective truth directly linked in memory and
not compromised over time or by over-enthusiastic therapists. As the
personal accounts above testify, the need to know the truth is frustrated
by the effects of trauma, but women question their own credibility as
there is no definitive link to abusive events decipherable in fragments
of their memory. In terms of collective understanding, the storehouse
model rendered incredible ritual and cultic abuse because their identifi-
cation and distinctiveness depended upon the presence of participants’
recovered memory (Scott 2001).
Although the harm story provided an explanation to justify the cred-
ibility of incomplete and recovered memory, a critique to decentralise
memory as the significant condition of trauma developed in opposition
to both the storehouse model and the harm story. In order to avoid
silencing women whose experiences of sexual abuse are incoherent and
irretrievable, distanced from ‘real rape’ or too incredible and unbeliev-
able, an alternative consideration of memory has been proffered that
questions the link between memory and credibility. This proposition sug-
gests that memory is both a cultural and contextual (re)production and
like identity, which involves an active and on-going process that changes
depending on current understandings and concerns. That is memories
‘do not have to be fixed and singular in meaning in order to bear witness

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

to the reality of the past’ (Campbell 2010: 184). This is important because
Warner (2007: 65) would argue that ‘rather than trying to find out “what
really happened” [a process which relies on recovering memories]
people need to know that there are good reasons why their memories
may be incomplete’. Given that sexual violence is discursively defined
in psychological terms, and has implications for how women come to
know themselves, telling can be dangerous, not only bodily, through the
labelling of psychiatric conditions requiring surveillance and medication
(Warner and Wilkins 2003; Proctor 2007), but also in relation to identity
as it is defined in memory. Warner (2007) therefore calls into question
directly the centrality of memory and instead acknowledges power rela-
tions within which stories of abuse are told.
In the above accounts elusive, partial, and bodily memories were
recognised as troubling the traditional storehouse model of memory as
fixed and connected to truth and suggest an appropriation of the harm
story’s prominence of recovered memory as evidence of credibility.
However, these excerpts also reveal the necessity of a critique that not
only questions essential truths and fixed memory but severs truth from
credibility and situates experience within specific cultural contexts and
power dynamics that prioritise and legitimate only certain stories and
particular experiences.

Credibility in transformation
Herman (2001) acknowledges power dynamics, especially those sus-
taining patriarchy, and suggests gendered inequality can be challenged
through an active personal and political engagement with the trauma
implicit in all experiences of sexual violence. Her starting point is the
acknowledgement of the severity of rape. However, in order to further
elucidate the ‘credibility conundrum’ that suggests participation in
recovery is constrained by assumptions that trauma is necessarily and
permanently damaging but necessitates the management of the signs of
trauma, this section focuses on three particular elements in the proc-
ess to self-transformation. In disclosure, the individual is required to
embark on a specific journey that involves the articulation of trauma and
acceptance of harm, both of which have significant implications to self-
perception. Deviation from this prescribed pathway is curtailed through
assessment and is connected to credibility. It is argued here firstly that

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 Credibility 

women experience assessment of credibility as a judgement on their

character and as such implicates their access to support. Secondly, nego-
tiation of the criteria of continual assessment involves anticipation of,
and engagement with, cultural expectations about the impact of sexual
violence and in which only certain responses are validated. Thirdly,
moments of resistance absent from the prescription of the harm story are
highlighted. Just as Herman (2001) argues, acknowledging the severity
of rape is required, but accounts from women detail the nuances of the
daily negotiation on the path to credibility that suggest a more ambiva-
lent relationship with recovery as a prescription for transformation.
The following excerpts were chosen because they clearly articulate
how individuals assess their own credibility in relation to character and
support Jordan’s (2004b) assertion that women speak from a position
of having to challenge the assumption that they are lying. Credibility
matters, but also apparent here is that it is located in the deficiencies of
women.
I never used to blame myself for being prostituted until I started to talk
about some things. Trying to heal hurt me a lot because I never stopped
getting told ‘you chose it’, ‘you still did it’. Compassion goes out the window
as soon as people hear money is involved. Though I didn’t even want or
need money. HE did (the pimp). And in a million years I never chose it and
‘I’ didn’t do it ... I was brainwashed using thought reform. Broken. There are
so many ‘helplines’ I can’t talk to now. They always end up blaming me ... .
However, I can talk about how I blamed myself for incest as a child. After
all, everyone tells you it’s not your fault. And these days no-one blames me
for knocking on his door when I was a child or for the fact that he made
me orgasm. They understand about children having to live in the situation
they can’t get out of. But people don’t even understand that pimps control
women and girls ... they don’t understand that women cannot get away from
the pimps, and how the pimps, men, and society sell and buy women and
girls. They don’t understand how soul destroying it is to be bought and sold
and used and thrown away. (Maya)
(As a young women Donna and her friend were entrapped by a man they
barely knew, in an isolated house in the French countryside.) It was abso-
lutely terrifying ... I couldn’t see a way out of it. She wasn’t going to do it. I
think because when I was 15 my boyfriend raped me, so I think, looking
back at it now, I think I said ‘I’ll go sleep with him.’ It was ok for me to do
that because it happened to me before, so I was protecting her because she
had not been damaged, if you like. I’d been damaged once so it was ok.
One of us had to do it so I said ‘right’ and went in. So I was complicit, see

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

I’m shaking now, I was absolutely terrified for my life and he, he did the
dirty deed I don’t know how many times that night. And I just lay there
and I didn’t resist but I didn’t comply also. It was just, I just switched off
completely. (Donna)
(In therapy) we’ve uncovered so many reasons why I consider myself as
weak, partly physically weak cos it happened in the first place, psychologi-
cally weak cos I allowed it to happen. I’m starting to believe those things
aren’t true but it’s not easy. And then there was the weakness of not doing
something about it. (Dawn)
You get mixed up on what you’ve said. When I gave my statement (to the
police) I kept thinking ‘why did I say that because that couldn’t have been, it
couldn’t have ...’ And I never thought they check your medical records and
I got the date wrong of the termination ... . And I couldn’t sleep for another
night then because I’m thinking I’ve lied ... . Well it was integrity being
questioned (Alison: at every step) At every step. Every step. Erm ‘where was
your lamp?’ ‘what did you have on?’ ‘Did you have knickers on?’ ‘well did he
take them off?’ ... It never occurred to me that they would ask questions like
that. (Eliza)
You see the difficulty with my situation is that I had slept with him before
on one occasion I think. (Eliza)
(After she has made her statement with the policewoman) And I remember
laughing with her but walking out feeling like I had no clothes on. (Eliza)

Each of these excerpts reveals a struggle with credibility defined through

criterion of innocence already outlined by Jordan (2004a and b), Kelly
et al. (2005), and Myhill and Allen (2002), and consequently in com-
parison, each woman finds herself lacking and incredible. Women who
have experienced sexual violence often speak of there being something
deficient about themselves that somehow invited, and continues to invite,
abuse. For Maya innocence is operationally associated with children
who are abused rather than afforded to herself as a formerly prostituted
woman. Although she contends that her previous experiences of child-
hood sexual abuse have been culturally legitimated through acceptance
that children have no power or choice in abusive situations, the personal
deficiencies which have made her incredible and therefore ineligible for
support are centred on her re-victimisation, prostitution, and involve-
ment in cultic abuse. Donna also re-victimised is rendered incredible
because of her previous experience of rape that she says damaged her.
Although she didn’t fight, as is socially expected of victims of rape
(perhaps experienced as another deficiency), she feels she didn’t comply

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 Credibility 

either but instead avoided the corruption of her innocent friend who she
felt was so different from her own polluted self. Dawn felt herself to be
wholly weak and Eliza, whose deficiency lies in her having chosen as a
sexual partner the man who raped her, expresses for all, the overwhelm-
ing sense of shame.
In each of these excerpts women suggest their character was so defi-
cient it not only set them apart from non-abused women but was also
implicit in assessment of their lack of credibility. Although for Jordan
(2004b) assessing truth or lies was specific to police investigations, these
accounts suggest the negotiation of credibility is encountered much more
widely: indeed credibility permeates all social encounters. Whether cred-
ibility is approved or not, and given that innocence is rarely assigned,
having to participate in a continual process of assessment is keenly felt.
Women here recognised that they would be judged deficient because
they saw their own ‘deficiencies’ clearly, and this was merely confirmed
in their encounters with others. This is of significance if, as the trauma
story suggests, recovery contributes to credibility. As suggested in these
excerpts, women already judge themselves in relation to victim blaming
mythology often prohibiting themselves from accessing support. Women
also anticipate such responses in all encounters, and depending on the
assessment of credibility required in support and justice services, they
may be excluded, which in turn further reduces their credibility.
It seems clear here that the preponderance and proliferation of cul-
tural myths which justify victim blaming in situations of sexual violence
is hard to escape, especially when each encounter involves an assessment
of her essential character in order to ascertain truth or lies. This can
dictate whether or not she is entitled to support and opportunities for
justice. Complicit in the predominance of victim blaming mythology
is the trauma story where the expression of harm is a measure of cred-
ibility and truth but where credibility is approved only within specific
culturally sanctioned parameters of legitimate behaviour. Her credibility,
the ‘truth’ about the assault(s), and therefore the seriousness with which
abuse is taken, is measured in relation to the depth and length of behav-
iour accepted as denoting trauma. Thus, in the trauma story, although
sexual violence is inevitably traumatic and devastating, the responsible
victim has to be seen to access appropriate support in order to secure her
own recovery; otherwise, and argued here, she is positioned outside of
credibility. Warner (2003) proffers the notion of the ‘recovered woman’
which relies on an illusion that confessing to or disclosing abuse leads

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

to greater self-knowledge when it actually brings more efficient regula-

tion and normalisation through self-policing subjects. Recovery in these
instances focuses on the individual and obscures interaction in each
social encounter. Warner (2003: 231) says,
The fictive separation between personal and social serves to concretise
‘recovered’ women as self-disciplining subjects set in opposition to
‘unrecovered’ women – who are out there, dangerous and unpredictable.
The recovered woman is ‘open about her problems’ and has ‘insight’. This
woman is no longer ‘out of control’.

Credibility therefore is more likely to be assigned if she expresses an

‘appropriate’ amount of controllable harm because she has accessed and
is engaging with suitable support.
On the other hand, in her concern to question victimhood as an
inevitable consequence of sexual violence, Lamb (1999) highlights the
moral judgements that exist for women who feel ‘no repercussions’ from
sexual violence. She argues that contemporary cultural assumptions dic-
tate that only in situations where the incident(s) were actively trivialised
or deemed not to have taken place is it accepted that sexual violence is
not traumatising. That is, rape is considered inevitably traumatising and
therefore women who are unaffected by their experiences are judged as
liars; their experiences are not believed and are discredited. All in all, it
is a tricky and narrowly defined path trod by women who have experi-
enced sexual violence and one that necessitates a particular performance
that accedes to trauma but is manageable. To be either out of control and
unrecovered or to be unaffected leads to a loss of credibility; women are
not believed and are excluded from further or any support or justice.
This proscriptive and limiting performance required of the sexually vio-
lated woman in an on-going process to credibility is articulated clearly
by Eliza:
I remember a woman who worked in a (chemist), in a big town, Manchester,
Liverpool, I can’t remember and she was raped by the pharmacist ... and it
went to Crown Court and I think he got off because what they were saying
‘how could she go back to work straight after that’. And I knew why she
did because why the bloody hell shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t she, she’s
done nothing wrong. It’s an act of defiance that. That’s not weakness. That’s
strength.
Because of the job I do and I’m meeting police and I see CID and I had
a CID officer who knew about my [story], because he actually said ‘why

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 Credibility 

didn’t you tell me’ and then I saw him out when I was with my friends, one
night after I’d reported it and I’ve never, ever, done that ever, (indicating a
really low cut top) but that’s ok but I just haven’t and I had a blouse on and
I kept thinking, I said to [my friend] ‘can you see it?’ (covering up her chest
with her hands) ‘does he think I’m a ...’ and then I was dancing and I’m
dancing and enjoying myself and I’m thinking ‘oh no this isn’t as it should
be!’ I should be at home rocking (curling herself up in a foetal position and
rocking on her chair).

So totalising is the trauma story that an individual knows the parameters

of appropriate behaviour because she feels the weight of social judgement
and boundaries are policed. It seems that the sexually violated woman
is expected not to cope with everyday life in the immediate aftermath
and therefore an early return to work raises suspicions about the truth
of her account. Similarly given that trauma is devastating, to be seen out
enjoying herself also jeopardises her claim to credibility. But at the same
time, as Warner (2003) suggests, she is also expected to access support
and recover, so giving up work altogether indicates that she is uncon-
trolled, unmanaged, and also incredible. Eliza articulates the constant
negotiation of identity on a prescribed path to credibility and in so doing
troubles the staged approach to recovery which relies on indeterminable
points in a delineated process. What is acceptable behaviour and where
each stage begins and ends is variable yet is assumed and employed in
judgement. Eliza also questions who decides credibility in order to pass
through the gateway to support and justice. The assignment of credibility
is so intangible that the need to conform to prescribed behaviour is not
derived from the necessity to continue as credible (as she may not have
been originally granted credibility), but rather to avoid jeopardising her
credibility further.
It seems that whoever women are and whatever women do, their iden-
tity as a sexually violated woman is assessed and found lacking in relation
to the trauma story and victim blaming mythology. However, although
deviation from the process to credibility has serious and devastating
implications for women, including being disregarded and excluded from
services or medicated and psychiatrically labelled, the above accounts
suggest there are resistances to such a totalising discourse. As proposed
by women interviewed here, the identity of the sexually violated woman
is questioned in order to avoid shame and credibility assessment. Gavey
(1999; 2005) and Lockwood Harris (2011) have also considered resistance
to rape victim identity. In order to avoid the psychological implications of

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

being categorised as a rape victim Gavey (2005: 176) ‘found only around
30–50% of women who affirm that they have had an experience which
meets the narrow definition of rape identify that they have experienced
something they call “rape” ’. Whilst Lockwood Harris (2011) demonstrates
that women avoided the term rape to describe their experience because
it reduced the complexity of their relationship with the perpetrator, and
with whom they had a relationship, to an act of violence and determined
that they should leave. Both suggest that in their avoidance of the term
rape, women are questioning the limited and limiting vocabulary which
reduces complex relationships to essentialist and fixed categories that
not only deny agency but determine a specific course of action.
Lockwood Harris (2011) employs the concept of ‘grey rape’ in instances
where rape categorisation is both evaded and alluded to. ‘Grey rape’ is
evident in the following accounts:
I find it very hard to use the word ‘rape’ and hate it, I really hate it, and
I used to say it but my friends would be like ‘well you have been’ ... In my
counselling ... it was almost like Stockholm syndrome or something, having
sort of sympathies for, not really for the two guys who were watching but
for the other guy, thinking well, you know, maybe. I used to have this weird
habit – I was obsessed with not being unfair to him, so I would say to (my
counsellor), well I’m not going to call it rape, cos what if I’m wrong? She said
well you don’t even know that person so it doesn’t matter, but I said ... what
if I’m saying something totally unfair to him and it’s not even true? (Ruby)
I also consider myself quite a liberal person ... and I feel strongly about
miscarriages of justice and people being branded for things they haven’t
done ... . And so in our law course you learn about how a crime does not
happen without intention, and to me rape is a crime, and if the guy who
tried to have sex with me didn’t realise or didn’t mean to do it or didn’t
realise I didn’t want to then, although (her counsellor) said it didn’t make a
difference, it did to me. (Ruby)
I knew what had happened. And I just put all my make up on and went to
work. I kinda questioned what had happened but I chose not to think that
that’s what happened because it’s not what you see on films (laughs). This is
the problem. Rape is when they hold you down, you scream, you break your
nails, you know ... you get the vase, you get the lamp and you beat them and
you try and protect yourself. Then you stagger to the phone, you know, with
a broken arm. You don’t get up in the morning, put your make-up on, do
you? That’s not what you see on telly. (Eliza)
It’s going back to the same thing – what’s rape? He just messed with a knife
(indicating at her stomach) and threatened me with my kids, he didn’t

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 Credibility 

assault me, but what choice did I have cos, there was no choice to make
at that time. You think you’d pick the phone up, don’t you. You don’t! You
don’t because you are too scared. You know that I know that, they don’t
know that out there, do they, because people don’t understand. (Eliza)

Hesitation about defining experience as rape, suggested in these

accounts, reveals a complicated situation. Both women question the
truth of their experiences yet allude to the seriousness of them. Ruby was
worried he may not have understood her refusal to consent – was it a
misunderstanding? In not fighting her abuser and getting ready as usual
for work Eliza similarly questions her experiences. Ruby and Eliza nego-
tiate cultural assumptions which deny rape in situations where women
are perceived to give mixed messages or are immediately unaffected by
trauma. Moreover, Gavey and Schmidt (2011) suggest the trauma of rape
discourse impacts on everyday understandings of sexual violence, which
coalesce around rape as a special kind of trauma, unique and beyond eve-
ryday experience. Therefore, simultaneously, the trivialisation of sexual
violence through the denial of certain experiences is offset against the
sensationalisation of rape as a fate worse than death. Even though Ruby
and Eliza’s experiences were relatively close to the ‘real rape’ scenario, in
their eyes there are sufficient discrepancies to cast doubt on their inter-
pretation of it as rape. In their internalisation of society’s unobtainable
rape criteria, they assess their experiences as trivial. However, it could be
argued, that ‘grey rape’, that which avoids defining experiences as rape as
evidenced in these accounts, implies a resistance to the harm story and
victim blaming mythology. Maybe it is not about trivialising, but rather
avoiding the destruction of their identity that experiencing rape predict-
ably involves and actively circumventing the inevitability of victimhood,
including an engagement with a denial of agency, credibility criteria, and
the delimiting process to recovery.

