Tag Archives: voices against violence

12.15.17
by Jeana Jorgensen, Ph.D.

Teaching About Trauma & Sexual Violence As Contingent Faculty

Photo by Erik Mayes

Jeana Jorgensen is a folklorist, writer, dancer and sex educator. Her scholarship explores fairy tales and other narratives, dance, body art, gender identity, women’s folklore, and the body in folklore. Her work in/on sex education addresses professional boundaries, the intersections of belief and sexuality, and understanding the cultural and historical contexts informing public sex education. She is a regular contributor to Conditionally Accepted, Patheos and MySexProfessor.com. You can follow Dr. Jorgensen on Twitter at .

Teaching Trauma While Contingent

I have been on a trauma-research kick for a couple of years now, and the topic has found its way into my teaching. But as an adjunct professor — thereby lacking job security — I must be mindful of the potential professional costs of teaching about trauma.

I am especially concerned about teaching triggering material because I am an adjunct. I worry about complaints from students, parents and perhaps colleagues — not for mishandling contentious material (which would concern me, too), but for bringing it into the classroom in the first place.

Adjuncts often teach on semester- or yearlong contracts, lacking the job security of a guaranteed renewal and the protection of tenure. In an earlier blog post, “Adjuncting and Academic Freedom,” I reflected on how that affects my ability to teach contentious subjects: “At some point, the merit of the individual adjunct scholar ceases to be a factor in the decisions of large institutions, and negative press might be a factor.” When we choose or feel compelled to teach about controversial issues, we become vulnerable to negative responses that could hasten the end of our time at a given institution.

Sexual violence and trauma are still, in my experience, considered edgy or controversial topics to include in one’s curriculum. While it is certainly possible to misstep by handling those issues poorly or insensitively, merely including them should not be a risk. I say this based both on their deplorable prevalence historically as well as on my work today in the sex education world, which has taught me that trauma-informed education is essential.

Based on lessons that I have learned while teaching as an adjunct about trauma (mostly related to sexual violence), I offer the following advice to other contingent faculty members.

Start creating a civil classroom environment immediately. I do not usually lead with trauma topics on the first day or even in the first week of the semester. Instead, I begin to craft a civil classroom from day one, trusting that it will support discussion of tough topics later.

I share my guidelines for discussion in lecture, and the students and I talk about whether we should add anything to this shared agreement about how to comport ourselves in class. It contains basics of adult communication: things like using “I” statements when discussing your response to topics, respecting people’s boundaries and so on.

Instructing students on how to interact with difficult topics and each other is not a panacea. But it does give me something to fall back on if I need to intervene in a discussion in which someone begins to say something that sounds like victim blaming.

That relates back to the precarity of teaching trauma as a contingent faculty member because, if nothing else, we can point at our scaffolding and preparation as evidence that we did our best to create a safe classroom environment. Our best may not be good enough when facing a hostile administration, but it is something.

Learn about and implement trauma-informed approaches. In my time among sex educators and therapists, I have learned that trauma-informed approaches are a must. That means being aware of how trauma impacts the brain and memory, knowing what flashbacks and triggers are, and understanding how to provide social support in appropriate ways. (For example, if you are an educator, then your tool set is different than a clinician’s.)

I have blogged about crafting trauma-aware interactions. Whatever the situation, it boils down to giving the people with whom you are interacting agency in terms of what and how they disclose, and not judging or diagnosing them.

I guarantee that, in most classrooms, you will have someone who has a trauma history, whether it is neglect or sexual violence. It is so statistically likely, especially compounded by intersectional factors (e.g., with college students more likely to have experienced sexual assault), that we need to adjust our teaching to account for this.

Unfortunately, most adjuncts do not have the time or resources to pursue training in trauma awareness. I have attended workshops on my own dime to acquire that knowledge. That is a disservice to students, but I do not see college administrations changing their orientation toward trauma awareness any time soon. And even if that were to change, I cynically believe that full-time faculty and staff members would see the first wave of trauma training before adjuncts and part-time faculty would.

