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Around 30% of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetimes. In Europe, one in 20 women over the age of 15 has been raped. Meanwhile gross misogyny and sexual violence against women is becoming more normalised in society. When women have been victims of physical, sexual violence, emotional abuse or coercive control the impact on their mental health can be severe.The sense of shame can be overwhelming. Mental health problems are not an inevitable consequence of IPV but anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychosis, self-harm, substance misuse and getting a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) are all more common. Domestic violence can also result in suicide and is linked to murder-suicide and ‘honour’ killing. However, women who have killed abusive men have been repeatedly denied justice. Mental health services need training about IPV and sexual violence and to make strong links with organisations in the community. Each of us needs to ensure that we would know what we would do to help a friend, family member or colleague who is experiencing domestic violence or sexual assault.
This article explores the promises and pitfalls of the colonial archives for the study of seeing and knowing contemporary violence. As an ethnographic field and a site of decolonial struggles, the colonial archive is increasingly mobilised in scholarship that seeks to historicise and disrupt conventional, Western-centric knowledge production. While using the colonial archives might reproduce asymmetrical power relations, they also hold the potential to unsettle the ‘toxic imperial debris’ of our time. How can the colonial archives challenge the post-colonial politics of erasing imperial violence and contribute to decolonial futures? Drawing on research in the African Archives in Belgium and fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this paper complicates problematic portrayals of the post-colonial state in the DRC and Congolese women as always already violated or silenced. We argue that the logics of the African Archives reveal a set of destabilising state anxieties that reflect the duality and instability of colonial rule itself and that infuse contemporary (international) politics. This recounting of the violence contained in the archives both narrates the concrete, violent manifestations of our ‘global coloniality’ and works towards its own demise as part of a broader ‘anticolonial archive’.
This essay interrogates the queer history of slavery through close readings of nineteenth century literature. Specifically the texts Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriett Jacobs, Our Nig (1859) by Harriett E. Wilson, “The Heroic Slave” (1853) by Frederick Douglass, as well as the pro-slavery text, The Partisan Leader (1836) by Nathaniel Beverly Tucker are placed in conversation and tension to examine how cruelty against slaves and free Black people expose the vexed queer encounters of the antebellum period. Rather than thinking of queerness as solely same-sex sexual acts, this argument extends a theory of racial sexuation that considers violence extended by masters, mistresses, and non-slave owning whites as imbued by fantasies and desires about Blackness as sexually open, unruly gendered, and innately erotic. Lastly, in reading texts pertaining to the conditions of slaves and free Black people, this essay interrogates how the racial sexual relations that are present under slavery extend beyond the confines of the plantation.
During the two World Wars sexuality was fundamental to how both conflicts were planned, conducted, and experienced. The sexual body was an ever-present target of military policy as a potential polluter of the race, a danger to colonial order, sexual mores, or gender hierarchy; it was an object of intervention and mutilation, even annihilation. Nonetheless, war also offered opportunities for new, hitherto illicit sexual encounters. Individuals experienced sexuality in two opposing ways: as a source of immense suffering but also of erotic excitement and love. Changes in sexual attitudes, regulation, and practices must be understood through the filters of gender, class, race, sexual orientation, religion, and regional variations. Between 1918 and the `sexual revolution” of the 1960s a profound shift in sexual mores and attitudes took place in all bellicose nations. The millions of deaths on the battlefields, the suffering at home, the unprecedented mass movement within and between countries had sufficiently ruptured the social fabric to unleash a wide-spread liberalisation of sexuality. The steeply declining birthrate was the most dramatic expression of changing ideals. Yet, liberalisation was at best ambivalent as many traditional attitudes and regulations resurfaced and women and queer people struggled to fit back into a state-sanctioned `normal” life.
This chapter charts sexual violence over time and place, showing substantial shifts in thinking about sex as violence, rape as an assault on property, emerging ideas of consent, and changing attitudes towards the victim and the offender. It traces how sexual violence was defined and understood, in both society and law, from the classical world to today, examining case studies that include rape, sodomy and offences against children. It examines the structural impediments to the prevention of sexual violence, and the social and legal barriers to justice when a crime did occur. It highlights the fact that responses to sexual violence vary between individuals and communities, though survivors reveal that many forms of sex might be experienced as violent or traumatic, regardless of whether the acts were normalised or criminalised. Ideas of sexual violence are read through intersectional lenses, highlighting the idea that normative ideas of gender, sexual identity, race and class heightened the potential for sexual exploitation of marginalised groups. Limited, fragmented or unrepresentative sources make it challenging to trace sexual violence in history, but it is imperative to do so, as sexual crimes have had a substantial impact on the life experiences of individuals and their families and communities.