Conclusion
O’Dell (2003) situates the discourse of harm, which presupposes the
inevitability of trauma and psychological damage, in the 1970s when
psychology, in its pursuit of absolute scientific truth, established itself as
the rightful authority to define and explain sexual violence. Not only was
feminism as a politically alternative response to sexual violence sidelined,
but elements of the trauma story were incorporated into existing feminist

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

praxis. Whilst for some the proliferation of a therapeutic approach

evidenced depoliticisation (Furedi 2004; Becker 2005), this discourse
recognised the significance of sexual violence, legitimated women’s psy-
chological responses to adverse situations, and centred on agency and
personal transformation. The story of harm provided tools and hope for
women struggling with the trauma of abuse. However, although offer-
ing a more sympathetic understanding of the impact of sexual violence,
Gavey and Schmidt (2011) suggest that, nevertheless, once categorised
within a stigmatised identity the individual is more easily subjected to
various forms of symbolic violence. Prioritising trauma above inter-
relations of power, the harm story has created further conditions with
which to assess the ‘rape victim’s’ credibility. Indeed, in its insistence on
the inevitability of damage, the story of harm has become the measure
of truth and credibility, defining women’s experiences and confining the
presentation and articulation of sexual violence.
The ideal rape victim, as a categorisation, is an inevitably contemporary
identity position that requires incontrovertible truth, innocence, pro-
portionate expression of trauma, and immediate dissociation, preferably
through recovery. Framed in the discourse of harm, the perfect victim
is an unobtainable and regulatory ideal operating within Zizek’s (2009)
‘fantasmatic dimension,’ always present but out of reach, functioning as
the standard by which women’s credibility is assessed and truth verified.
In its internalisation, the ideal victim becomes a self-defining and self-
regulating archetype. Categorisation of the ideal rape victim operates
in conjunction with processes of compartmentalisation, where certain
experiences of rape are considered more ‘real’ or credible than others.
Both rely on trivialisation and sensationalisation techniques that distort
women’s understanding of their embodied experience of sexual vio-
lence and trauma. Accounts from women facilitate a different analysis
of living in the aftermath of sexual violence that is more nuanced and
involves negotiating indiscriminate memories, personal deficiencies,
uncontrolled trauma, being unmoved by trauma, or remaining in the
stigmatised difference.
One way out of this particular ‘credibility conundrum’ could be that
proposed by Woodiwiss (2014). She suggests there is a need to separate
innocence from credibility so that all experiences of sexual violence
are recognised regardless of the individual’s conformity to sexual inno-
cence. She also suggests the need to separate wrongfulness from harm
so that sexual violence is accepted as condemnable irrespective of the

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 Credibility 

presentation of distress. However, with women’s accounts in mind, it is

imperative that credibility itself is troubled, as part of the categorising
process to ‘rape victim’ identification. Otherwise the symbolic violence
encountered when called into this subjectivity cannot be averted. Sexual
violence is perceived as inevitably and visibly traumatic requiring spe-
cialist support, but the majority of women who have experienced sexual
violence tell no one (Women’s Resource Centre 2008). Maybe in not
telling, or avoiding defining their experiences as sexual violence, women
are creating an opportunity to circumvent credibility assessment and
rejecting the inevitable destruction to identity that acceptance of trauma
necessitates.

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 4
Responsibility
Abstract: Chapter 4 examines the cultural presumption
that blames women for sexual violence. Originally,
feminism attempted to absolve women of their
responsibility but denounced their agency. Women’s
accounts of ‘complicity’, mothers’ denial, and female
perpetration necessitate a more robust engagement with
female sexual agency particularly. Kelly’s theorisation
of relative powerlessness (1997a) offers an alternative
that does not trivialise, sensationalise, or excuse female-
perpetrated abuse, but situates female agency within
differential power relations. However, women’s accounts
spotlight the role of others and the usually invisible
perpetrator, so this theory is extended to recognise the
responsibility of wider society in the reiteration of sexual
violence.

Healicon, Alison. The Politics of Sexual Violence: Rape,

Identity and Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015. doi: 10.1057/9781137461728.0005.

 DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0005
 Responsibility 

Three people were involved because, like, you know, I was basically
(raped) in a park with this guy and these two other men, that I
thought were basically gonna help me, came (over and watched)
and even though they didn’t do anything ... I’ve felt a lot more you
know, bitterness and anger and resentment towards them than I
did towards the person, the other person who was there (and who
raped me).
In a way I can possibly, possibly think perhaps even if it was rape,
perhaps, there can have been some blurring of the lines, some
misunderstanding on his part ... but I know that that wasn’t there
for them (who watched) ... I feel that if it had just been this one per-
son ... my recovery would have been a lot better (but) because there
were two other people there (watching), and also that thinking that
they were going to help, and just getting ... the worst rejection, you
know that has affected my whole view of the world.
(Ruby)

Sexual violence involves not only the perpetrator and the ‘victim’ but
exists in a social context with multiple sites of relative responsibility.
Women who have experienced sexual violence assume responsibility
because they have assessed themselves defective or complicit and there
are no culturally viable alternatives. Yet these intimate acts of power and
control occur, and are made meaningful, in gendered interrelationships
which ultimately and inevitably blame or vilify women. Meanwhile
the perpetrator remains elusive and peripheral and the role of others
in sexual violence is obfuscated. Nonetheless, others are involved in
incidences of sexual violence both actively and explicitly through par-
ticipation, observation, and trivialisation but also implicitly through
denial, avoidance, ignorance, and indifference. The explicit and implicit
involvement of others compounds experiences of sexual violence and
further complicates the emotional and physical impact of abuse, but this
involvement of others is in practice overlooked and under-theorised.
Sexual violence as a social issue is neglected at the expense of scrutinis-
ing the actions and character of the ‘victim’. As such, responsibility and
the ensuing blame are readily attached to the woman.
Women who have experienced sexual violence feel complicit in their
abuse and blame themselves. Therefore, it is necessary to consider

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

responsibility more broadly as it is produced in the intra-actions of bod-

ies, social spaces, structures, and language. That is, in order to refigure
a just way of articulating and understanding her feelings of complicity
that does not produce her as victim or villain, the role and participa-
tion of others within the social and cultural context has to be examined.
Consideration of responsibility as a collective and gendered dynamic,
rather than personal duty, might facilitate an understanding of abuse
which enables women to make sense of their involvement devoid of
blame and without relinquishing agency. It may also bring to the fore the
role of the perpetrator-and-others.
This chapter considers issues of responsibility by firstly exploring
implications of certain feminist theory that attempts to absolve women
of blame and shame but which requires positioning women as passive
victims both of specific incidents of violence and of generalised gendered
social roles. Secondly, the cultural vilification of female-perpetrated
sexual abuse is considered here as this debate demonstrates the conse-
quences and dangers inherent in gendered assumptions and roles that
rely on a lack of female (sexual) agency and which ultimately operate
to reinforce and reproduce victim/woman blaming, further obscuring
responsibility in sexual violence. Thirdly, sexual violence as collective
social responsibility, indicated above in the explicit conjunction of
‘perpetrator-and-others’, is considered as it is articulated in accounts
from women interviewed in this study, thus emphasising the need to
incorporate the implicit and explicit role of others.

Feminism and responsibility

Feminism has theorised male violence against women in conjunction
with grass roots feminist activism that located this abuse of male power
in a social and political context and provided practical opportunities
for escape and transformation. The theories of two main protagonists,
Brownmiller (1975) and MacKinnon (1989; 1995), are considered here
as they typically and specifically consider rape within the context of the
oppression of women and gendered power relations that had immedi-
ate implications for praxis and whose legacy continues. Both theorists
provided an alternative to victim blaming mythology in their assertion
that male oppression, encompassed in cultural and social structures,
causes sexual violence. However, it is argued here that their underlying

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 Responsibility 

assumption positions women as passive and biologically subordinate,

and as such their theories are unable to grapple with the intricacies of
sexual violence including the role of others. Women accept responsibility
and blame because they sought out, talked, or joked with the perpetrator,
complied to avert violence or death, and attempted strategies to temper
an escalating situation. Sexual violence involves others as observers,
planners, facilitators, or blamers. In their denial of female agency, and
ignorance of the involvement of others, complex issues of responsibility
are insufficiently articulated.
In Against Our Will Brownmiller (1975) proposed a political theory of
stranger rape to counter persistent myths that assumed rape was motivated
by a dangerous and rapacious female sexuality, which transfixed men,
unable to stop their natural desire, once initiated. Advocating parity before
the law with other incidents of physical violence, Brownmiller severed
rape as violence from sex, promoting the significance of rape as physical
assault rather than a sexual encounter. Arguing that rape was violence
and not sex rendered irrelevant the sexuality of the individual woman
and female sexuality more generally. As such she exposed the brutality of
rape that had been concealed behind this assumption of ‘just bad sex’ and
a female sexuality that required guarding against and for which women
were responsible. Moreover, Brownmiller situated rape within a system
of oppression, where power is universally located within the male class.
This political belief is encapsulated in Brownmiller’s (1975: 15) eponymous
phrase: rape is ‘nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimida-
tion in which all men keep all women in a state of fear’. In practice situating
rape as violence by the male class meant that self-blame could be alleviated.
For women who felt they had put themselves in a dangerous position, or
who wondered why they had been targeted particularly, this theorisation
provided a counterargument that claimed it was not the woman’s fault as
responsibility for rape lay with men. Rape happened not because of who
they were as individuals but was a fate that women as a class could experi-
ence and as such were effected by collectively.
Brownmiller divorced sex from violence in order to promote rape as a
serious and brutal crime. But for MacKinnon (1995: 29) sex is central to
our understanding of rape, suggesting that:
so long as we say these things are abuses of violence, not sex, we fail to
criticise what has been made of sex, what has been done to us through sex,
because we leave the link between rape and intercourse, sexual harassment
and sex roles, pornography and eroticism, right where it is.

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

To suggest that rape is not about sex is for MacKinnon a disavowal of the
fundamental way in which society is constructed unequally according to
sexual differences. Whilst Brownmiller proposed a dualism of gendered
classes, MacKinnon employed Rich’s (1980) concept of compulsory het-
erosexuality as the organising system of contemporary society through
which gender inequality is maintained. Compulsory heterosexuality,
as it is forced upon us, is defined primarily as a dynamic of masculine
sexual domination and feminine sexual passivity and submission. Rape
is not simply about lack of consent as within heterosexual sex a certain
amount of force is considered normal and abuse is an inevitable expres-
sion of the male sex drive. Rather, MacKinnon (1989: 172) suggests that
‘if sexuality is central to women’s definition and forced sex is central to
sexuality, rape is indigenous, not exceptional, to women’s social condi-
tion’. In compulsory heterosexuality female sexuality is defined in rela-
tion to the power of masculine domination and is inevitably passive.
Thus, heterosex is impossible to resist and contrary to women’s interest
and rape is an inevitable expression of heterosex, legitimated in culture
and social institutions that deny the existence of an alternative and active
female sexuality. Such a theory justified feminist campaigns that chal-
lenged institutional, cultural, and political assumptions and practices
and rendered impossible women’s responsibility for rape.
Situating sexual violence within wider political injustices is important
theoretically and practically, in highlighting the social significance of
rape and sexual abuse and in the alleviation of blame and shame for
individual women. In this feminism, it is impossible for women to be
responsible for sexual violence as it is an inevitable consequence of the
social and structural reproduction of oppression. Unfortunately, whilst
responsibility is located with men as a class, in these theorisations,
women are automatically denied agency, merely victims of gendered and
oppressive circumstance. Moreover, responsibility and blame are located
elsewhere precisely because women are denied an active sexuality, and
this has serious repercussions for women who question their involve-
ment in their own abuse. If women are denied sexual agency to remove
blame, certain experiences of sexual violence are silenced. Amy describes
clearly the need to be able to make sense of her participation in the abuse
she experienced as a child:
because I liked the feeling I got from what he was doing, using his hand
basically and I got a nice feeling ... so I actually encouraged it by putting his
hand there and stuff. So that’s where the guilt creeps in because I feel like

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 Responsibility 

I’m a dirty sort of tart or slag. And no matter how much counselling I get I
can’t shake that feeling because I encouraged it. Although people tell me it
wasn’t me, I’d been groomed ... . He was buying me, sort of thing and I know
that but it was normal to me and ... I still can’t get past that guilt.

Amy suggests there is a need to name and debate the sex of abuse
neither by prioritising violence (Brownmiller 1975) nor in response to
an aggressive male sexuality (MacKinnon 1989). She also notes that in
practice recovery involves acceptance of an inevitable victimisation in
order to relinquish responsibility and grasp a modicum of credibility.
Any participation by the girl/woman is interpreted as a consequence of
her powerlessness not only in that situation of abuse but because she is
female and/or young. Brison (2002: 93) argues that ‘sex’ of sexual vio-
lence matters because ‘it is violence committed (typically) on the basis of
sex (or because of the sex of the victim)’. Also men who rape describe it
as sexually motivated, a means to sexual access that would otherwise be
denied to them (Scully and Morolla 1995). Therefore, Amy is suggesting
that an articulation of sex within rape and abuse is much more than being
a casualty of a sexually dominant and powerful class or one that requires
relinquishing agency to a(n older) predatory male. Amy is concerned to
understand her own sexual agency in order to make sense of responsibil-
ity, and the theories from Brownmiller and MacKinnon which rely on a
passive and victimised female sexuality are insufficient for such analysis.
Rejecting sex for violence prevents dialogue necessary to appreciate
situations where women feel sexually complicit and responsible, which is
further compounded in rhetoric that female sexuality is defined only in
response to male sexual aggression. The ‘sex’ of sexual violence is central
but not only because it is a cultural expression of gendered stratification.
Sexual violence involves socially designated sexual body parts and such
violation is intimately and shamefully experienced. It is both sexualised
and violence. Therefore, to understand the intricacies and impact of
sexual violence in practice necessitates analysis which engages with an
active female sexuality whilst questioning the inevitability of victim
blaming and includes acknowledgement of the role of others.

Theorising female perpetrators

Victim blaming rape mythology links automatically an, albeit distorted,

active female sexuality with fault and responsibility. To counter this,

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

some feminist theorisation would rather assert the powerlessness of girls

and women and ignore the involvement of others in situations of abuse
to absolve women of responsibility. Women who may feel complicit in
their own experiences of abuse are unable to articulate this because there
is no space in which to engage with such ‘participation’ as women are
either without sexuality or blamed for their sexuality. Certain experi-
ences of abuse therefore cannot be thoroughly known and are accounted
for instead through gendered assumptions, which in practice render
support services inaccessible. Nowhere is this more demonstrable than
the theorisation of the role of female perpetrators in sexual violence
who are signified differently from other women and demonised in
comparison with male perpetrators, leaving women abused by women
with little critical understanding or societal support. Whether women
sexually abuse or facilitate abuse, they attract societal vitriol. But neither
rape mythology that blames female sexuality nor the powerless victim of
feminism is helpful to women trying to make sense of their responsibil-
ity in experiences of sexual violence involving women and especially
mothers.
Whilst there has been a burgeoning interest in violent women, includ-
ing those who abuse men and children, there is negligible feminist
theorisation, an unfortunate gap given the need to make sense of female-
perpetrated abuse and responsibility. In the interviews conducted for this
study three women noted particularly various forms of abuse by their
mothers. This section focuses on these particular experiences in order
to trouble the duality of the evil and sexually aberrant or sexless and
nurturing mother to articulate a more nuanced consideration of sexual
violence. The following accounts are rich and reveal the intricacies of
lives that are well in excess of the essence encapsulated in the following
argument.
It was the women in the family that were the perpetrators, the ring leaders,
and that going off with the men to be raped was preferable to being left with
the women. (Caitlin)
You get abused on a night and nobody sits having breakfast the next morn-
ing acknowledging what happened and so you grow up with a sense that that
didn’t happen, it reinforces the dissociation. And the mother that was either
complicit in the abuse or directly involved in the abuse the night before is
then giving you your packed lunch for school and taking care of you and
making sure that you’re dressed properly and you’re warm enough for
school. So there’s a tenderness and care, ‘make sure you’ve got your gloves’,

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 Responsibility 

whilst a few hours previously there’s extreme stuff going on, you’re being
tortured by her ... . It’s this mind control aspect of mothering that ... is one of
the most pervasive, damaging effects of it all, isn’t it? Not so much the rape
but how you’ve been made to believe that that didn’t happen. (Caitlin)
I strongly suspect my mother was DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) as
well, because she just seemed so many different people and so I think I am
more messed up by the fact that sometimes she was nice than that most of
the time she was nasty. Just get on and be horrible the whole time cos then I
know who you are. (Caitlin)
I think (my mum did know about the abuse) but I don’t think she cared.
I’m not being funny but there was somebody came into our house ... . This
bloke was sent up to sleep in me sister’s bedroom and he raped her ... . And
when she told mum next morning, cos she was stuck, his arms were around
her and she couldn’t move, she was awake all night. And when she told me
mum. ‘So it takes two to tango’, me mother told her. But I think he paid me
mum. To have some money, cos she was desperate for money. (Amy)
And (my mother) was naked and we were in bed together and she told me
also to undress fully and I was like a zombie, I did that and she hugged me
and I had nightmares about how she is doing something sexually to me and
in the middle of the night I couldn’t sleep and I left ... . But then after this it
makes me laugh, but on the other side I think it has to be painful, but I don’t
feel this pain I just think they were crazy and I didn’t have enough experi-
ence, but if you think properly, it is some kind of abuse. She didn’t have to
put me naked in her bed and hug me. It’s crazy, you know. (Victoria)

In an email after this interview Victoria suggests that:

This is the hardest for me – my mother could shout at me for no reason
for hours, swear at me, say such humiliating words which do not exist in
English ... she could threaten to kill me, hit my head with the fists and order
me to stop crying otherwise she’d kill me or it would kill her and I’d be
guilty in her death ... but other moments she could be very warm, not even
to notice the things I did not do – like washing dishes, etc., she could be
very caring, loving ... even incisive about what I need, she could make me
happy, but then again ... the hell came back and she became a beast ... drag-
ging me by hair through the long corridor of our flat ... .