If you only read one book on trauma, I highly recommend Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma. It is my guide to teaching about trauma.

Destigmatize the experience. I spend a lot of time thinking about what counts as normal and how normativizing discourse is deployed. I appreciate Dr. Debby Herbenick’s Tumblr project, , which aims to normalize the daily discussion of sexuality topics. I also think my colleagues who take issue with the word “normal” have a point in stating that it can have negative connotations, implying that normal is something for which people should strive.

For those reasons, I prefer to think about destigmatizing the study of sexualities and its various practices/experiences. I have received some pushback here, but luckily it has not come with consequences (yet?). It has mostly come in the form of students relaying parental complaints at my assigned reading for being “trash” when it focuses on alternative sexualities.

In a gender, women and sexuality studies course I taught on sexuality in fairy tales, we did a unit on abuse and incest in fairy tales, drawing on both texts from the Grimms’ collection and recent rewritten tales. Students spoke up about their own abuse in class and how it was helpful to see trauma and abuse reflected in literary and cultural sources.

When teaching about sexual assault and trauma, I try to destigmatize the very widespread experience of surviving abuse by including statistics about its prevalence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That helps students to realize how common it is, which can lead to a conversation about how we handle the topic. Hopefully, this also makes students who have experienced it — whether they disclose — feel seen and included rather than marginalized.

I have started to incorporate trauma every semester I teach, because it relates to most aspects of human experience. While I am still learning the ropes, I believe that following the aforementioned methods has been helpful, both for my own experience and for my students’.

Recently, I did an hour-long lecture about trauma and folklore in The Forms of Folklore, my large lecture class at the University of California, Berkeley. I was only a visiting lecturer without the possibility of renewal, but I believed that my students deserved to have access to information about how trauma works and how it might impact their fieldwork experiences while collecting folklore. It was nerve-racking for me to prepare this lecture, but it went extremely well. Lots of people thanked me afterward, including a few who identified as survivors.

It can be disheartening to study and teach sexual violence and trauma, especially when faced with the apparent contradiction of administrations who are either apathetic about what we as adjuncts do in the classroom or unduly vigilant about controversial topics that might damage the brand. But students need access to this information as humans traveling a world that is rife with abuse. Knowing that this helps students makes it worthwhile for me to teach trauma, no matter how precarious my situation might be, and I am curious to hear if it is the same for others.

12.01.17
by

Power-Conscious Approaches To Campus Sexual Violence Prevention

Harris & Linder

Note: this blog post was originally published on our career advice column on Inside Higher Ed (here). Dr. Chris Linder () is an associate professor of college student affairs administration at the University of Georgia. Dr. Jessica C. Harris () is an assistant professor of higher education and organizational change at the University of California, Los Angeles. Be sure to see their first blog post on challenging taken-for-granted assumptions in research on sexual violence.

Feminists have long advocated that sexual violence is more about power than about sex, yet few people understand what this means. Further, when mainstream feminist movements (i.e., white, middle-class, educated, cisgender women) highlight that power is integral to understanding sexual violence, that usually (re)centers power connected with only sexist oppression. While misogyny, patriarchy and sexism contribute to sexual violence, we argue that the root of sexual violence is deeper than the sum of these sexist systems.

The root cause of sexual violence is oppression, in all of its manifestations, including racism, cissexism, heterosexism, ableism and sexism. Oppression results from people abusing power or lacking consciousness about how power influences their own and others’ experiences. For these reasons, we advocate a power-conscious approach to addressing sexual violence.

What does “power conscious” mean? Simply put, it means paying attention to power dynamics at work in individual, institutional and cultural systems of oppression. Developing power consciousness means that we ask:

  • Who is missing in this discussion? Who is centered? Why? (See our previous essay for a fuller discussion on this.)
  • Who has the power — both formal and informal — in this system?
  • How do social identities influence who is heard and who is ignored and silenced?
  • Who benefits from this system? Who does not?