This chapter finds in the Bible a diversity of views about sexuality, gender, marriage, divorce, celibacy, virginity, and the human body. It next traces in early Christianity an aversion towards same-sex relationships, abortion, and contraception, and a growing gynophobia combined with a growing devotion to the Virgin Mary. It discusses the association between sexuality and original sin, and between misogyny and the invention of the witch, together with the negation of sexual pleasure, the confinement of sexual relations to procreation within marriage, and the struggles of monks with their erotic desires. A painful incompatibility between the sexual practices of colonized peoples and missionary expectations and behaviour is noted. Through to the present time, different models of marriage and attitudes towards same-sex relationships are found within Christianity. The early diversity of views about sexuality is shown to be unresolved, re-appearing in the culture wars of the present century. While attitudes to cohabitation, divorce and masturbation are generally more liberal than in the past, global Christianity still retains a strong antipathy towards loving same-sex relationships, abortion, and even the ordination of women.
Edited by
Scott L. Greer, University of Michigan,Michelle Falkenbach, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies,Josep Figueras, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies,Matthias Wismar, European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
This chapter explores the linkages between Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 ‘Health’ and SDG 5 ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. We argue that health equity and gender equality are ‘twin forces’ that are historically connected and cannot be separated, creating either strong co-benefits or a ‘double jeopardy’ scenario for health and gender equality. Developments at the cross-roads of SDG 3 and SDG 5 are never ‘gender neutral’ and need attention for two reasons: to strengthen the health policy co-benefits and to prevent and mitigate adverse effects if gender equality is ignored. We introduce a conceptual model of researching co-benefits that expands the focus on macro-level co-benefits towards more complex governance processes and outcomes, including gender mainstreaming approaches. Selected empirical case studies consider major targets of SDG 5 and related SDG 3 sub-goals, illustrating different scenarios of implementation of health and gender co-benefits in a range of policy and governance contexts. The empirical cases illustrate that governance actions and intersectoral structures/institutional pathways shape the ‘windows of opportunity’ for co-benefits, yet co-benefits remain contested and must be re-assured, a lesson most recently learned from the COVID−19 pandemic.
To encourage further interrogation of the language of “survivor-centredness” in the field of conflict-related sexual violence, this article offers a case study of efforts to build and intensify more survivor-centred pedagogy for use in the training of humanitarian workers seeking to address sexual violence in conflict and emergency settings. Set against the backdrop of a literature review of existing usages, it builds on key aspects of an earlier evaluation in which all three authors were involved in different capacities.
At a time in U.S. politics when advocacy groups are increasingly relying on supporters to help advance their agendas, this chapter considers how intersectional advocates are mobilizing their supporters in Chapter 6. While membership in women’s advocacy organizations has decreased over the years, supporters that volunteer their time to advocacy organizations to advance their policy goals has been largely overlooked. Yet, these supporters are important contributors to intersectional advocacy. In Chapter 6, two original survey experiments are presented with the supporters from this organization that also engages in intersectional advocacy. Each experiment contain authentic policy platforms that either present an intersectional advocacy approach or a traditional single issue policy approach to supporters. The findings from these experiments answer the final question: does intersectional advocacy resonate with the intersectionally marginalized populations it aims to serve, and if so, to what extent does it mobilize them to participate in the policymaking process? This chapter highlights the role of supporters in advancing these policy efforts while showcasing tangible
Ezekiel 16 paints one of the harshest pictures in the Hebrew Bible. In a brokenhearted cry of rage, the prophet contemplates Jerusalem's history of relationship with God. Employing familial imagery, the relationship is characterised by constraints and penalties, including instances of sexual violence imposed by God. Consequently, the allegory challenges the perception of the deity as an exemplary figure. This article posits that the allegory deliberately delivers a jolt to its recipients by depicting God as transgressing a social taboo, by altering his role for the people from a father to a spouse. This depiction of incestuous relationship wields the power to evoke threat and terror. It acknowledges that the breaching of the taboo of a father–daughter incestuous relationship, albeit inadvisable, is possible. By ascribing to God a behaviour that fathers strive to avoid, the reproach captures the imagination of its recipients, leaving a profound impact upon them.
This chapter emphasises the key role that comic revues and music hall acts played in ensuring the British army had a continuous stream of recruits throughout the First World War. Through examining the songs, sketches and characters through which this was achieved, the chapter demonstrates the varied strategies used and the ways they drew on earlier modes of performance such as nineteenth-century melodrama. Particular emphasis is placed on the gendered ideology that was implicit in the performances examined, for example in looking at the dramatization of atrocity stories which were circulating in the press and the treatment of women in these plays and wider narratives. The chapter also focusses on music hall songs and performances by male impersonators such as Marie Lloyd. It encourages us to question the simple alignment of propaganda and popular entertainment and offers a more nuanced understanding of these performances through the lens of satire. By doing so, it demonstrates how satirising and parodying wartime experiences provided a release from anxiety. Stage satire and comedy, it concludes, offer a unique perspective on how modern total war saturated public life.