It is clear from the pain expressed in these excerpts that it is more dif-
ficult to make sense of abuse when mothers are involved. Although vic-
timisation by some of the men in their lives was necessarily distressing,
their mother’s complicity meant they were confronted with experiences
of abuse that challenge the social certainty that women are naturally

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

and essentially reliable and nurturing. It is presumed that mothers will

believe, protect, and prevent such occurrences. That men perpetrate
sexual violence is considered normal or inevitable almost and constitu-
tive of behaviour within boundaries that signify masculinity. Yet, abusive
women defy not only biological definition but also societal assumptions
of woman/motherhood. Amy’s mother was physically violent towards
her, gave her up to local authority care, and set up the situation in which
her sister was raped and Amy yearned for ‘real parents’ to love and care
for her. For Caitlin and Victoria the barrier to making sense of their
experiences was the inconsistency of the care from mothers who both
attended to their needs as children and abused them. These mothers did
not provide the unselfish and permanent nurturing that biology and
society assume. They were also involved in their daughter’s sexual abuse,
causing significant distress and confusion. The predominant circulating
sexual violence narrative of predatory male and vulnerable female vic-
tim cannot be relied upon to explain such abuse, and so women abused
by women flounder, unable to comprehend their experiences. Instead,
negotiating and engaging with the contemporary cultural imagination
which sensationalises and categorises women who abuse as deviant,
social pariahs existing outside of acceptable feminine boundaries and far
worse than their male counterpart.
There is little theorisation to challenge this cultural vilification of
women who abuse as research tends to focus on the identification of indi-
vidual personality deficiencies and psychological typologies (Matthews
et al. 1989; Grayston and DeLuca 1999; Vandiver and Kercher 2004),
rather than locate such abuse in social situations of inequality. In stud-
ies that do notionally acknowledge the significance of gender, women
are constructed as mentally ill, poorly socialised, subject to domestic
pressures, with a high level of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in
their past histories. It is also suggested that women victimise children
in conjunction with a (usually) male accomplice, or are so poor they sell
their children for sex (Kaufman et al. 1995: Grattagliano et al. 2012). Just
as Peter (2006, 2008) found in her research of mother-daughter sexual
abuse, there is evidence here of the application of such theories. Caitlin
and Amy thought their mothers were victims of their previous experi-
ences of abuse, had mental ill health, and colluded because they were
controlled by male perpetrators. Amy’s mother was financially destitute.
As well as ascribing ‘mad’ or ‘victim’ to their mothers, Peter (2006) sug-
gests daughters also saw their mothers as ‘bad’, again evidenced here. As

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 Responsibility 

Victoria says: ‘I could not see her as an insane person ‘cause she was func-
tioning very successfully and she was a famous (artist) ... acknowledged
by authoritative people.’ Amy asks: ‘What had I ever done to her? I know
she suffered abuse ‘cause somebody told me years later, but why did it
make her want to take it out on me?’ In attempts to understand mother-
perpetrated abuse each woman draws on cultural tropes that suggest
such mothers are either mad or victims of circumstance and occasionally
bad. As they grapple with their mothers as abhorrent sexual predators
or powerless victims, the daughters’ confusion demonstrates that these
categorisations are insufficient and engaged with problematically.
At the heart of the insufficiency in these rationalisations of female-
perpetrated abuse is the readiness to attribute responsibility to the ‘evil’
mother without critique of the depth of gendered assumptions. Whilst
male perpetrators are not generally held responsible, women who abuse
are disproportionately vilified and demonised because their psychology
is so divergent from what is considered appropriately female. Yet at the
same time because abuse by women is culturally alien and too terrible, it
is rather trivialised or misconstrued and consequently goes unrecognised
or unnamed. So, women who are ‘mad’ or ‘bad’ are considered respon-
sible as they are evidencing a socially unacceptable and active sexuality.
Whilst explanations which suggest women are ‘mad’ or ‘victims’ frustrate
analysis by writing off the significance of such abuse by mothers. Neither
position, located in gendered assumptions, is useful for understanding
responsibility in sexual violence. Moreover, such theorisation condensed
around the duality of the abhorrent or victim mother underestimates the
complexity of mother-perpetrated abuse, not only for daughters making
sense of their experiences, but also for practitioners who, due to the lack
of alternative theorisation, respond with judgement and disbelief.
Just as Caitlin, Victoria, and Amy articulate, women who have expe-
rienced abuse by their mothers engage with and negotiate popular cul-
tural conceptions of motherhood to understand the complexity of their
experience. Denov (2004) suggests that in order to ease the conflict and
discomfort that perceiving their mothers as evil would prompt, women
attempt to understand abuse within the usual ideation of motherhood
to redefine abuse as an (albeit adverse) extension of mothering. Thus,
socially abhorrent and frightening realities are transformed into more
harmless, but psychologically containable, experiences. However, Denov
also suggests that this societal perception of the nurturing asexual mother
leads to reluctance among professionals to accept abuse involving female

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

perpetrators. Just as individuals negotiate the predominant theoretical

construction which ‘excuses’ abusive mothers’ behaviour, workers in the
field continue to use existing and accepted frameworks which rely on
stereotypes of female sexual passivity even when critical of them (Fitzroy
2001), resulting in disbelief, trivialisation, and judgement. The perceived
threat abusive mothers pose to society silences women abused by
women, forecloses opportunities to consider more critically the situation
in which mothers abuse, and effectively excludes women from support.
If abuse by mothers is so vilified, because female sexual agency
is culturally and theoretically denied, silencing the articulation and
recognition of certain experiences, responsibility in abuse is further
obfuscated and inevitably gendered. In recovery, women who feel com-
plicit accept their powerlessness and lack of sexual agency in order to
be freed from responsibility, whilst women who abuse are in excess of
a dangerous and evil sexuality. Either way, women abused by women,
or who feel ‘complicit’, are alienated from meaningful comprehension of
their experiences, and responsibility remains uncritically attached to the
‘victim’ noted above by Amy. For Victoria, the difficulty in making sense
of abuse by her mother was compounded when she sought support from
disbelieving agencies, resulting in confusion and self-blame. In her own
mind Victoria felt she had misconstrued the situation with her mother
because there are few and only restrictive cultural tropes with which to
articulate abuse by mothers, and this was confirmed in agency disbelief
and denial of support. This insufficiency in analysis suggests the need
for theorisation of female sexual agency that tempers the vilification of
mothers and women who abuse and facilitates the articulation of abuse
by women and of ‘complicity’ in a way that negates gendered assump-
tions so that issues of responsibility are adequately considered. Such
analysis also necessitates theorisation of the role of others, including
organisational response, as allocation of responsibility is not only per-
sonally negotiated but is externally reinforced in various ways.

Others’ responsibility
Female-perpetrated violence opens up discussion to include analysis of
the role of women in abuse and highlights gendered explanations which
confuse issues of responsibility and inculcate self-blame. Furthermore,
accounts from women suggest there are multiple sites of responsibility

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 Responsibility 

necessitating a reconsideration that incorporates recognition of the

role of others, including the perpetrator, as well as social and collective
responsibility. It is in relations with others, which Butler (2004: 21) refers
to as ‘the crucible of social life’, that self-blame is either reinforced or
averted and responsibility assigned. This section attempts such a recon-
sideration of responsibility by concentrating on themes that arose in
specific accounts from women interviewed.
The previous chapter evidenced the difficulties in disclosing abuse
as it involves negotiating victimhood and credibility. This section
firstly considers disclosing abuse particularly to non-abusive mothers
to demonstrate that even when women are not involved in abuse they
are systematically blamed and held responsible. But in these accounts
also significant is the need to be believed, especially by mothers, thus
introducing the idea that we are all implicitly involved in sexual violence
if we respond with disbelief and perpetuate rape mythology. Secondly,
Kelly’s theory of sexual violence (1997a, 1997b; Kelly and Radford 1997)
is considered. Unlike Brownmiller (1975) and MacKinnon (1989, 1995),
Kelly provides a framework of relative powerlessness in which female-
perpetrated abuse and gendered assumptions are acknowledged and
through which the complexity of, and responsibility within, sexual vio-
lence can be articulated. However, this theory, located in a context hostile
to feminism and feminist praxis, continues to preserve the powerlessness
of women. So finally drawing on interview excerpts, an extension to this
framework is proposed to include more specifically the role of others in
the perpetuation of sexual violence and social responsibility in order to
remove responsibility from the individual without the inevitable accept-
ance of victimisation.
It has already been suggested in the previous chapter that disclosure
involves acceptance of the role of ‘victim’ and invites assessment of the
individual’s credibility. However, the following excerpts demonstrate
that revealing abuse to their mothers was experienced by the women
in this study as particularly complicated and more risky than disclosing
to friends or even agencies. When Victoria disclosed to her mother the
sexual abuse by her father, she recalls,
the first three days (my mother) believed and then she denied it. ‘He died,
it can’t be like this, he can’t protect himself, he can’t justify himself, he’s
dead in heaven, how can you blame such a person, it could be cruel. This
psychotherapist put this wrong idea (into your head) because they want to
use you for money.’

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

Dawn and Maya describe their concerns about disclosure to their

mothers:
In a way I don’t want her to be worried by what’s going on, but more than
that I don’t want to say anything to her, cos I don’t want the same reaction
again. It took an awful long time for me to say yes there is a problem, yes I
need help. It sounds really arrogant but I’ve always been the one people turn
to for help but that’s the way it’s been and for me to say help, takes one heck
of a lot of doing. And for somebody then to say you shouldn’t need that help
is ... can’t deal with that especially not when it comes from my mum. So I’m
just not going to put myself in that position. (Dawn)
I cannot be sure my mother knew at the time. Though she must have.
Everyone else realised. And she was around me a lot more than them too.
She certainly did nothing when I spoke up in ‘family therapy’ as a teenager.
She kept her mouth shut. And she stopped attending and went into hospital
as her diabetes suddenly ‘went’ out of control. I think she needed to have
a distraction as she couldn’t stand up to any of these truths and wanted
everything to go away. It was a given in my family that if you stand up to my
father with truths, you are going to be totally rejected, humiliated, ridiculed,
ousted, dumped, dropped ... . Speaking out as a child left me desperate. I
know now how my mother loved me, but she just couldn’t stick her neck out
over this. (Maya)
I did try to tell my mum which was quite a big thing, my counsellor said try
to tell her and she didn’t react very well and that she tried to deny what I
was telling her, she just didn’t, brushed, glazed over it and pretended that I
wasn’t trying to tell her something important. I’m not angry towards her. To
be honest it was a massive weight off my shoulders because well I’ve totally
done my responsibility, I’ve tried to tell you, I don’t feel guilty anymore, but
at the same time, you know I do feel that she let me down, because I didn’t
tell her properly or coherently, I was sort of trying to tell her, but I know if I
had a daughter I would be making her tell me. (Alison: yes you’d know there
was something enough to ask a bit.) Well she did ask me some things like ‘did
you call the police’ and stuff like that but she just couldn’t handle it. (Ruby)

The mother-daughter interaction is crucial in determining self-blame

and responsibility. To have sexual violence recognised in all its severity
by her mother is both expected and yet not assumed. As such, motherly
acceptance can relieve individuals of responsibility, making this par-
ticular moment of disclosure fearfully anticipated and particularly risky.
Indeed, in most of the accounts here this fear was justified as mothers’
responses left women feeling astonished, disappointed, blamed, and ulti-
mately rejected. As noted in these excerpts, the fear of not being believed,

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 Responsibility 

of having their experiences trivialised or written off, and of questioning

their need for support, could prevent women from disclosing to their
mothers, foreclosing opportunities to disclose to others. After all, if your
mother doesn’t believe you, then who else will? Other concerns include
protecting their mothers from the disgust and pain that rape elicits,
or questioning their mother’s allegiance especially when the perpetra-
tor is another family member. These disclosures reveal the underlying
assumption that because of their gender and role, women and moth-
ers, particularly, are supposed to have an inherent connection to their
daughters and an understanding of what it feels like to be a victim of
gendered inequality. As such, it is necessarily assumed that women, par-
ticularly mothers, are supportive. The cultural ideation of the nurturing
mother conceals the appropriation of rape myth acceptance and when
confronted with the converse situation, women feel blamed, responsible,
and without adequate explanation with which to make sense of their
experiences and their mother’s rejection.
Many women decide not to disclose sexual violence to their moth-
ers to protect them from what they feel to be the repellent truth, and
because they fear their mother’s rejection, thus avoiding jeopardising the
cultural assumption of the nurturing mother and a confrontation with
their mother’s active reproduction of rape mythology. Maya’s comments
are useful here as they illustrate clearly the process of making sense of
abuse and her mother’s responses to it. As noted in her comments above,
Maya was rejected by her mother in her lack of acknowledgement of the
abuse Maya experienced as a child in the home. Rather than being forth-
rightly critical of her mother, though, Maya attempted to understand the
context in which this abuse and the subsequent disclosure took place.
Just as Denov (2004) suggested earlier, abuse by mothers is often rede-
fined in order to preserve traditional gender stereotypes of the idealised
mother so as to reduce the emotional impact that such abuse can cause.
Similarly, Maya has to consider her mother’s response in terms of her
powerlessness within the family in order to manage the distress that her
rejection on disclosure invokes. However, in her comments, Maya pin-
points exactly the need for adequate theorisation of the role of mothers
and others and their responses, which situates rape myth acceptance in a
gendered cultural context in order to then facilitate understanding of the
impact such responses cause and to negate blame and responsibility.
The effects of mothers’ responses to disclosures of child sexual abuse
particularly have been considered in feminist texts in order to challenge

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

mother-blaming assumptions and to introduce some theorisation of the

impact of sexual violence on the mother-daughter dynamic. Rather than
assume mother’s collusion in abuse, or attribute blame to her deficiencies
as a wife, the damage to mother-daughter relationships is situated within
patriarchy and powerlessness to identify a complex range of responses and
barriers confronting mothers of daughters abused in the family. Behind
some of these unhelpful and harmful responses, cited by the women
interviewed here, Taylor-Johnson (1992) found that mothers were often
overwhelmed with the contradictory demands made of them subsequent
to disclosure and feelings of having let their daughter down whilst profes-
sionals apportioned them with blame. Bolen (2003) argues that historically
mother-blaming has become so established within social services that non
abusive mothers continue to be actively constructed as participating in the
abuse and for Plummer and Eastin (2007) are perceived as blameworthy
for not keeping their daughter safe or for choosing an incestuous partner.
Thus, mothers were not only blamed but also blamed themselves, even
though they did not participate in the actual abuse.
Croghan and Miell (1995) meanwhile considered explanations from
daughters who blamed their non-abusive mothers for not protecting
them from their abuser. They proffer a framework of meaning based
on the idealised social construction and appropriation of the ‘normal
family’, through which daughters interpreted their experiences of abuse.
Non-abusing mothers were therefore blamed for their inadequacies
because they failed to match up to behaviour other daughters could
expect from their ‘real’ but ideal mothers, who would protect at all costs.
Revealed are very different expectations applied to the male perpetra-
tor and non-abusive mothers. Whilst male abusers were excused on the
basis of their adverse early experiences or existing stress, adult daughters
abused in childhood expected more from their relationships with their
mothers and were more censorious of their mother’s behaviour. In prac-
tice these feminist texts which focused on the mother-daughter dynamic
highlighted embedded gendered attitudes to challenge women-blaming
practices within support organisations. They also provided an alternative
perspective to enable both mothers and daughters to understand how
they were caught up in a situation not of their own making. However,
in order to challenge gendered assumptions that situate responsibility
for abuse with daughters and mothers, these writers ultimately deny
complexity because they position women as unfortunate and powerless
victims of a system that privileges male power.

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 Responsibility 

Kelly, a leading feminist writer and activist in the field of sexual vio-
lence in the UK, has developed a theory that facilitates the articulation
of complex experiences, thereby challenging gendered assumptions that
situate responsibility for sexual violence with women and girls. Instead
of locating responsibility for sexual violence either within the psychol-
ogy of the individual (woman) or within a system of male privilege that
victimises an already submissive class of women, Kelly’s theory of relative
powerlessness acknowledges a more complicated power dynamic. Based
on the work of black feminists especially, who advocated scepticism of
patriarchy as the sole oppressor of women, Kelly suggests that sexual
violence is experienced at the intersection of gender, race, sexuality,
disability, and class. Whilst such institutional oppression exerts consid-
erable influence, it is in the milieu of competing and conflicting oppres-
sion that individual agency emerges. For Kelly (1997a: 37) ‘gender [is] a
social construct which recognises the variability with which gendered
selves and individual biography combine’ without reducing all forms of
‘power plays’ to institutionalised structures of power. Rather than sug-
gest all women are victimised similarly, this theorisation enables consid-
eration of differing experiences situated in varying power relations. In
this theorisation, agentic individuals purposively exercise power, albeit
necessarily gendered and constrained within complex intersections of
oppression.
This more nuanced conceptualisation of sexual violence as operating
within complex interrelations of power allows for a consideration of the
severity of female-perpetrated violence and ‘complicity’, whether that
involves women in abuse, negative responses to disclosure, or as it is
articulated by women who have experienced sexual violence. Implicit
to this framework is an understanding that responsibility for sexual vio-
lence is ultimately explained within gendered social relations, the pur-
pose of which for Kelly (1997a: 348) is social control. As such, although
both men and women abuse, there are considerable differences in terms
of scale, cause, impact, and attitudes because of the ontological experi-
ence of oppression and epistemologically in the cultural production
of knowledge about sexual violence. Female-perpetrated abuse then is
situated within the context of gendered social relations and other forms
of oppression, and although distressing, the moments which women
have ‘power over’ are connected to, and can be explained in, their
powerlessness generally as women in society and within the specifics
of their family relations and personal histories. This is not to excuse

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

female-perpetrated abuse as a consequence of powerlessness, nor does

it absolve female perpetrators of responsibility as victims of oppression.
Rather, Kelly suggests (1997a: 40), ‘being victimised does not remove
all responsibility, but it places actions and choices in a particular, con-
strained context’. Thus female-perpetrated violence is experientially
different because it operates within different power relations than
male-perpetrated violence and is perceived differently as evidenced
within rape mythology and social attitudes to sexual violence. Unlike
other theories that rendered women victims of circumstance, female-
perpetrated abuse and complicity are understood as the enactment of
agency within situations off relative powerlessness.
Kelly’s work is particularly significant as she recognised at an early
stage the impact of neglecting both theoretically and practically female-
perpetrated violence. Kelly (1997a: 35) argued that ‘if we fail to develop a
feminist analysis of abuse by women we are handing over the issue to the
professionals and the media. Silence also means that we will continue
to fail women and children who have suffered at the hands of women.’
Such warnings recognised that women’s use of violence was perceived as
a direct challenge to traditional feminist
f analyses and practice strategies.
In voicing the issue, Kelly exposed some reluctance within feminism to
consider female-perpetrated violence because it supposed a rewriting
of theory, especially political, in light of contemporary hostility towards
feminism. Whilst popular feminist backlash questioned the scale of
violence against women, feminist organisations were seen as politically
motivated, and gender neutral-policy demanded the inclusion of men
in women-only services. The fear, therefore, that the issue of female
violence would be used to undermine the ‘grudging acceptance’ (Kelly
1997a: 35) of the scale of male violence was (and remains) considerable.
However, it was precisely because of these challenges that feminism had
to confront the issue of female violence, but it did so by adapting rather
than radicalising established analyses.
Kelly’s theorisation that recognised the impact of compounding
oppression and gendered relations is significant in understanding abuse
perpetrated by women, rejection by mothers on disclosure of abuse, and
issues of complicity, but there remains a tendency to reduce women to
powerless victims even though there is an acknowledgement of relativ-
ity within the constraints of multiple oppressions. As such the notion
of a restricted agency only notionally engages with the complexity of
social responsibility including the role of others in sexual violence. The

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 Responsibility 

following extracts evocatively articulate multiple sites of responsibility to

suggest that responsibility is not simply a matter of assessing a definitive
truth about who is blameworthy or blameless. Rather, each elucidates the
need for detailed analysis of the incident moment by moment to acknowledge
a diversity of points at which power was contested. Rape mythology has
been and continues to be challenged in feminism, but clearly noted in
accounts from women is the need to analyse more thoroughly the role
of others and collective responsibility. Firstly, Donna describes here a
situation some years ago when she decided to report her experiences of
rape to the police in Europe where it occurred:
So I felt quite within my rights to go to the police and report this incident
and they did the worst thing possible which was they got him in and they
sat us both in the same room, while I told my story and they looked at him
and they were all sniggering. And they sent me for a medical and because
there was no bruising it was thrown away ‘you’re just full of crap’ basically
and I felt doubly violated with that I really did and I felt like nobody’s going
to listen to this, nobody is going to take me (seriously), see my side ... .
And I don’t think it was the first time he’d done that and probably not the
last. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the police were involved as well, really
because they knew him. They knew exactly who he was and they had to get
him in and they were chatting like old friends. It sickens me. (Donna)
Within a ritual abuse setting, you’ve got a whole circle of people watching
and not doing anything about it and I think there is something particularly
horrific about that because you’ve got the aggressor and you put aside
why they are doing what they are doing, but then you’ve got people who
aren’t acting out some violence they’re just watching and I think that then
brings it into ‘will anybody help if I go for help or will they standby as well?’
Something incredibly dehumanising about somebody watching you be
raped, that all the things that we expect to kick in, you know compassion
and empathy and intervention, don’t and that I think really destroys your
faith in then any services helping. (Caitlin)
(after being raped at 15 at a party by her boyfriend) I remember someone
taking me home, I think it was someone’s parents and I was made to feel I
was in the wrong because I was drunk. Nobody mentioned anything about
what happened in the bedroom and so neither did I. I was too embarrassed.
(Donna)
I did tell J, my school friend when I was about 12. I went to hospital at 14 and
then again at 15 (with anorexia). The second time J’s mother rang the hos-
pital and informed them of what I had told J a few years previously because
they thought I might well die and that the knowledge of abuse might be a

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

key for me to get well. There is a tiny reference scribble in the nurse’s day
notes. But that’s all. I had the same shrink as before and no-one took any
notice of J’s mum’s call. (Maya)
The shrink(s) believed my father’s cover-up lies, which was devastating for
me. My shrink was a woman and she couldn’t hear that I was abused. (Nor
could any of the others either though. Or the social worker.) Having people
who were meant to rescue me believe my father was very damaging for me.
My shrink dismissed me in my sessions from 14–16 years. She believed my
father’s cover up when he said the incest was ‘games’ ... I then spent the rest
of those years practically silent. I did make one more effort to be heard. I
wrote the shrink a letter. By that time I was taking responsibility for the
abuse in the letter, because aren’t games a 50-50 shared thing? Like tennis or
chess. And I like games so I must have been a bad girl. (Maya)
J (her mother) knocked Amy black and blue, that’s all that was in me file,
the bit that I got to see. So why didn’t they take me off her? (Amy)

In these extracts, the process to responsibility is exposed as more

complex than suggested in reductionist theories which absolve female
blame by presupposing the guilt of all men or in terms of relative
powerlessness. Alongside self-blame, other sites of responsibility are
apparent – rapists, observers, listeners, and professionals whose actions
together sanction abuse and consequently silence and blame sexually
violated women. There are two levels of complicity here which highlight
responsibility as collective and socially produced. Firstly, there is the
passive but nevertheless collusive involvement of others evidenced in
the form of observation, inaction, disbelief, and ignorance. Observers in
ritual abuse, or bystanders in the park, or friends and practitioners who
choose not to mention what they heard, or hear what is said, ignore the
realities of sexual violence for the individual woman. In so doing they
send an unambiguous message that no help is available. Such inaction
suggests that no one is prepared to step in to confront sexual violence
because it is legitimate and the ‘victim’ does not matter. It is almost as
if in their passive acceptance of rape, their responsibility and participa-
tion does not register as it is assumed that blame inevitably lies with
the woman. Ruby, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, and Caitlin
acknowledge completely the helplessness of their situation and therefore
readily blame, and feel more aggrieved by, the inaction of observers.
The behaviour of the rapist could be explained with albeit inadequate
theories about misreading signals, but collective responsibility, standing
back and allowing it to happen, is much harder to explain away.

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 Responsibility 

The second level of complicity involves a more proactive participant,

whose actions deliberately contribute to the sexual violence situation
itself or to the dehumanising disregard of the woman in her disclosure.
Such complicity is evidenced in the time, effort, and thought on the part
of many people in the planning and execution of sexual violence as in
Caitlin’s experiences of ritual abuse. It is also evidenced within the insti-
tutional embodiment of rape mythology where agencies actively condone
sexual violence, described by Donna. Participants including organisers,
perpetrators, and collusive practitioners are supported in their actions
within institutions and agencies whose ethos accepts rape as the respon-
sibility of the woman/‘victim’. Situations are contrived to facilitate sexual
violence and in conjunction with agencies that operate to actively under-
mine women’s right to be heard. Together these elements of complicity
render unaccountable those responsible because they work to silence
women who have nowhere to go. This contrivance of situations which
functions to deflect responsibility away from these proactive participants
is also clearly evident in the actions of the rapists themselves.
The proactive behaviour of the perpetrator ought to be identifiable as
evidence of clear responsibility. Yet for women making sense of respon-
sibility, the role of the perpetrator is problematic. In a study which
considered the location of blame in abuse, Reavey and Gough (2000)
found that women were not only more likely to blame themselves, but
scant reference was made to the perpetrator at all in discussion about
responsibility. In the above excerpts it is apparent that women were more
ready to question the roles of observers and practitioners than the abus-
ers, suggesting there is some difficulty in determining the perpetrators’
blameworthiness. However, this is not to imply that the abuser is absent
or free from responsibility. Indeed, in the interviews here, the abuser
was an ever-present figure who affected the daily life of the individual.
As Dawn says, ‘I felt very angry at the time. He probably hasn’t thought
about it twice and for me it just keeps coming back in various ways.’ The
following excerpts focus on the role of the perpetrator whose behaviour
and actions facilitate both the opportunity to rape and avoid responsibil-
ity. The stark contrast between his perception of the situation and the
way in which she experiences it is eloquently evidenced.
It wasn’t actually at the party, it happened after and afterwards I took myself
off to my room and spent all night convincing myself it hadn’t happened. I
buried it and then the following day when we were all leaving the house at
the same time he said how lovely it had been to meet. (Dawn)

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

But then half way through the night he got up and was rifling through the
cutlery drawer and I thought that’s it. (Alison: he was going to get a knife.) I
thought that was it. And I er, I think I just lay there motionless absolutely
terrified and after about 10 minutes of this rifling through this cutlery
drawer he came back with erm, he came back to bed with erm, oh what’s
it called now? A crème caramel and a spoon. And he sat there eating this,
he was just an utter animal. I think at that point I got up to go to the loo
and threw up. But it was the most terrifying night of my life. And in the
morning, I think he eventually stopped, but in the morning he got up like
everything was ok and we got in the car and he dropped us off in the town.
(Donna)
(when she was raped by her boyfriend at 15) I was screaming throughout the
ordeal but the music (at the party) was very loud and it took a while before
anyone heard me and came to the door (of the bedroom) but they obvi-
ously couldn’t get in (as he had put a wardrobe there). I remember they were
banging on the door and he was laughing! I was sick and had wet myself
and I was so embarrassed. (Donna)
[bumping into him in town one day] that bad man ... c[a]me walking
towards me, I couldn’t believe, I honestly was so stunned, stunned. And he
looked at me and he said ‘it’s Eliza isn’t it?’ and I just thought I can’t believe
after what you did to me, and you’re aware of it, that you’ve got the audacity,
audacity ... . (Eliza)
When ... everything had finished, I put my clothes on and everything ... the
guy that I had gone back to the, had taken me to the park, he followed me
home and I was saying to him, you know, look ‘please, please leave me
alone’ and ... he just followed me and I said ‘you can’t come into my house’
and I closed the door and he was really insistent that he was coming into
the house, ringing the doorbell, but I lived with eight people at the time ... .
But that was worse than the actual, than actually what happened ... you
know, ... what happened, he cannot have not thought. He knew I didn’t
want, I was literally screaming at him to leave me alone. You just think what
was that person doing. (Ruby)
Can’t believe he didn’t hear me screaming (laughs). Maybe I wasn’t, maybe
I was screaming inside me. I was screaming quietly anyway. I can’t believe
he couldn’t tell from ... but I worry that by not having said anything and not
having said anything to him or anybody else that he might have gone on
and done it again. (Dawn)

The abusers’ behaviour is met with incredulity by the women they raped
because it seems impossible that the situation could be read any differ-
ently. They clearly demonstrated their lack of consent. However women

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 Responsibility 

express their non-compliance, perpetrators choose to ignore it just

as they choose to ignore the significance of their own actions. Donna
was certain she was going to be injured or killed when the abuser rifled
through the knife drawer, yet he ate as if nothing untoward had hap-
pened. And when her boyfriend raped her, he laughed in spite of her
obvious screams and embarrassment. Dawn and Ruby exerted as much
objection to the behaviour as they could and still the abusers chose to
ignore this active non-consent. In pretending not to remember Eliza, her
rapist diminishes what happened.
Winkler (2002) argues that in this intimate and power-laden interac-
tion, the perpetrator actively dehumanises her, and these excerpts reveal
one of the tactics that facilitates this disregard of her personhood. Sexual
violence is not about the misreading of signals, the usual explanation
that absolves perpetrators of responsibility (Frith 2009), but involves
contrivance. The insidious tactic used here by abusers introduces an ele-
ment of doubt that immediately causes women to question themselves.
In experiencing the situation so differently she wonders whether she
misread the situation, especially when she was so completely ignored and
disregarded. To be confronted with the person who shared the experi-
ence and to have it perceived in such an opposing way begs the question
about how others might respond. His contrivance involves tactics, even
in those situations that appear spontaneous, which ultimately operate to
obscure his accountability. So these excerpts suggest that whilst women
acknowledge the presence of the abuser in situations of sexual violence,
they were considered no more responsible than observers or facilitators.
Indeed, endorsed within culture that denies perpetrator responsibility
and silences women from disclosing, such tactics prove successful.
The dehumanisation of women in sexual violence makes allocating
responsibility complicated. Such tactics that deflect blame away from
those actively involved are reinforced in subsequent interactions, when
others trivialise and ignore the rapist’s conduct, leaving her in no doubt
that she is responsible and that no one will take her seriously. Few moth-
ers supported their daughters, and agencies neglected to act. Donna
screamed whilst she was raped by her boyfriend at the age of 16 at a
party, but because ‘he was laughing’ and ‘nobody mentioned anything
about what happened in the bedroom’ she could tell no one about it
and felt she was to blame. In highlighting such systematic appropriation
and implementation of rape mythology Kelly’s (1997a) theory of relative
powerlessness is apparent as women are caught in a network of power

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

which limits their capacity to act within situations of abuse and in the
disclosure of abuse. Yet such a theory also recognises the agency she
expends in her expression of non-consent, and the actions she has to
take to reduce the severity of the situation and which she later interprets
as complicity, within this limiting context. However, accounts from
women propose a consideration of the role of others in abuse so that
the allocation of responsibility can be adequately understood. The tactics
that perpetrators employ (Warner 2007) in conjunction with others’
complicity, including collusive practitioners, suggest that responsibility
is collectively wrought. To acknowledge this in practice might mean that
there are alternatives to self-blame.

Conclusion

Absolving women of responsibility for sexual violence in some feminism

and therapy is located in the abdication of their power and control.
Whilst rape mythology assigns blame to women who express complicity,
this alternative feminist response victimises and ignores often complex
power dynamics. Lockwood Harris (2011) highlighted the ways in which
women’s accounts exist in tension with the prevailing feminist discourse
to suggest that the eradication of self-blame as an obligatory part of
the healing process undermines the idea that it actually preserves the
individual’s sense of agency. Instead of accepting their lack of control in
sexual violence, women who blame themselves feel that if they had done
something differently, they could have had an effect on the situation, to
prevent it from happening. Self-blame is not a matter of ‘false conscious-
ness’, the internalisation of patriarchal indoctrination. Rather, it signifies
the struggle to reframe power and control and avoid victimisation. For
Brison (2002: 74), women who have experienced sexual violence are
‘faced with a choice between regaining control by accepting (at least
some) responsibility – and hence blame – for the trauma, or feeling
overwhelmed by helplessness.’
Returning to women’s accounts, then, the need to engage with respon-
sibility and reconsider agency becomes apparent. Women who have
experienced sexual violence are caught up in the constant reiteration of
blame that simultaneously denies perpetrator and social responsibility
and presumes gender differences which rely on either an idealisation or
vilification of women, and mothers in particular. Mardorossian (2014)

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 Responsibility 

asserts the primacy of sexual violence in the reproduction of gendered

power dynamics that are structurally derived rather than biologically
determined to suggest that women can occupy and enact masculinity.
However, Kelly’s (1997a) articulation of relative powerlessness offers a
more nuanced theorisation of gender and intersectionality within sexual
violence where female complicity in all of its configurations makes sense.
This is not to excuse all women of responsibility, as victims of gendered
power relations, but to acknowledge the relative power women have in
different social situations and in relation to different people. However,
sexual violence is an embodied reality of concern not only to women
(Mardorossian 2014). In interview extracts women make clear the per-
petrators’ responsibility and their strategies to dehumanise and deflect
blame. Also very clear is our responsibility as individuals within this
rape-supportive culture, to notice and act to challenge sexual violence.
Otherwise, in our denial of perpetrator and social responsibility, and in
our collusion in victim blaming, we effectively leave women who have
experienced sexual violence unsafe and with nowhere to go.

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 5
Agency
Abstract: Chapter 5 considers the contemporary feminist
articulation of responsibility and female sexual agency in
SlutWalk. Two features of neoliberalism, the risk aware
and responsible citizen (Anderson and Doherty 2008) and
the commodification of experience (Phipps 2015), disrupted
SlutWalk’s celebration of ‘slut’ as the essential, active female
sexuality. In mainstream media feminism was blamed for
sexualising young children. In feminism pro-sex and victim
feminists became entrenched and polarised positions.
Therefore, returning to women’s accounts of sexuality after
sexual violence, it is proposed that female sexual agency is
neither passive nor free, but nuanced and irreducible to the
presence or absence of male sexuality.

Healicon, Alison. The Politics of Sexual Violence: Rape,

Identity and Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015. doi: 10.1057/9781137461728.0006.

 DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0006
 Agency 

it’s more like a political thing, sort of maybe moving beyond my

personal experience of it or my personal feelings and kind of maybe
acting more on a political level rather than on a personal level, like
I say for an example, ... I am quite open with it now because it was
a secret for such a long time and when it all came out ... it was a
very freeing experience and I don’t ever want to feel like I am like
putting it back in a box ... even if it’s just a case of ‘oh well, I’ll only
bring this out for good friends’. No! It’s part of who I am and part
of life’s experiences, like all sorts of other things, the same way you
talk about your family, or ex-boyfriends or where you went to uni,
y’know it’s just a part of that. But also I got this real kind of politi-
cal feeling about it sort of being something that I won’t be shut up
about. And you know not everyone wants to hear it at all and I
have had experiences where people are quite like ‘oh my god, you’re
bringing the mood (down)’, and I thought no ‘I’m not asking you to
feel sorry for me, I not asking you to shed a tear’ ... ‘I’m just telling
you that that happened’ because it did and maybe if more people
said it ...
it wasn’t really about me as an individual but about who I am in a
social context and I think that’s why I feel so strongly, d’you know,
about feminism as well because in a way I need to hold onto that in
order to ... counter the kind of victim blaming.
(Violet)

Speaking publicly, to another individual or to a wider audience, about

experiences of sexual violence is a defiant, validating, political activity
that has the potential to transform that which feels shameful, intimate,
and personal. Rather than being reduced to, and defined by, incident(s)
of abuse, in their articulation, these experiences can be acknowledged
as some of the many events that accumulate over a lifetime and which
together constitute the whole person. Moreover, also exposed are the tac-
tics and justifications that abusers employ (Warner 2007), to reveal male
entitlement as it is channelled through the perpetrator and fuelled by
social attitudes which shame and blame the ‘victim’. As such, perpetrator-
other responsibility becomes visible, thus troubling the criteria by which
credibility is assessed. Therefore, in speaking about sexual violence the
process of dehumanisation wrought within these specific and abusive

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

incident(s) is both highlighted and subverted because personhood is felt

to exist beyond the limits of the particular experiences and is contextu-
alised within a culture that tolerates and condones sexual violence. Her
character and actions are decentralised, shifting blame and shame away
from the individual and onto the perpetrator-other and the politics of
the social context in which it takes place and is made meaningful.
Having experiences heard within ‘a community of listeners’ (Brison
2002), who are empathic, aware, and similarly politically motivated,
troubles self-blame, restores credibility, and locates responsibility within
the social context. Feminism as a practical and theoretical challenge to
male entitlement has provided, and continues to offer, a political com-
munity in which experiences of sexual violence are heard and support
the possibility for change. However, it is argued in this chapter that
the feminist promise of personal and social transformation through
the articulation of sexual violence is severely compromised within
contemporary neoliberalism, which emphasises penalties for those who
ignore risk (Anderson and Doherty 2008) and where personal stories of
distress are commoditised and depoliticised (Phipps 2015). Rape Culture
minimises and normalises sexual violence through the proliferation of
rape mythology and vitriolic victim-blaming, and sits comfortably with
neoliberal notions of individual responsibility and risk-aware citizens.
This political context is also where feminism takes place and as such it
becomes inevitably divided, defensive, and blamed. The consequences
are dire for those whose experiences of sexual violence are invalidated in
each of these two opposing, yet internally turbulent, processes.
This chapter considers SlutWalk as third-wave feminist activism
operating within, and in opposition to, Rape Culture and contemporary
neoliberal concerns for risk and blame. SlutWalk attempted to confront
directly the issues of credibility and responsibility considered in previous
chapters in its central message to reclaim ‘slut’ and locate responsibility
resolutely with the perpetrator in the context of Rape Culture. At its heart,
SlutWalk aimed to challenge the rape mythology that renders all women
prone to, and responsible for, sexual violence and, in the promotion of a
heterogeneous and active female sexuality, encapsulated the politics and
possibility of agency and transformation. Once SlutWalk as a political
movement is described, Rape Culture as an incarnation of neoliberalism
is considered in relation to the public and mainstream media debate at
the time, to identify processes that are actively misogynistic. Then, this
chapter endeavours to demonstrate how neoliberal concerns for risk

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 Agency 

and commodification of distress (Phipps 2015) compromise SlutWalk as

a specific movement within feminism and a particular ‘community of
listeners’ (Brison 2002). In order to elucidate the implications for women
who have experienced sexual violence, it is argued that in its attempts
to grapple with female sexual agency, SlutWalk potentially perpetuated,
rather than challenged or extended our analysis of, neoliberal and patri-
archal notions of female sexuality.