Edited by
Cecilia McCallum, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil,Silvia Posocco, Birkbeck College, University of London,Martin Fotta, Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences
This chapter centers voices that are traditionally excluded from the anthropological canon in order to read a feminist praxis back into anthropology’s feminist theory and methodology. The authors excavate key debates and practices that yield insight into the liberatory potentiality of feminist anthropology. First, they explore questions around gender, sexuality, and the authority of the knowledge producer. Then, they query how the sexual and gendered mythos of the researcher clings to their research and the way the researcher is integrated into the field of anthropology, taking examples from anthropological history and debates around auto-ethnography. The third section explores how self-knowledge folds into feminist traditions of situated knowledges, particularly as it is engaged by Black feminist anthropologists, women of color, and queer thinkers. The fourth section revisits the work of performance and choreography in our field, navigating the political forces and forms of embodiment revealed through these methodological approaches. The chapter ends by drawing together questions of authority, autoethnography, situated knowledge, and the high stakes of performance through the case of sexual and gender-based violence to illustrate methodological and epistemological possibilities within anthropological research.
Twentieth-century feminist activism and thought spread with an urgency and ambition unseen before, as advocates for women achieved mass recognition, unsettled long-held convictions, and upset the status quo in ways unimaginable in previous centuries. No novel genre escaped these changes or failed to register them. Feminist politics reshaped the content, and sometimes the form, of the novel. Yet, dramatic as the expansion of US women’s opportunities was, progress was never unchallenged or universal. Feminist political gains inspired significant backlash: Patriarchy supporters fought back. Meanwhile, feminist organizing fractured from within. Before the twentieth century even began, women of color were explaining why they couldn’t be expected to identify only as women, as if all women belonged in a single category. Their message often went unheeded, particularly in the most widely circulated versions of feminist thought, which elevated white middle-class experiences over those of working-class, Indigenous, Black, Latina, and Asian women. Throughout the century, narratives by women of color pushed back against the white supremacist version of feminism. The American novel narrated multiple feminisms, triumphant and defeated, jubilant and anguished, razor-focused and utterly lost.
This article explores contemporary representations of wartime sexual violence on the operatic stage. Rape and the threat of rape loom over many operas in the canon, but even those operas that do not thematise rape may have sexual violence introduced to them in performance. Through analysis of four twenty-first century productions, I consider how the idea of sexual violence works in these wartime stories. Staging the implicit or explicit sexual violence in canonic operas can, in the best cases, allow for nuanced commentary on the subject in our cultural moment. But putting sexual violence on stage is controversial and can pose real risks to audience members. Instead of dismissing the proliferation of depictions of rape in wartime opera productions as mere scandalmongering, I explore specific representations through a feminist ethical framework, and ask: What do we risk and what might we gain by putting rape on stage in these operas?
Sexual violence is a significant problem within many Western militaries. Despite international attention to the issue and global #MeToo and #TimesUp movements highlighting the impact of sexual violence, rates of sexual violence are going up in many militaries. This book uses feminist theories of 'rape culture' and institutional gaslighting to identify the key stories, myths, and misconceptions about military sexual violence that have obstructed addressing and preventing it. It is a landmark study that considers nearly thirty years of media coverage of military sexual violence in three case countries – the US, Canada and Australia. The findings have implications not only for those seeking to address, reduce, and prevent sexual violence in militaries, but also for those hoping to understanding rape culture and how patriarchy operates more broadly. It will appeal to students, scholars and general readers interested in gender, feminism and the military.
This chapter argues that in Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, the depictions in the inset tales of male self-assertion and sexual violence are offered not as models which we may expect Daphnis to imitate (as suggested e.g. by Winkler) but as contrasts to his reciprocal and considerate relationship with Chloe.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV) are significant problems world-wide, and they affect women disproportionally. Whether individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at an increased risk of being involved in these types of violence is unclear.
Methods
We carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis (PROSPERO registration CRD42022348165) of the associations between ADHD and being the victim or perpetrator of IPV and SV. Ratios of occurrence of violence were pooled in random-effects models and study risk of bias was evaluated using the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale.
Results
A search on multiple databases, carried out on 7 October 2022, yielded 14 eligible studies (1 111 557 individuals). Analyses showed a higher risk of ADHD individuals being involved in IPV as perpetrators (six studies, OR 2.5, 95% CI 1.51–4.15) or victims (four studies, OR 1.78, 95% CI 1.06–3.0). Likewise, individuals with ADHD were at increased risk of being perpetrators (three studies, OR 2.73, 95% CI 1.35–5.51) or victims of SV (six studies, OR 1.84, 95% CI 1.51–2.24). Results were overall robust to different analytical choices.
Conclusions
Individuals with ADHD are at an increased risk of being involved in cases of violence, namely IPV and SV, either as victims or perpetrators. Although the causal path or mediating variables for these results are still unclear, this increased risk should inform evidence-based psychoeducation with individuals with ADHD, their families, and partners about romantic relationships and sexuality.
This chapter focuses on the Canadian defence forces and includes an overview of the history of sexual violence in Canada and the main narratives that emerge in media coverage of sexual violence.
This chapter focuses on the US military and includes an overview of the history of sexual violence in the US and the main narratives that emerge in media coverage of sexual violence in the US.
This chapter focuses on the Australian defence forces and includes an overview of the history of sexual violence in Australia and the main narratives that emerge in media coverage of sexual violence.