SlutWalk

In response to comments by a Toronto police officer in January 2011 that

women should avoid dressing like sluts in order to avoid being victimised,
the street action phenomenon of ‘SlutWalks’ spread globally, bringing
together a diversity of people to confront attitudes towards rape and
reclaim the word ‘slut’. The purpose of SlutWalk was to declare the cred-
ibility of all women, to challenge the assumption that sexualised clothing
causes rape and sexual assault, and to celebrate sexual assertiveness. At the
same time SlutWalk called for the accountability of those who perpetrated
sexual violence, rather than their ‘victims’. SlutWalk UK’s message was:
We want to claim back the word ‘slut’ ... to stop victims being blamed, and
blaming themselves. We want to fight sexual stereotypes, and the stere-
otypes surrounding sexual assault. We’re ANGRY about the way ... victims
of sexual violence are treated and perceived and ... want to change this.
This is NOT about hate. We will not tolerate hatred ... we want to use the
word slut in a positive and empowering way. Sexual assault is not an issue
that just concerns women, and ... our male allies ... can join us on our march.
If you’re male, female ... in between or nothing at all we need you. https://
www.facebook.com/slutwalklondonuk/info?tab=page_info

Kruper (2013: np), a commentator on SlutWalk, explains further:

Slut-shaming is society’s attempt to control women’s sexuality by shaming
them for their sexual actions. Rape Culture, on the other hand, is when
society begins to normalise or excuse rape, and is often associated with
victim blaming and shaming. SlutWalk attempts to raise awareness of the
problems created by slut-shaming and rape culture in hopes of creating a
society where these constructs no longer exist.

The prevalence of ‘slut’ as a justification for sexual violence is directly

confronted in the SlutWalk message. In its campaign to expose rape

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

mythology and to challenge social attitudes that tolerate rape, SlutWalk

focused on two interconnected claims that lie at the heart of credibility
assessment and the allocation of responsibility: SlutWalk troubles the
notion that prostituted women are perceived of as inherently devoid
of credibility and therefore responsible for the sexual violence they
experience. It also questions the wider implications for all (girls and)
women who are assessed as existing outside of the gendered confines
of sexual passivity and restricted sexual expression, since women (and
girls) subjected to slut categorisation are similarly rendered incredible
and responsible. Reclaiming slut therefore involved asserting the cred-
ibility of prostituted women and a celebration of a female sexuality that
is obvious and polymorphous rather than constrained and submissive.
It is in the practical application of a post-structural type of feminism
that the direct action of SlutWalk expressed these two interconnected
claims. SlutWalk attempted to subvert the double standard which grants
men a sexual freedom unavailable to women and to trouble credibility
assessment through parody and language. The enduring image from
SlutWalk is the scantily clad young white woman on whose body slut
was written walking with placards proclaiming ‘my dress is not a yes’.
SlutWalk both appropriated and simultaneously mocked that which is
considered ‘unacceptable’ female attire. Through repetition and positive
spin, the category ‘slut’ was questioned. Just as Butler (1997) suggests in
her analysis of hate speech, it is possible to transform the historicity and
authority that has congealed around ‘slut’, in this particular instance,
through language itself to dissipate the harm it causes and the power it
holds. Such sentiments were articulated in contemporary media reports.
For example, in one article at the time Jones (2011: np) exalted the vir-
tues of an approach that involved ‘celebrating ... that the word ‘slut’ is
now up-for-grabs because we no longer accept the terms on which it was
defined’. For Filar (2011: np), SlutWalk k challenged directly slut-shaming,
‘by reclaiming the derogatory terms that you use to silence my sexual
expression, I dilute your power.’ It was suggested through SlutWalk
that as long as women maintain control over the creation, promotion,
and production of the event, such ‘gender manoeuvring’ (Finley 2010)
in parody and the appropriation of hate speech can transform pariah
femininities such as ‘slut’ into acts of resistance.
Another manifestation of a post-structural type of feminist activism
is suggested in SlutWalk’s emphasis on diversity and identity rather than
material and structural inequalities. SlutWalk promoted itself as diverse

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 Agency 

and inclusive, encouraging the voices of sex workers and the involve-
ment of men and those who are gender non-conforming. As such,
SlutWalk also confronted two of the main controversies within feminism
itself – the issues of prostitution and transgender identities, albeit under
the auspices of the broader concern to promote and celebrate agency in
female sexualities. These protests received much media interest and were
declared by Valenti (2011: np) the ‘most successful feminist action of the
past 20 years’. However, it is argued here that the focus on the politics of
polymorphous identities and sexualities through language did not create
the much anticipated transformative space in which to properly inter-
rogate female sexual agency outside of heteronormative expectations.
SlutWalk was unable to offer a viable alternative to patriarchal notions
of female sexuality, and instead the oppositional feminist engagement
with prostitution and transgender identities became further entrenched.
The social construction of hazard/risk and the commodification of expe-
rience, mechanisms of neoliberalism, are identified and detailed in an
examination of slut-shaming and rape culture because these neoliberal
strategies contributed to the failure of SlutWalk.

Slut, risk, and the commodification of distress

Neoliberal concerns for hazard and risk, individual responsibility, and the
commodification of experience are evidenced in contemporary instances
of slut-shaming and in Rape Culture. ‘Slut’ has long been a powerful
category rendering unintelligible girls and women whose behaviour
and self-presentation transgresses narrow norms of femininity. As Lees
(1993: 235) suggests, a slag or slut, ‘is ... the woman who is fucked and
discarded, however, it is also one of the few words to imply active female
sexuality. The term is ... highly derogatory, yet it refers to a woman who
behaves in the way men are expected to behave.’ Through slut-shaming
this category operates to regulate female sexual behaviour. Ramifications
are experienced beyond the impact on the individual’s credibility as its
usage as a mechanism of social control implicates more widely a society
in which women and girls are considered responsible for sexual violence.
This pervasive attitude that is consistently legitimated within institutions
that sustain Rape Culture is considered here. It is also worth noting that,
as Lees alludes, this categorisation relies on an assumption that female
sexuality is defined only in its opposition to male sexuality. That is,

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

female sexual agency cannot be articulated other than in relation to male

sexuality, or within language that already presents male sexuality in a
way that eradicates alternatives, a point that will be elucidated upon later
in relation to SlutWalk.
Before attempting to consider the depth of slut-shaming within Rape
Culture, it is worth noting that slut categorisation is not totalising. In a
social landscape which both promotes and scrutinises hyper-sexualised
femininities, feminist research has demonstrated that (young) women
do not passively accept such categorisation, but participate in a continual
process of negotiation and resistance (Jackson and Vares 2011; Allen
2003). Contemporary ‘riot grrl’ and ‘girl power’ discourse facilitates a
more active engagement in slut categorisation. For example, Attwood
(2007) and Ringrose (2011) argue that slut has become re-signified.
Young women play with language and employ ‘slut’ humorously in refer-
ence to their own sexual status, and use ‘whore’ to mean being ‘really into
something’. Mirroring the language of Butler (1997) in these instances,
it is suggested that slut is disinvested of its conventional potency and
divorced from its hurtful history. It is of significance that these stud-
ies highlight female agency and opportunities to resist the continual
surveillance and regulation of slut categorisation, because it offers the
possibility of transformation. Although it is easy to deny instances of
resistance when confronting the scale and impact of slut tagging, this
body of research provides a basis from which to consider an alternative
theorisation of female sexuality. SlutWalk attempted to politically and
collectively embody this resistance.
In recent years, stories of sexual violence and childhood sexual abuse
have pervaded the media, but contained within these very public debates
are blatant examples of slut-shaming and victim-blaming as well as a
normalisation and trivialisation of rape and sexual assault. For every
article that spotlights the publication of government reports into child
sexual exploitation or the prevalence of sexual violence within university
fraternities, or the severity of historic childhood sexual abuse in the trials
of celebrities, commentaries appear that are saturated with rape mythol-
ogy. For example, Bindel (2015: np) cites Judge Joanna Greenberg’s
justification of her decision to give a non-custodial sentence to a teacher
convicted on two counts of sexual activity with a child by a person in
a position of trust in the following way: She said of the 16 year-old girl
to the perpetrator: ‘If grooming is the right word to use, it was she who
groomed you, [and] you gave into temptation.’ Laville (2014) reported

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 Agency 

on the suicide of a 23-year-old woman three days before she was to be

tried for perverting the course of justice after the man who raped her
began a private prosecution against her in which he accused her of lying
about the incident. Even though there was no evidence to suggest she
lied to the police in her reporting of the rape, and the Crown Prosecution
Service were aware that she was experiencing mental health problems,
it appears within the criminal justice system his word was taken more
seriously than hers. Additionally, in Smith’s (2015) blog entitled ‘She
Was Gagging for It’ cited are the comments of barrister David Osborne
who derided the revised prosecution guidelines which place the onus
on rape suspects to demonstrate how the complainant consented with
‘full capacity and freedom to do so’. Instead Smith (2015: np) suggested
he advocates ‘a system in which accused men would have a “complete
defence” to allegations of rape if the woman was “under the influence” ’.
Moreover, Osborne (ibid: np) argues,
In my book, consent is consent, blind drunk or otherwise, and regret
after the event cannot make it rape as Ms. Saunders (Director of Public
Prosecution who introduced the new guidelines for prosecutors) and Ms.
[Harriet] Harman (a renowned feminist MP) seem to be advocating. Save
us from the Mssss!

Although Rape Culture is ingrained in all aspects of society, these

reports focus on the criminal justice system particularly and demon-
strate clearly the dangers involved in the process to incredibility. Women
(and girls) are positioned as liars, temptresses, sexually unconstrained
and immoral, drunken and slovenly, or mentally unstable, which are
contemporaneously held as justifications for disgracing female cred-
ibility. Furthermore, the male voice is privileged over their accounts
and experiences. Feminist activism via Twitter, Tumblr, and other social
media is swift in its response to victim-blaming and yet is simultaneously
pilloried, blamed, and accused of irrelevance. Male perpetrators are
designated victims of the seductress and ‘politically correct’ feminism,
whilst women are shamed and rendered responsible with fatal conse-
quences. In order to further interrogate slut-shaming and Rape Culture,
the responses to SlutWalk within a blog following an article by Germaine
Greer (2011) are considered. In so doing, neoliberal concerns for risk and
the commodification of experience as they materialise in Rape Culture
are explored.
In ‘These SlutWalk Women Are Simply Fighting for the Right to
Be Dirty’ Greer (2011: np) encapsulated the attitude of SlutWalk in

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

connecting the original use of the word ‘slut’, as a dirty or slovenly per-
son, to the more gender-specific contemporary definition, a woman of
loose morals or who is sexually promiscuous:
No house is ever clean enough, no matter how many hours its resident
woman spends spraying and wiping ... disinfecting and deodorising.
Women’s bodies can never be washed ... enough to be entirely free of dirt;
they must be depilated and deodorised ... When it comes to sex, women are
as dirty as the next man, but they don’t have the same right to act out their
fantasies. If they’re to be liberated, women have to demand the right to be
dirty. By declaring themselves sluts, they lay down the Cillit Bang and take
up the instruments of pleasure.

Greer suggests that in taking on the mantle of slut, SlutWalking women

choose to disregard social convention and declare themselves liberated
from the constraints on female sexual agency, thereby eradicating slut
shame specifically and generally. In particular, SlutWalk legitimates
prostitution as sex work devoid of social stigma, and reconsiders more
generically slut as a positive and active sexuality. Moreover, in choos-
ing to rid themselves of such constraints SlutWalking women are free to
expose, and celebrate, an inherent and essential ‘dirty-ness’. An approach
that suggests, in their declaration of sexual freedom, women can sim-
ply walk away from gendered oppression is problematic and discussed
later in relation to the feminist debate. However, in the wider public
domain this SlutWalk message was missed and misappropriated. Within
mainstream media, the choice of women to engage more actively with
their individual sexual identity and expression metamorphosed into a
risky and potentially hazardous personal decision. This choice was also
diverted into debates about sexualisation. Western women, veil-wearing
Muslim women, and children were set in opposition to each other in a
commoditisation of experience.
These extracts have been taken (and anonymised) from a publicly
available blog following Greer’s article on 13 May 2011 to demonstrate the
typical tropes employed in media discussion of SlutWalk at the time. The
regularly repeated analogy in the blog was that in order not to have our
possessions stolen it is our responsibility to keep them secure.
No one has said ... rape and nicking a car are in the same moral cat-
egory ... there are parallels in how people can take measures that reduce
or increase the likelihood of either crime happening without reducing
the severity of the crime in the eyes of the law if those precautions are not
taken. One of the problems ... is that feminists ... set things up so that it is

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 Agency 

impossible to say anything ... except pat clichés about how bad rape is ... what
advice do you think it IS ok to give women about how to protect themselves
from sexual attack? (danielGB85)
Why do women need to take such measures ... ask ... yourself that? Or chal-
lenge ... the notions that give rise to some men feeling they can take whatever
they ... please like ... rutting stags because a woman is ‘asking for it’? Never
mind the awfulness of being forced off a street ... you would far sooner ... call
me a liar than deal with the very raw issues rape victims face ... faced with
a non-feminist challenging the hideously ugly inhuman commentary from
men ... the knee jerk reaction is to call that person a liar ... Rape isn’t a lie ... .
It’s a real and nasty issue a good number of women such as myself and our
families deal with dignity ... ask yourself what ... YOU can do to challenge
the men who feel they can rape with impunity when they see women they
are attracted to? ... Instead of forcing women to be continually on their
guard ... (Camdenistar)
There are some men in the world who will commit rape. This is a facet of the
human race. Just as some women will neglect their children ... the problem
is never going to go away. So ... people need to ... protect themselves ... not
put themselves at increased risk in order to make feminists feel better.
(danielGB85)
... (so) rape is ... just a crime and a threat to be wholly reduced by ... women.
For women it involves compromising ... freedoms and the result of a rape can
be ... more debilitating than the effects of other crime. The problem is ... not
going to go away by insisting women compromise ... freedoms and that we
somehow invite rape. The ... issue is wholly skewed ... where women ... need
to take responsibility to avoid rape and men ... don’t. (Camdenistar)
... I suggest you get some therapy. You seem totally neurotic ... (eduke)
Wear whatever ... you like ... . But ... if you hide your face, people will be suspi-
cious of you, and if you dress like a ‘slut’, you are more likely to draw the eye
of predators. Do either ... . But don’t whine about the inevitable responses to
your choice. (danielGB85)
If you dress like a hooker, don’t be surprised if people treat you like one.
(a.nother)

The continual trivialisation of sexual violence by the male protagonists

is striking and so entrenched that no alternative understanding appears
possible. Not only is it a ‘cliché about how bad rape is’ and a crime
comparable to theft, but the woman, who has named her experience in
the blog, is eventually silenced as neurotic. Despite declaring herself a
non-feminist and having clearly articulated problems inherent to the
biological determinism of their argument, in suggesting she requires

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

‘therapy’ the male adversaries tactically obliterate her credibility and

minimise sexual violence generally. The male response presumes mad-
ness, which operates to invalidate her experiences, and therefore the
experiences of others. As a consequence, her (and any other) political
viewpoint based on these experiences is easily disregarded. It has become
inconceivable that within ‘madness’ there is credibility. Moreover, central
to Rape Culture in its trivialisation of sexual violence is the neoliberal
concern for responsible choice, also evident in this conversation. The
male response additionally assumes that in choosing to speak from her
experience she has exposed her already ‘discreditable’ positioning and in
naming her experience in this particular domain she has again chosen to
make herself vulnerable. In their minds, because of the choices she has
made, she is fair game. This association of neoliberal choice, credibility,
and responsibility is evident in three key themes apparent in this extract
and in discussions on sexual violence in mainstream media.
The first theme, evident within this extract, involves this location of
responsibility for sexual violence solely with the woman because she
‘chose’ to put herself in danger. Anderson and Doherty (2008) suggest
that neoliberalism relies on the reflexive, risk aware, and self-regulating
subject. Choice, therefore, is an effect of the autonomous and respon-
sible citizen assessing and avoiding risky situations. It is assumed that
‘reasonable’ women would make themselves hazard aware and take the
necessary precautions to keep safe. In the extract, the two men assert that
women know the risks and as such the choice is clear: to be responsible
and conventional, or to ‘dress like a slut’, lose credibility, and suffer the
consequences without ‘whining’. It is incomprehensible in this conversa-
tion that inhabiting the proscriptive confines of female sexuality is no
guarantee of safety for women either. Rather, victimisation signifies a
reckless individual (that is, someone who was drunk, wore a short skirt,
was ‘unladylike’, involved in sex work, etc.) who ‘chooses’ to expose
themselves to dangers in society and of a failure to make responsible
adjustments. Within neoliberalism and Rape Culture, a victim is both
culpable and blameworthy.
Anderson and Doherty (2008) also identify another three elements of
neoliberal risk taking that are relevant to this discussion here and to the
later debate on SlutWalk. They suggest that within neoliberalism the self-
sufficient individual has no need to rely on the state for support or pro-
tection as it is their responsibility to take care of themselves. Translated
into the sexual violence field, Warner (2003) claims, a ‘recovered’ subject

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 Agency 

is one who is manageable and predictable and no longer a ‘nuisance’ to

others or public services. In the extract, this element of neoliberalism
is revealed in the assertion that the woman should ‘get some therapy’.
In this statement two mutually exclusive assumptions are conjoined
to blame her. Not only have they previously suggested she is lying or
exaggerating, but this statement presumes a self-regulating and self-
improving citizen, responsible for her own recovery, thus rendering pos-
sible some ‘damage’ that they originally disclaim. However, the apparent
devolution of power in the form of responsibility to the individual away
from the dissociated and shrunken state is a smokescreen that has much
wider implications. It forecloses an alternative perspective, that sexual
violence is the responsibility of the perpetrator-other within the specific
cultural context. In this dissociation, the individual’s connection to col-
lective community support is severely restricted, and in the obfuscation
of social responsibility, opportunities for proper protection and justice
are also curtailed. In this cultural climate it becomes easier to implicate
women in their responsibility for sexual violence and recovery and more
justifiable to withdraw support from unrecovered or incredible ‘victims’.
Anderson and Doherty suggest that this laissez-faire language of
neoliberal capitalism, which equates the global free market with growth,
security, and prosperity, seeps into the social sphere. In the social market
place, individuals negotiate and compete with others in order to secure
and protect their various interests. As the woman in the extract suggests,
sexual violence is a ‘compromise in freedoms’ as sexual encounters
are articulated in terms of reciprocal transactions of losses and gains.
Furthermore, unrecovered and incredible ‘victims’ are positioned as a
drain on valuable resources. However, Anderson and Doherty argue that
this neoliberal conception of human interaction as a mutually benefi-
cial exchange presupposes that differences and inequalities are matters
of mere personal choice. For example, choosing to express sexuality
through appearance, or choosing to engage in sex work, or choosing
to consume alcohol all suggest that such sexual negotiations are based
on positions of preference and reciprocity. As such, sexual violence is
reduced to problematic communication and mixed messages as any
analysis of gendered power relations, and intersectional inequality is
precluded.
The second theme evident in this extract, and pertinent to the later
SlutWalk discussion, concerns the commodification of experience
(Phipps 2015). Within the framework of neoliberalism – which Phipps

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

(2015: np) claims ‘individualises, interiorises, and neutralises’ – personal

experience becomes co-opted, diverted, and transformed to fit the
political agenda of those who make use of the particular narratives.
Furthermore, in order to fulfil such ideological and often opposing
demands, lived realities are ‘flattened out’, reducing complex experiences
to simple, homogenised, and polarised arguments. The ramifications
are twofold: personal experience is de-humanised and corrupted, and
the space in between for debate, which holds ambivalence and explores
nuance, is closed. In this particular extract the politics of sexual violence
were conflated with issues of choice and co-opted into wider public
debates of the time around sexualisation and the hijab as a symbol of
oppression. As one of the men opines:
Wear whatever ... you like ... . But ... if you hide your face, people will be suspi-
cious of you, and if you dress like a ‘slut’, you are more likely to draw the eye
of predators. Do either ... . But don’t whine about the inevitable responses to
your choice.

Responsibility and choice continue to dominate in this statement. Yet

choosing to ‘dress like a slut’ is now aligned with choosing to ‘hide
your face’. Either way, choosing to conceal or reveal the female body
incurs ‘inevitable responses’. In this extract there is an underlying (and
misguided) warning that women should choose responsibly to tread the
narrow path of safe respectability, between totally covering and expos-
ing the body, or suffer the consequences. The lived realities and the
political challenges that SlutWalk and wearing the veil encompass are
simplified and reduced to a choice that sustains suspicion and violence.
The commodification of these particular experiences was also found in
other broadsheets. Muslim women and SlutWalkers were not only set
against each other but also alongside other experiences, with ‘inevitable
responses’ articulated.
For example, in one Observer article (McVeigh 2011) commentators
described SlutWalkers as liberated, political, and essentially Westernised,
in contrast to the ‘oppressed, veiled Muslim woman’ (Pedwell 2011: 189).
Although it was acknowledged that choice of attire is politically moti-
vated in both situations, Western women were positioned with agency
in their capacity to challenge inequality. Whilst the ‘inevitable responses’
for veiled women are therefore pity or suspicion, the commentators’
response to SlutWalkers was to extend the bounds of female responsibil-
ity to incorporate the potential impact that such displays of sexuality

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 Agency 

had on younger women. The needs of adult SlutWalkers to assert and

celebrate their sexuality in order to confront slut-shaming were not
only positioned in relation to ‘oppressed Muslim women’ but also as
potentially harmful to children. As one of the female commentators in
McVeigh’s (2011: np) article suggests:
while I found the way the [Toronto] policeman expressed himself com-
pletely inappropriate ... I do wonder about a lot of the fashion now, with
young girls ... dressing very provocatively ... perhaps they don’t realise the
subliminal message they send out. So there is an interpretation ... more
sympathetic to his view ... that ... women can be making themselves vulner-
able, particularly young girls. Our very sexualised society puts pressure on
young girls ... . If they gave it more thought they wouldn’t feel comfortable
with what they’re saying about themselves.

The political message of SlutWalk to recognise the responsibility of

the perpetrator was missed as it became diverted into contemporary
concerns about the sexualisation of young people (Popadopoulos 2010).
These cultural fears, that young girls may not have the maturity to under-
stand the possible consequences of such sexual expression and indeed
may be psychologically damaged by social pressures to behave and
appear sexualised, were privileged over perpetrator-other responsibility.
The obvious sexual expression of SlutWalkers was evidence of their par-
ticipation in this possible corruption of young girls. In this debate, the
representations of the veiled Muslim woman, the slut, or the sexualised
child became entrenched positions. Experiences were dehumanised and
contorted to fit the political agenda of the speaker. Women’s lives were
extricated from the complex realities of intersecting inequalities, and
agency was defined only in relation to individual responsibility within
the confines of a choice that suggests safety for women is possible. Such
commodification of experience facilitates the denial of perpetrator and
social responsibility for sexual violence and as Phipps (2015) suggests,
minimises opportunities to fully engage, emotionally and practically,
with different experiences.
SlutWalk was founded on creating opportunities to learn from the
diversity of experiences of those involved. Yet, the third identifiable
theme articulated in the original excerpt and within Rape Culture is
feminism as an outmoded, misguided, and corrupting influence.
Feminism was blamed for restricting the debate, for setting ‘things up so
that it is impossible to say anything’. SlutWalk was also accused of dup-
ing other women because ‘people need to ... protect themselves ... not put

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

themselves at increased risk in order to make feminists feel better’. In the

sexualisation debate, feminists risked being positioned as lacking moral
integrity for suggesting that young people’s negotiation of sexualisation
is ‘complex’ (Ringrose 2011). SlutWalk demonstrates that the political
motivation to make a difference in specific aspects of women’s lives
continues to be significant. The wider political impetus to challenge and
eradicate rape-supportive infrastructure through SlutWalk, however, was
misrepresented and instead reduced to the sole need of women and girls
to have information to help make responsible choices to keep themselves
safe. In mainstream media feminism is sidelined, deemed irrelevant in
our equality (McRobbie 2009) and dangerous. It is apparent in these
excerpts that credibility and responsibility are only ever conventionally
articulated and that the possibility of reclaiming ‘slut’ as a viable and
credible category is extremely remote.

Feminist debate

Analysis of the mainstream media debate revealed the reproduction of

rape mythology and the operation of neoliberal processes of individual-
ism and compartmentalisation which absented perpetrator-other respon-
sibility and trivialised the voices of women who have experienced sexual
violence. Yet within feminism, ‘slut’ as a viable category for reclamation
was also contested. At the heart of this feminist debate was a theoretical
and practical engagement with what it means to be a woman, and in a
process of commodification of experience, SlutWalk became further
entrenched in internal oppositional politics. Whilst in the mainstream,
SlutWalk’s celebration of inherent sluttiness further confirmed conven-
tional justifications for sexual violence, for Attwood (2007: 245), ‘[s]
truggles over sluttiness have become part of a struggle over feminism
itself.’ However, the problem with defining female sexuality as inherently
slutty is twofold. This position doesn’t necessarily challenge underlying
structural oppression and rape-supportive infrastructure in which slut-
shaming and responsibility are inextricably linked. Also, such debates do
not necessarily progress an articulation of female sexual agency, but rather
the reformulation of male sexuality. So in a return to the voices of women
who have experienced sexual violence, in a process of ‘unthinking’,1 this
section also considers some of the issues encountered in directly trans-
posing the language of male sexuality onto female sexuality.

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 Agency 

It has already been suggested that SlutWalk, as a practical engagement

with post-structural feminism, confronted
f slut-shaming through lan-
guage and a celebration of diversity. The following excerpts, taken from
a variety of sources, exemplify the framing of this particular story within
the feminist debate:
Unlike protests ... by mainstream ... women’s organisations, which are care-
fully planned ... SlutWalks have cropped up organically ... fuelled by raw
emotional and political energy of young women ... the success of SlutWalks
does herald a new day in feminist organising ... women’s anger begins online
but takes to the street ... a local step makes global waves ... that will have last-
ing effects on the movement. (Valenti 2011: np)
the crowd identified with sex workers. There was such empathy when
two women from the English Collective of Prostitutes spoke that my first
thought was that this was a sex worker audience ... I then realised that the
line between women who turn tricks and women who don’t was almost
invisible ... it was not a moral divide, but one of chance and choice ... we were
marching because it wasn’t anyone’s business what any of us did with our
bodies ... transgender, lesbian, straight and bisexual women. We were not
merely marching together; we were one, claiming not equality but mutual
respect for individuality. Establishing your right establishes and safeguards
mine. (James 2011: np)
I don’t think this is a protest about identity, I think it’s a protest about lan-
guage. (Jones 2011: np)
The organisers claim that celebrating the word ‘slut’, and promoting
sluttishness ... will help women achieve ... autonomy over their sexuality.
But ... ‘reclaiming’ the word slut fails to address the real issue ... slut is so
deeply rooted in the patriarchal ‘madonna/whore’ view of women’s sexual-
ity that it is beyond redemption ... . Encouraging women to be even more
‘sluttish’ will not change this ugly reality ... the organisers of the SlutWalk
might think that proudly calling themselves ‘sluts’ is a way to empower
women, they are in fact making life harder for girls ... trying to navigate
their way through the tricky terrain of adolescence. Women need to take
to the streets – but not for the right to be called ‘slut’. (Dines and Murphy
2011: np)
for a prostituted girl or woman ... enslaved in the sex trade, the word ‘slut’
could mean abuse, sexual torture, terror and exploitation. For many, to be
a ‘slut’ ... means to hang between life and death. Would these women really
want to reclaim the word ‘slut’ when that is what it means to them? (blog
response to Jones 2011: np)
is undressing the best way to protest against rape?’ (Gold 2011: np)

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

I completely understand the motivation behind SlutWalk ... I’m simply not
personally comfortable marching ... under the banner ‘slut’. It’s not how I
define myself ... (or) ... how I want other people to view me. The use of the
word has brought global media attention to ... victim blaming, which is fan-
tastic, and ... makes complete sense in the context ... so I’m not going to deny
it was a great idea. I just don’t want to go on a march myself, and ... their
[sic] are other feminists who feel the same. It’s not that we don’t ‘get it’, it’s
that slutwalking isn’t an approach that we ... favour, for a whole variety of
reasons. (Woodhouse 2011: np)

Inclusion, fun, and individualism are the three characteristics of third-

wave feminism outlined by Budgeon (2011) that are apparent in the
ethics, delivery, and content of SlutWalk. Instigated by young women,
proponents celebrated SlutWalk as inclusive of diversity with particular
emphasis on the participation of black and working-class women, sex
workers, male feminists, and people identifying as transgender. SlutWalk
rejected ‘victim’ feminism that denied female agency and positioned all
women as casualties of an oppressive patriarchy, in favour of fun and
sexy empowerment with attitude, where women are agents in control of
their (sexual) life. The politics of SlutWalk was not collective action but
a collection of politically divergent people brought together, as Budgeon
(2011: 283) suggests, ‘to define their personal relationship to feminism in
ways that make sense to them as individuals’. Passionately and organi-
cally disseminated, the SlutWalk message was not about ‘equality but
mutual respect for individuality’, nor was it ‘a protest about identity’ but
‘language’. Content concerned the legitimation of sex work and reduction
of stigma in order to assert a polymorphous, active female sexuality. The
delivery and content of the SlutWalk message was asserted to indicate a
distinction from, and an opposition to, the feminism of the 1970s and
1980s which was articulated as exclusionary, essentialist, and hard-line.
SlutWalk distanced itself from earlier incarnations of feminism just as
feminist critics questioned an approach that both relied on the exposure
of women’s bodies (was ‘undressing the best way to protest against rape?’)
and disregarded fundamental structural and institutional inequalities, to
further establish an oppositional politics. For Walia (2011: np; and Islam
2011) SlutWalk acknowledged ‘slut’ as a category that ‘disproportionately
impacts women of colour and poor women to reinforce their status as
inherently dirty ... second-class ... more rape-able’, but it was unable to
respond to the accusation that reclaiming ‘slut’ is easier for some white
women. The main controversy within the feminist debate, however,

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 Agency 

inevitably concentrated on the prostituted woman. Third-wave SlutWalk

discourse emphasised choice, pleasure, and validation of experiences of
women involved in pornography and prostitution. Conversely, critics
focused on accounts that highlighted the harm of both. For example,
Coy (2009: 201) suggests that even without violence and coercion,
selling sex is characterised ‘by a sense of intrusion, dissociation and
(dis)embodiment’. SlutWalk proponents advocated for the decriminali-
sation and the consequent legitimation of sex work in order to secure
women’s rights and control over their working environment thereby
eliminating stigma considered the only barrier to validation. Whereas
feminist critics of SlutWalk focused on removing the demand for pros-
titution since structural inequalities render prostitution dangerous for
the majority of women involved. In their assertion of an active female
sexuality, SlutWalkers demanded choice to participate in pornography
and sex work in defiance of the perceived anti-sex view that prostitution
is a process of re-victimisation. Although at the heart of the debate is the
recognition that the female body matters, and responsibility for sexual
violence lies with the perpetrator-other, positions became entrenched.
The prostituted woman, as the embodiment of society’s censure and
victim-blaming, both susceptible to sexual violence and responsible for
it, was contested territory in a battle to define women’s sexuality and
ultimately feminism itself.
The infiltration of neoliberal concerns for individualism and the
commodification of experience is clearly apparent in this feminist
debate. Both elements are detrimental to the progression of a nuanced
and contrary praxis necessary to challenge the predominance of Rape
Culture. SlutWalk’s sexually autonomous female agent accepts and
enjoys an inherent sluttiness and as such her sexuality, and intimate
encounters, become unencumbered by social constraints. She is free
to make informed choices and to consent in sexual relations based on
a negotiation and mutual exchange of personal interest. However, this
neoliberal risk-aware individual, responsible only to herself, may be able
to celebrate a previously denied sexuality, but it depends on an equality
that does not exist and a negation of power that saturates each social
situation. Moreover, sluttiness, as an expression of sexual difference, in
actuality encapsulates an exaggerated heteronormative sexuality which
absolutely reproduces social censure and processes to credibility. The
very rules sluttiness attempts to displace are further ensconced as these
demonstrations of female sexuality incite further social criticism.

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

The individualism of SlutWalk was confronted in critical feminist

responses because it ignored structural inequalities and depoliticised
feminism as collective action. Unfortunately, this argumentation was
absorbed into the entrenched positioning that relied on the opposition
of second- and third-wave feminism, foreclosing dialogue and consid-
eration of continuities and coherence. Drawing on Phipps’ (2015) notion
of commodification of experience, particular and ‘flattened out’ experi-
ences were set against each other and the surrounding politics ignored.
In their articulation of ‘slut’, prostituted women were either dupes and/or
victims of patriarchy or liberated and self-possessed sex radicals. There
was no space in which to narrate or recognise the subtlety of contra-
dictory experience. ‘In this politics of positionality’, Phipps (2015: np)
argues, ‘experiences are always already marked by ideology and the first
question we ask (consciously or not) when someone shares their experi-
ence is, “whose side are you on?” ’ The oppositional politics evidenced in
SlutWalk is fundamentally problematic for both individual identity and
the identity of feminism. ‘Them and us’ situations polarise and reduce
experience and, in a process of abjection (Butler 2004), eradicate the pos-
sibility of a more intricate and alternative subjectivity. Simultaneously,
within feminism the space to discuss commonalities and complexity is
reduced whilst in the public domain both sides of the feminist argument
are discredited as feminism is portrayed as either dangerous in its pro-
scription of free sexuality, or moralistic in its policing of ‘slut’. Internal
feminist debates are not publicly acknowledged and therefore the pos-
sibility of nuance is lost, as feminism is perceived as obsolete.
SlutWalk attempted to trouble generic and feminist representations of
female sexuality as inevitably passive. Given the scale of sexual violence
and the proliferation of rape-supportive presumptions and practices, it
is expedient to both consider female sexuality as relational and subordi-
nate, and to demand to signify it differently. Rather than subscribe to the
oppositional politics that emerged from the neoliberalism of SlutWalk,
which asserted either a passive or a male-oriented female sexuality, it is
perhaps strategic instead to recognise the complexity of sexual agency
that is apparent within women’s accounts. It has been previously argued
that rape is intimately sexualised and experienced as the destruction of
(sexual) identity. Moreover, women feel complicit if they have instigated or
responded biologically to sexual violence. Indeed any situation where the
individual’s sexuality is manipulated for perpetrator gain causes confusion
and reveals inherent power dynamics. Therefore, in their articulation of

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 Agency 

the destruction of sexuality in violence, in these accounts, women offer a

starting point from which to ‘unthink’ female sexual agency that is neither
passive nor free, but nuanced and irreducible to the presence or absence of
male sexuality. Ultimately these extracts reveal the need to problematise
cultural presumptions that both subsume female sexuality to managing
trauma or to responsibility for her own and male sexual behaviour.
And I felt quite promiscuous after [being raped] ... . But then I built up a
relationship with a bloke who, it was more a friendship, who helped me
really. (Alison: How?) I don’t know, just being there really ... . I’d not seen
him for about 18 months and I knocked on his door once and it was after
I had reported [the rapist to the police] ... . Been for a bottle of wine at [my
friend’s] and when I come home I opened another one ... I would be drunk
then ... . And he was so shocked to see me. Basically I wanted him to sleep
with me but I didn’t want sex. I don’t know what I wanted. I wanted to feel
worse. And he was very good. I mean I didn’t say ‘I want to sleep with you’,
but I was obviously very vulnerable and he respected my vulnerability
really ... he didn’t take advantage of it. (Eliza)
But I do think the effects are that I read into things too much now ... I
become an emotional ... caretaker for people ... . Not because I’m a good
person ... I feel because of my knowledge I can protect. Well, no I can’t. You
protect yourself. (Eliza)
My first husband was very, very supportive, very ... . In fact I was going out
with him for quite a long time before we had physical contact and he was so
patient and he knew why and I always found [sex] painful, physically pain-
ful ... and I never made the link but it always brought me to tears. And ... it’s
only recently that I’ve made that link. That it saddened and distressed me
so much the actual act and disgusted me that it brought me to tears. And
my husband was like ‘what is wrong?’ and I didn’t know, it just happens. But
that stopped after the counselling. Just like that. It was not something that I
thought I had any control over. (Donna)
I hated men basically, I hated them. I just saw each and every one of them as
predators, even my husband when I married him. It’s like if he did certain
things like, if he tried to have sex with me in the middle of the night it dis-
gusted me, it horrified me and it would take me back. (Donna)
maybe one effect of the trauma is ... you sort of sexualise other people and
you feel you can only get love through sex, or you can get something like
affirmation or any good feelings through sex. What you really want is a
friendship. (Elaine)

The perpetrator’s colonisation of her embodied self precipitates a dispute

over the physical, psychological, and sexual ownership of her mind and

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

body. Sex after sexual violence, therefore, is understandably problematic

in its potential to activate physical and emotional pain. SlutWalk’s insist-
ence on embracing and liberating a free and polymorphous sexuality is,
therefore, not reflected in these accounts. Neither is the passive and vic-
timised sexuality of SlutWalk critics. Instead women articulate the need
to test, evaluate, and to challenge previously held and socially constructed
beliefs about a female sexuality that is constrained within gendered
power relations. There is much to consider within these frank and emo-
tive extracts, but highlighted here are two main areas of concern that
demonstrate nuance and complexity, to supplement the ‘flattened out’
and opposing experiences proffered in the SlutWalk debate. Firstly, sexual
violence causes her, and others (friends, partners, professionals, etc.) to
critically reinterpret her sexuality and sexual expression, and secondly,
this re-evaluation, which focuses on women’s sexual behaviour, detracts
critical attention away from male sexuality as the explanatory framework.
Critical re-evaluation of her sexuality prompts a number of fearful pos-
sibilities particularly related to her sexuality, including the fear of vulner-
ability, fear of perpetual victimhood, and fear of difference. Articulated
in the excerpts is a vulnerability that is both naive, propelling her into
unsafe predicaments, and knowing, since it is presumed that experiential
knowledge of dehumanisation assists her to identify oppressive situa-
tions and behaviours that are best avoided. However, whether naive or
knowledgeable, for Mardorossian (2014) vulnerability is inextricably
linked to responsibility within contemporary ‘rape victim’ identity as she
is held responsible for managing her vulnerability before and after the
event(s). As such she may blame herself not only in light of an unfavour-
able reinterpretation of her previous ‘negligence’ but also for making
insufficient use of her experiential knowledge to protect her present self
and others. Moreover, Reavey (2003) suggests that female sexuality is
measured in relation to abuse and the damage it produces so that any
subsequent sexual relationships, whether problematic or not, are defined
only in relation to the incidences of abuse. Participation and enjoyment
of penetrative heterosex is considered evidence of progress, of her taking
responsibility to repair her ‘damaged’ sexuality. Reavey (2003) argues that
women’s sexuality is monitored in terms of the reiteration of, or recovery
from, a perpetual victimhood. Thus affirming her difference from ‘normal’
women who are neither alienated from their sexuality nor privy to the
circumstantial knowledge of vulnerability. However, as Reavey suggests,
ignored are the gendered power relations apparent in all women’s lives.

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 Agency 

The excerpts expose the spotlighting of female sexuality as the arbiter of

sexual responsibility which justifies the need for its continual scrutiny and
evaluation. As progress is assessed in relation to her sexual encounters, her
responsibility for male sexuality becomes apparent. For example, Eliza and
Donna saw all men as sexually predatory; therefore, even ‘supportive’ men
who acknowledged their vulnerability and refrained from sex required test-
ing. This presumption of female responsibility that incongruently requires
the monitoring of her sexuality rather than his obscures the significance
of male sexuality as thee filter through which all sexuality is known. Amara
(2015) draws upon her own and other women’s experience of sexuality after
sexual violence to suggest that it is from the perpetrator’s perspective that
she understands her own embodied self. For example, in her article, Amara
(2015: np) cites one woman who fears catching sight of her body because it
will ‘be like looking through the eyes of [her] rapist. [Her] body is the image
he must have seen. [She doesn’t] want to look through his eyes ... [she] wants
[her] body back.’ The struggle to reclaim her body is more than the desire
for situated ownership, but an imperative to define herself independently
from him, to know herself not through the male gaze or from the male
perspective, but on her own terms. Scrutiny of female sexuality is both a
distraction from the significance of male sexuality and a necessity in order
to review and renew connection to her body and sex. It is both an imposi-
tion of gendered norms and a challenge to them.
If male sexual agency is an imposition that obliterates alternative
descriptors so that female sexuality is defined only as an imitation of male
sexuality, then consideration of sexuality within and after sexual violence
is significant. The process of reclaiming her body, self, and sexuality in the
aftermath of such destruction could be mirrored theoretically in order to
define female sexuality on our own terms. These accounts suggest that
female sexuality is not an appropriation of male sexual behaviour and
attitudes as proposed in SlutWalk. Nor is female sexuality the moderate,
temperate, or sensible antithesis of the male agency articulated in the
public domain either. However, just as women here suggest, given the
pervasiveness of this male perspective, possible alternatives are limited.

Conclusion

Speaking out loud experiences of sexual violence is an agentic and politi-

cal act. It exposes secrets, identifies commonalities that alleviate stigma,

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

and names operations of oppression. In contemporary Western neolib-

eralism that reifies the autonomous, proactive, and responsible citizen,
collective naming of experience and resistance to slut-shaming on such a
global scale as that of SlutWalk demonstrates an unprecedented demand
for feminism. However, the existence of ‘slut’ as a misogynist category
in itself was not properly articulated (Murphy 2012). Instead SlutWalk
assumed elements of neoliberalism that further entrenched political
divisions and left the general public unaffected by a feminism that was
perceived as at best irrelevant and at worst dangerous. It also promoted
a controversial exposition of female sexuality as polymorphous, active,
and unfettered by traditional gendered constraints that denied the exist-
ence of structural inequalities and left unchallenged the predominantly
masculine template that proscribes sexuality. Although SlutWalk asserted
multiplicity, it simply transposed male sexuality onto women.
In consideration of women’s accounts of sexuality after sexual vio-
lence, it becomes apparent that such a response is problematic. If rape,
as Mardorossian (2014) suggests, is a fundamental incarnation of the
hegemonic masculine will to dominate that necessitates the subjugation
of the feminised other, then examination of rape exposes sexuality that
is constituted in oppression. That is, sexual violence does not reveal the
essence of heterosexuality, nor does it suggest an extreme and unusual
manifestation of masculinity because it is not contingent on biologically
sexed bodies. Rape defines sexual relations and sexuality particularly
because it is the enactment and reproduction of structural inequali-
ties through the will to dominate. Although the sexuality of SlutWalk
highlights societal double standards where normalised sexual behaviour
considered acceptable in men is condemned in women. In its insistence
on the appropriation of male sexuality as the template of all sexuality, it
actually and inadvertently reinforces the categorising duality of female
passivity and male agency it attempts to dispel, thereby perpetuating
the very structural inequalities that legitimise the will to dominate. No
alternative definition of female sexuality is offered here, but rather an
understanding of sexuality that incorporates nuance and complexity as
it is reconstructed after sexual violence.

Note
1 Thank you to Lyra for suggesting this term.

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 6
Practice
Abstract: The concluding chapter attends to the demands
of feminist research to improve practice response. In order
to assess the study’s contribution, therefore, a summary
of the concerns highlighted within women’s accounts
is provided, as they challenge the categorisation and
essentialism of victim identity, and expose secondary
harm that blames the violated woman and denies social
responsibility. Representing rape carefully (Gay 2014)
raises issues for practice and highlights the limitations of
the research. Good practice responses are summarised in
recommendations.

Healicon, Alison. The Politics of Sexual Violence: Rape,

Identity and Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015. doi: 10.1057/9781137461728.0007.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0007 

 The Politics of Sexual Violence

I had nowhere to turn, the bad [children’s] homes were abusive.

Staff didn’t give a shit anyway.
(Amy)

There’s nothing worse when people are grasping for support when
somebody sits on the fence. Get off the fence and join them or don’t
bloody bother.
(Eliza)

I care passionately about people being able to live life, not being
constricted by this crap. I think that is the ultimate success of the
abuser ... . It isn’t what they did at the time, it’s what they make us
stop achieving.
(Caitlin)

Wow. This is scary stuff. Am I a self-disciplining, recovered woman?

Is that how I position myself not to be feared/ rejected/ ostracised/
looked down on? Are my attempts of liberation and empowerment
in fact leading to greater subjugation and oppression?
(Violet)

In an attempt to write sexual violence ‘carefully’ (Gay 2014), without

trivialising or sensationalising, and with a passion for precision and
dissemination, this book detailed the experiences and priorities of 12
women who have been raped. Focussing particularly on their articula-
tion of the reality of rape and the limits to self-presentation, these more
rounded and less ‘flattened out’ (Phipps 2015) accounts offered nuance
and complexity. In doing so, the book exposed and challenged the
polarisation implicated in processes of compartmentalisation, which
ranks experiences such as stranger and date rape, and categorisation,
where identity is assessed for credibility and innocence, or responsibil-
ity and deficiency. In accordance with the wishes of the women who
participated, this book theorises the possibility of living beyond, and in
contradiction to, the socially ascribed labels implicit within the harm
story of abuse (O’Dell 2003), which establishes the inevitable damage
of the traumatised yet stigmatised ‘rape victim’, or the victim-blaming
misogyny of rape mythology. The research aims were, therefore, to trou-
ble processes of compartmentalisation and categorisation (Mardorossian
2014) contained within psychological and public discourse, in order to

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 Practice 

facilitate a more faithful account of sexual violence and to situate blame

and responsibility with the perpetrator-other.
For women who have experienced sexual violence, it is important to
acknowledge and appreciate trauma, the particularities of terminology
and therapeutic strategies that help describe and manage emotional
distress, and opportunities to access a range of support including coun-
selling. However, this book does not pursue a therapeutic approach, it
does not prescribe a route to recovery, nor does it offer practical coping
techniques or exercises. Indeed, the predominance and prioritisation of
a psychological response is contested as a product of a therapy culture
(Furedi 2004) that surveils and delimits self-expression and identity. So
how is this book useful, then? In taking seriously women’s accounts, it
confirms the necessity of an alternative and feminist consideration of
sexual violence that does not differentiate between experiences, or assess
for credibility or harm. It situates the experience and representation of
rape, and the behaviour and responsibility of the perpetrator, within the
context of contemporary but persistent and entrenched power dynamics
and intersectional inequalities. This book engages with feminism and
philosophy to consider subjectivity as neither biologically determined or
free, but complicit and resistant, articulating theoretically the possibility
of agency or transformation, which are significant themes in women’s
accounts. So although this book does not offer practical strategies and
solutions, it is pragmatic in its analysis of a politics of transformation, as
it is necessarily narrated in the extracts above.
Kelly (1988: 73) suggested feminist research that focuses particularly
on gendered violence requires ‘a commitment which includes not con-
doning abuse explicitly or implicitly, seeing the purpose ... as increasing
understanding in order that more appropriate responses can be devel-
oped, and wanting to contribute to a long term goal of ending violence
in the lives of women and children’. Applying theory to practice in order
to make a difference in women’s lives was the primary motivation for
seeking publication and precipitated the participation of women into
this study. Given the extent of Rape Culture and the proliferation of the
harm story, women who have experienced sexual violence may find clar-
ity in the presentation of narratives that communicate missing nuance to
plug some of the gaps created in processes of compartmentalisation and
categorisation. However, in spite of good intentions, it is impossible to
measure impact or contribution to ending violence. The responsibilities
of the research(er) therefore are more tangibly evaluated here in relation

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

to the possibility of developing practice responses and avoiding excuses

for male-perpetrated violence against women and girls. There are four
main areas in which this research has contributed to knowledge. It has
provided: nuances in experience that suggest the contemporary category
of ‘rape victim’ is both accepted and rejected, critique of the essential-
ism of the gendering of the ‘rape victim’, details of secondary harm, and
details of social responsibility. These themes are discussed to summarise
the concerns of women who have experienced sexual violence as they
have been articulated within this research. Further practical implications
are identified within a consideration of the limitations of the study and
then recommendations for practice are collated and suggested.

Contribution to knowledge

It has been argued that sexual violence destroys the self (Winkler 2002)
which, in therapeutic and psychological literature, devastates the indi-
vidual’s relationship with her body and with the community. Without
denying the possibility, or the effects, of trauma, this research opposed
the pathologisation of subjectivity in order to facilitate capacity for indi-
vidual and social change. The traumatised and dissociated self, arguably
indicative of psychological damage, was reformulated to suggest a poten-
tially transformative, fluid, and multiple subjectivity that is dependent
upon, and constituted within, the intra-actions of bodies, social spaces,
structures, and language. Other studies similarly advocate multiplic-
ity and fluidity, in order to avoid pathologisation and promulgate an
alternative understanding of identity after trauma (Sinason 2002) and
to trouble the medicalised version of experience that describes, creates,
and sustains difference (Antze and Lambek 1996; Reavey and Warner
2003). The specific contribution made here, though, is the provision of
a nuanced and detailed exemplification of Mardorossian’s (2014) critique
of the contemporary framing of ‘rape victim’ identity as inevitably vul-
nerable, inherently deficient, and so stigmatised that immediate transfor-
mation is required. It details the challenge she proposes to essentialism
that presumes sexual violence is an enduring expression of masculinity
and victimisation of women. Also exposed within this example of the
subtleties of categorisation is an individualism that assumes ‘victim’
wrongness rather than fault the morality of the society that encourages
such violence. There are of course many and varied feminist responses to

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 Practice 

victim blaming (Kelly 1997a; Jones and Cook 2008), but the contribution
made here is an exposition of secondary harm and an extension to the
theorisation of responsibility that includes collusive others.
Evident within accounts from women who have experienced sexual
violence is both an acceptance and rejection of the category ‘rape victim’
as a contemporary and all-consuming subjectivity. The predominance of
psychological terminology renders alternative descriptive language and
sense-making elusive. The effects of classification offset the need to have
rape recognised as a dehumanising process. Either way, personal costs
are incurred. Acquiring ‘victim’ status legitimises the devastation of rape,
but it precludes agency and control. The spectral presence of innocence,
on which the universal application of credibility assessment depends,
not only detracts from the reality of rape but is available exclusively to
the very young as it is presumed women lie (Jordan 2004b). Chances
of credibility approval are further reduced in the compartmentalising of
experience through trivialisation and sensationalisation. Moreover, the
‘rape victim’ requires monitoring and surveillance of manifested trauma,
and her work towards ‘normality’ (Warner 2003).
Conversely, in not telling, not naming, or trivialising experience,
women linger outside of, avoid, and resist victim categorisation. Some
agency and control is retained, but she may feel fraudulent or anticipate
both exposure and eventual confrontation with the trauma that will sup-
posedly catch up with her. Standing on a metaphorical cliff edge, this
implicit contradiction is evidenced in the reluctance to jump into the cat-
egorical abyss, where simultaneously endured are the fears of not being
believed and of the personal harm caused in keeping this experience
contained. The prioritisation of this moment in accounts from women
reveals the operation of categorisation which ultimately prevents women
from speaking out and accessing recognition and respect. For those who
decide to disclose, their experiences, and the articulation of them, are
constricted. The challenge that varied and nuanced experiences offer is
therefore silenced and erased from the debate.
Troubling the contemporary articulation of the ‘rape victim’ also
necessitates questioning sexual violence as an inevitable expression of
an essentially dominant masculinity and naturally victimised feminin-
ity. Although it was acknowledged within women’s accounts that men
and boys experienced the devastation of sexual violence, the primary
cause for concern was the denial of female (sexual) agency which was
communicated in two main ways. Firstly, women were dissatisfied with

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

the political language of sexual violence that prioritised male aggression

but inadequately explained their experiences of abuse perpetrated and
condoned by women. Accounts here problematised the normalisation of
male aggression and the customary explanations of female perpetrated
abuse (Peter 2006, 2008) that either trivialise because women are not
perceived to have sexual capacity or sensationalise the female perpetra-
tor’s unusually monstrous sexuality.
Secondly, in the aftermath of rape, women expressed the need to
articulate their sexuality independently from their experiences of sexual
violence in order to challenge the subsumption of female sexuality as
responsible for male sexual behaviour or as unavoidably traumatic and
problematic (Reavey 2003). The denial of female sexual agency limits
opportunities to make sense of particular experiences of abuse, but it also
clearly demonstrates the significance and predominance of male sexual-
ity as the defining framework. Indeed, the feminist politics of SlutWalk
questionably appropriated and disseminated the assertive sexuality of
masculinity because it appeared to encompass freedom from gendered
restrictions. Accounts therefore suggest the necessity of theorisation of
a female sexual agency that, in the same manner as subjectivity, is not
essentially derived but emerges within the social and political context.
The framing of contemporary ‘rape victim’ identity (Mardorossian
2014) insists on psychological descriptions of trauma (O’Dell 2003) that
dismiss the significance of the social and political context. Located within
neoliberalism, this focus on the individual prioritises victim-blaming
rather than social responsibility, especially apparent in situations of
sexual violence. It is evident in accounts that women find themselves
already deficient, blameworthy, and shameful, and depending on the
reactions of others, these feelings are relieved or encouraged. Secondary
harm, therefore, is the imposition of cultural expectation and victim-
blaming in every subsequent encounter that affirms and reproduces the
dehumanisation of sexual violence, and where trauma is interpreted as
confirmation of ‘victimhood’. Although most encounters involved some
element of victim-blaming and trauma assessment, it was mothers’ nega-
tive responses that were particularly painful.
In accounts women spoke of their mothers not believing them, telling
them to keep quiet or risk the break-up of the family, accusing them of
provoking the sexual violence, trivialising it, and choosing not to notice.
Many women decide not to disclose to their mothers to protect them
from what they feel to be the repellent truth. It is also because they fear

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 Practice 

their mothers’ rejection, and they maya question her allegiance especially
when the perpetrator is another family member. The fear that their moth-
ers knew about, condoned, and did nothing to stop childhood sexual
abuse is extremely difficult to bear. It is clear in the effect that mothers’
responses invoke, that experiencing sexual violence can be devastating,
but the secondary harm caused by reactions that trivialise, disbelieve, or
blame reproduces the devastation and shame and highlights there may
be nowhere to go.
The secondary harm of victim-blaming exists in a symbiotic relation-
ship with the negation of social responsibility that functions to limit
options and opportunities to articulate the reality of rape. Alongside
examples of victim-blaming, women’s accounts emphasised the social-
ity of sexual violence, not least in the indestructible humanity signified
in excruciating and overwhelming shame. Women suggested that their
efforts to prevent, evade, and ultimately reduce the harm of sexual vio-
lence are culturally redefined as complicity. Perpetrator tactics (Warner
2007), including an entitlement that renders their behaviour incompre-
hensible even to themselves, immediately confuse and eventually deflect
perpetrator responsibility. The role of others is obfuscated explicitly
in the participation, observation, and trivialisation of sexual violence
and implicitly in our denial, ignorance, and indifference. The readiness
with which women are blamed for sexual violence and the reluctance
to assign responsibility to the perpetrator-other within the context of
Rape Culture indicates clearly the necessity of a multi-level challenge
that prioritises our collective and social responsibility. The political
critique of most feminism refuses to blame women for sexual violence
and problematises the cultural scaffolding of rape (Gavey 2005). Some of
the women in this study were not interested in the politics of feminism
to make sense of their experiences. However, the values of feminism are
encompassed in the following evaluation of the project of writing sexual
violence carefully and in the recommendations, precisely because of its
challenge to the neoliberal individualism of secondary harm, perpetu-
ated in the predominance of psychological responses.

Limitations

Gay (2014: 133) asserts the importance of writing sexual violence ‘care-
fully’ because ‘[t]he right stories are not being told, or we’re not writing

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

enough about the topic of rape in the right ways.’ The particular problems
she identifies are the impossibility and impact of insisting on the distinc-
tion between the representation and experience of rape. For example,
compartmentalisation tolerates the inaccurate and derogatory depiction
of rape, thereby trivialising most experiences, whilst sensationalising the
vicarious trauma or re-traumatisation of those encountering stories of
sexual violence, which was a concern for participants. The real conse-
quences are dire as this oppositional positioning confirms the privilege
of those who have not been raped in the ‘othering’ of the discredited
and ‘over-sensitive’ ‘rape victim’. Composing rape in the right way, then,
involves the responsible and sensitive pursuit of the mutuality of rep-
resentation and reality instead. In choosing not to portray women who
experience rape and sexual violence as discredited or stigmatised, and
in articulating agency and resistance, her ‘othering’ in reality might be
avoided. However, even writing from experience, the task is onerous and
clarified here by Gay (2014: 235):

As I write any of these stories, I wonder if I am being too gratuitous. I want

to get it right. But how do you get this sort of thing right? How do you write
violence authentically without making it exploitative? I worry that I am
contributing to the cultural numbness ... that allows rape to be rich fodder
for popular culture and entertainment ... . Whilst I have these concerns,
I also feel committed to telling the truth. These violences happen even if
bearing such witness contributes to a spectacle of sexual violence.

The responsibility of writing carefully is evaluated in a return to the

concerns of participants. For a study which engages a methodological
approach that troubles the representation of rape necessitates a critique
of its own representation of rape. Exposed are two main limitations of
the research that also highlight issues for practice.
The purpose of this research was to detail nuance absent from cultural
representations of rape in order to challenge the categorisation of the
‘rape victim’. Therefore, whilst recognising the significance of other
forms of sexualised violence, this particular representation engaged with
accounts from 12 women who had been raped at any point in their lives.
The narratives, indicative of concerns encountered daily as a practitioner,
were emotive, eloquent, varied, and rich. Although ethically appropri-
ate, my decision to rely on voluntary participation limited the scale and
representation of experiences which indeed tended towards repeated,
physically violent, and organised rape. It could be argued, then, that as

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 Practice 

opportunities to present more divergent experiences were restricted, the

methodological risks included the possibility of insufficient challenge to
the categorisation of ‘rape victim’, and in the routine presentation of the
sensational, compartmentalisation is arguably sustained. For without the
range of alternative narratives, violence may feel normalised and trivi-
alised. Mindful of categorisation and compartmentalisation, care was
taken with interpretation and analysis to deliberately avoid trivialisation
and sensationalisation. In fact, the need to problematise ‘rape victim’
identity originated and developed within the diverse and detailed nar-
ratives. However, the prioritisation of accounts of violence in rape has
implications for practice.
Most rape is not physically violent; that it is, therefore, not culturally
legitimate as ‘real rape’ (Estrich 1987) is signified in the normalisa-
tion of physically violent experiences. How, then, do we discuss and
respond to violence within some experiences of rape without imposing
victimisation or contributing to this compartmentalisation? Women’s
accounts suggest that articulating violence in rape is an expression of
an unbearable reality perceived differently as the cultural compart-
mentalisation of these severe and rare experiences differentiates them
from the supposedly usual and less harmful. Although all violence is
serious, in its sensationalisation she is confronted with acknowledg-
ing his complete domination proved in the physical violence and
therefore to also acknowledge her fundamental victimisation which
is overwhelmingly disempowering. It also further stigmatises her
because she is different from other raped women with whom she has
some connection but who may not feel so ‘victimised’ in comparison.
Whether it is too difficult to hear or too ‘normal’, ignoring violence
contributes to the compartmentalisation of rape because it supports
the distinction between the tolerable and intolerable and silences those
who fear stigmatisation in their exclusion from other women who
have experienced sexual violence. Therefore, it is imperative that the
significance of violence is acknowledged in our responses, but without
sensationalisation and trivialisation. So although the experiences of
those who contributed were not necessarily representative, in their
articulation of violence, they facilitated a challenge to the compart-
mentalisation and re-creation of victimisation that affects all women
who have experienced rape.
Plugging the gaps caused by categorisation and compartmentalisation
in order to present more accurately the reality of rape suggests political

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

motivation. Indeed, as a practitioner in the field of sexual violence, I

chose to analyse material from a critical feminist perspective not shared
with some of the participants. At times my interpretation contradicted
participants’ own understanding of their experiences, evident within
Violet’s comments at the beginning of this conclusion, and in contrarily
naming Dawn’s experience as rape when she was reluctant to do so. It
could be argued, therefore, that the research is limited because it does
not engage with theory outside of feminism, and who am I anyway to
speak on others’ behalf? I have suggested that sexual violence impacts the
individual and effectively reproduces structural inequalities. Feminism
routinely tackles issues of violence against women, offers the possibility
of personal and social transformation, and supports an ethical method-
ology involving participants in a process of mutual interpretation and
approval of priorities.
However, in practical terms, no matter who is speaking about rape
or how ethical and careful the representation might be, are we con-
tributing to the ‘cultural numbness’ that denies the reality of rape as
Gay fears? Of concern is not only the pervasive trivialisation of rape or
the apparent avoidance of perpetrator responsibility, but, in a poignant
example, Brison (2002) articulates the significance to other women of
contributing to the cultural representation of rape. It was during the
event of rape, when Brison (2002) recalled other women’s stories of
their experiences, that she came to understand the enormity of what
was happening to her. In the aftermath, writing her own account, she
was acutely aware of the endowment her representation would make to
women’s future sexual scripts and meaning-making processes. Clearly
representation and reality are not mutually exclusive, but emotively
intertwined and problematically wrestled. Nevertheless, for Gay
(2014), Brison (2002), and in women’s accounts here, it is imperative
that experiences of rape are rendered intelligible, as a testament to an
undeniable social reality. Careful representation of rape therefore offers
an alternative to rape mythology and counteracts ignorance; otherwise,
secrets are kept and women are isolated, blamed, and shamed. Eliza
wanted her experiences retold to help other women and to enhance the
responses of practitioners, an outcome which was also important to
Amy. Therefore, my role in this research was as a conduit, taking note
of discrepancies, to disseminate representations of rape that provided
a different perspective in order to reduce shame and improve practice
responses.

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 Practice 

Recommendations for practice

Women’s accounts clearly communicate the impact of categorisation and

compartmentalisation on their lives in the aftermath of rape. Presented
here are recommendations for action to prevent secondary harm that
occurs in personal and societal responses to sexual violence. In rape,
women already feel ashamed, disempowered, and responsible; therefore,
how we respond is crucial. We can choose to silence her with devastating
consequences or offer her understanding and solidarity.
Therefore, in order not to silence or hinder her articulation of rape, in
our personal response, we should:
1 Listen to what she says without judgement, presumption, or
interruption to identify what she feels and needs. We should also
be patient and calm, using gentle questioning only to clarify we
have understood accurately. Remembering and then articulating
intimate details is difficult, especially as the sexual language
available to women is limited.
2 Make no assessment of severity, but acknowledge the particular
difficulties she identifies. Trivialising it as ‘a bit of fumbling’ or
‘it can’t have been that bad or you would have said something at
the time’ dismisses her experiences, and ignores the barriers to
disclosure. Sensationalising her experiences through shock, disgust,
or particular interest stigmatises her.
3 Make no assessment of credibility. Nothing about her behaviour or
character prompted the rape.
4 Make no assessment of trauma. We should neither expect nor
deny presentation of trauma. Absence of trauma is no indication
of deceit. Presence of trauma does not signify mental ill-health.
If it becomes apparent she has, for example, intrusive memories,
acknowledge them as a common response.
5 Not impose or police the boundaries of victimhood by dictating
the remit of the conversation or confining her articulation of rape
to particular environments or to specific ‘experts’. Not only does
this denigrate her as contaminated, but others are inhibiting her
opportunities for self-determination.
6 Believe her disclosure automatically and demonstrably. She
has overcome numerous obstacles and self-doubt to reach this
situation.

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

7 Avoid using categories such as ‘victim’ or ‘survivor’. Labelling

restricts her self-presentation and determines our response.
But if she uses them, attempt to understand what these labels
mean to her.
8 Be mindful of the rape myths and gendered, racist, homophobic,
and classist stereotypes we hold and strive to educate ourselves. It
is not acceptable to impose our ignorance onto others reaching out
for support, reassurance, or friendship.
9 Recognise the strategies of resistance she has developed
and used, rather than focus only on the harm. We are all the
sum of a lifetime accumulation of experience and deserve
respect. Who we are cannot be reduced to particular events or
incidents.
10 Take seriously and act upon the decisions she makes about her
experiences. Women are often let down by people and/or agencies
that do not follow up on agreed action, are complacent, or ignore
her. This is frustrating and communicates to her that she is
worthless. It can also leave women unsafe.
11 Consider the impact of, and avoid re-creating, shame. We should
be comfortable talking about sex, bodies, and sexuality to reduce
the shame in relating intimate details of rape. We should strive
to understand her explanations of the role she feels she had in
sexual violence and reassure her that she did nothing to provoke
the situation, nor was she complicit. It is the behaviour of the
perpetrator that is shameful.
12 Recognise her need to define her own relationship to her body and
sexuality, being careful not impose the predominant, male sexual
framework upon her.
13 Recognise female perpetrated abuse without trivialisation or
sensationalisation. We should take seriously women’s capacity
to abuse, condone, and ignore sexual violence and the different
emotions this evokes. Politically sexual violence perpetrated by
men or women should be equally condemnable.
14 Be aware that debates about vicarious trauma feeds
sensationalisation to prevent women from speaking out and to
trivialise the reality of living with the effects of rape. It is also
positions women who experience trauma as exceptionally sensitive
and vulnerable, which reproduces victimisation.

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 Practice 

In response to the harmful effects of the social reproduction of catego-

risation and compartmentalisation in sexual violence as they have been
specifically identified in this research, we should:
15 Review policy that relies on the cycle of abuse theory and implicitly
locates responsibility with women. In practice it prioritises
evidentially ‘serious’ events and promotes a criminal justice
response, leaving little support for the majority of women who do
not want to report to the police.
16 Highlight the clear discrepancy between what rapists say about
their behaviour and what they actually did in order to challenge
the notion that rape results from mixed messages which displaces
responsibility away from the perpetrator.
17 Always locate responsibility for sexual violence with the
perpetrator. Those who have the capacity to choose to be actively
involved in abuse as organisers or recruiters, or who profit from
sexual violence, are equally responsible. Those who have the
capacity to choose to observe, endorse, and condone are complicit.
18 Return to a political response based on feminist principles of
self-determination and empowerment. Bureaucratic risk-focussed
procedures reinforce victim-blaming and exclude from support
women who require longer-term involvement that is outside of the
criminal justice and mental health care systems.

Why it was important to carry out this research

At the time of writing, underway are the drawn out and faltering
preliminaries of the UK public inquiry into the institutional failure to
protect children from sexual abuse, headed by the Honourable Lowell
Goddard. Already apparent are the processes of compartmentalisation
and categorisation. Whilst the media sensationally predict the inves-
tigation will shake the foundations of democracy, and focus on the
systematic cover-up by senior governmental officials of the sexual abuse
and murder of young boys in state care institutions, those who have
experienced sexual violence are excluded from the process because they
lack objectivity. In this nationwide investigation involving many, already
diminished are individuals’ voices, with women’s experiences further
trivialised in their ‘normality’. But the generalised perception that ‘they’

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 The Politics of Sexual Violence

as a homogenous group of ‘survivors’ are different in their incapacity

for objectivity fundamentally reproduces the categorisation of the ‘rape
victim’ as deficient and stigmatised. This insistence on objectivity is sup-
posed to legitimate the investigation whose message suggests a critical,
scientific, and rigorous procedure. Side-lining practice that believes chil-
dren’s disclosures, prioritised instead is the systematic presumption of
deceit. In this morass of corruption, senior officials and ‘survivors’ alike
will be scrutinised in the search for truth. Disguised as professionalism,
objectivity has excluded and silenced those who have experienced sexual
violence, and feminist practitioners, who employ an alternative and
respectful approach, are presumed misguided, gullible, and lacking in
due diligence.
The cost of disclosure is evident, for excluded are the individuals who
have made their experiences known. In this appalling example of catego-
risation, women who publicly name their experiences are ludicrously dif-
ferentiated from professionals, require representatives, and are ultimately
contained. Women who have undisclosed experiences of sexual violence
may feel compromised or at risk of exposure. In this context women are
silenced, whether or not they have disclosed. Of course there are critical
voices. Developing an ethical response requires a commitment to chal-
lenging these attitudes and practices that restrict women’s lives, whoever
we are. We can start with recognising our social responsibility and take
action in our personal responses to avoid secondary harm. Lyra reminds
us of the imperative to articulate the personal and social reality that is
sexual violence:
I have this thing burning inside me telling me to keep talking. And I can
remember being in hospital when I was fourteen and going to these meet-
ings where he rolled in and did the whole ‘concerned father’ act and lots of
adults nodding, and the weight and the darkness of it being there like you
could cut it with a knife, and suffocating and choking on my own silence.
And I think I can’t ever be in that position again. Anything would be better.
And then I think of that and I think that the fear of talking is from a whole
range of collusive ‘others’ – professionals who talk the talk really well, insti-
tutions, people in my everyday life – making me afraid because they want
to forget and don’t want to confront that I’m just as human as they are but
what happened in my life still happened. And then I think fuck that. And
then I talk in meetings and stuff and people’s faces do funny things and I
think ‘oh god it’s happening’ again. And I do feel scared but often I laugh a
little bit inside too because I’m not silent.

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 Index
Brownmiller, Susan, 65 SlutWalk, 31, 89–91, 114
social change, 9, 11–12, 111, 118
Categorisation, 2, 23, 33–37, 38, victim, 5–6, 34, 37, 65–67,
45, 113, 119–21 76–78
of slut, 91–92
of survivor, 20, 26, 34–37 Gendered essentialism, 21–22,
Credibility, 71–72, 113–14
in ascertaining truth, 44–49,
96 Herman, Judith, 42–44, 52
conundrum, 46, 53–59
in the discourse of harm, 44 MacKinnon, Catherine, 66
innocence, 35, 48, 54, 60 Media representation of rape,
and memory, 49–52 5, 92–93, 94–100
and transformation, 52–59 Methodology, 8–12, 115–18
Commodification of experience,
6–7, 98–100, 104 Perpetrator responsibility, 31,
Compartmentalisation, 1, 2, 78, 81–84, 115
4–7, 44, 113, 116, 119–21 Psychological impact of rape,
with symbolic violence, 20, 43
35–36, 60–61 contamination, 28, 29
Cycle of abuse theory, 28–29, damage, 22
121 trauma, 43, 51, 111
vicarious trauma, 36, 116
Dehumanisation, 2, 20, 31–32, 83
Discourse of harm, 25, 42–44, Rape Culture, 92–93, 94–100
48, 51, 55, 59 and neo-liberalism, 96–97,
103, 114
Female perpetrated sexual Rape definition, 4
violence, 68–72, 77–78 of consent, 4
Female sexual agency, 39, 66–72, of date rape, 5–6
77–78, 94, 100–107, 114 of grey rape, 58
Feminism, Rape victim identity, 4, 18–22,
demonisation of, 99–100 24–27, 33–37, 38, 60, 113
pro sex, 94, 100–04 resistance to, 57–59, 113

 DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0009

 Index 

Re-victimisation, 8, 45, 116 Violence in rape, 37, 67, 117

Roiphe, Katie, 5–7
Women’s accounts of,
Secondary harm, 2, 23, 55, 74–76, 83, credibility, 53–54
94–97, 114–15, 119–21 credibility assessment, 56–57
Self blame, 54–55, 63–64, 84 complicity, 66–67
Sexual violence, definition 4, 8 disclosure, 46–47, 73–74, 122
Shame, 28–32 exclusion, 6–7
Social responsibility, 80–81, 96–97, 115 female perpetrated sexual violence,
Stigma, 20, 28 68–69
Subjectivity, 18, 29, 32, 112 female sexuality, 105
Butler, Judith, 36–37 feminism, 87
Foucault, Michel, 23–27 grey rape, 58–59
Mardorossian, Carine, 6, 18, 21–22, impact, 19
108, 112 need for change, 110
rape as part of experience, 17
Therapy culture, 24 remembering, 49–50
responsibility, 63, 79–80, 81–82
Victim blaming, 49, 54–55, 59, 64–67, stigma, 28
73–76 victim/survivor, 32

DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0009