For example, how do social identities influence people’s experiences in the criminal justice system? The cases of Cory Batey and Brock Turner illustrate how racism and classism show up in sentencing processes. Cory Batey was a black football player at Vanderbilt University; Brock Turner was a white swimmer at Stanford University. Both men were convicted of committing sexual violence. Batey was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Turner was sentenced to six months in jail. Although state law and specific contexts make up for some of the discrepancy in sentencing, they cannot account for the drastic differences in the sentencing in these cases.

How does that relate to our campuses?

College campuses are mostly made up of the same people who make up our larger communities, so racism and classism are showing up in our campus accountability systems, as well. Campus police, campus judicial systems and even victim advocacy services are not immune from failing to consider the ways people from historically minoritized communities may not experience campus systems the same as students with mostly dominant identities.

So, what do we do? Below, we offer three specific recommendations for approaching sexual violence from a power-conscious perspective.

Learn the history of rape and racism. Ahistoricism, or failing to understand or account for the history and context of an issue or topic, leads to incomplete and ineffective strategies for dealing with sexual violence. For example, .

Early sexual violence laws in America were rooted in property law. White men were the only people who could file charges of rape, as rape was considered a property crime — something that reduced the value of a man’s daughter, essentially his “property.” Additionally, in the time period after the Civil War, of sexual violence directed toward white women to maintain white men’s power and dominance.

More recent sexual violence laws, specifically, the Violence Against Women Act, emerged during the “tough on crime” era of the 1980s and ’90s, which was also highly racialized. People in that era sought to address drug abuse, but , contributing to the continuation of portraying men of color as criminals.

Given the racialized history of sexual violence law and the current context of racism in legal and policy systems, administrators and educators on college campuses should consider community accountability processes as an option for addressing sexual violence. Community accountability, as described by the , means that communities stop relying on systems that perpetuate violence toward them and start relying on each other to hold perpetrators of violence accountable and work to transform perpetrator behavior. Community accountability is not appropriate in all cases and must be carefully implemented under the leadership of people with a significant understanding of it (specifically, women of color, who created it).

Further, in cases where campus adjudication systems are used, people involved in those systems must be educated about the role of oppression in legal and policy response, as well as the history of the intersections of oppression and sexual violence. A deeper understanding of history may lead to more equitable outcomes in campus adjudication systems.

Employ an intersectional, identity-conscious perspective. Foundational intersectionality scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw provides a to illustrate centering women of color and poor women in interpersonal-violence work. Crenshaw helps us understand that, by centering the most marginalized people in efforts to address interpersonal violence, no one is left out. When white, cisgender, heterosexual women at elite institutions of higher education are centered in sexual violence work (as they are now), they are the only ones to benefit. However, when marginalized populations are at the center of antioppression work, strategies are more comprehensive, resulting in more effectively dealing with interpersonal violence.

That being said, incorporating intersectionality into student affairs practice does not mean that every program has to be for every student. There is no such thing as an “all-inclusive” program. In fact, this is dangerously close to the concept of “color blindness,” or the notion that one does not “see” color when discussing race. In addition to the ableist nature of the term “color blindness,” using an “identity-neutral” approach to any issue effectively (re)centers people with dominant identities, who are treated as the norm or default.

Related to campus sexual violence, seemingly identity-neutral approaches effectively make the experiences of any victim who is not a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman invisible. Designing programs that specifically center the experiences of men survivors, trans and queer survivors, survivors of color, and survivors with disabilities (re)centers their experiences in the conversation. Doing so will result in better-informed providers and more empowered survivors. This also frees up space to develop programs specifically for white, cis, hetero women, whose experiences are distinct in and of their own — just not the only experiences, as currently portrayed.

Focus on perpetrators. We are working on a research project examining the ways sexual violence is portrayed in campus newspapers. An initial review of the data reveals that perpetrators are invisible in most articles about sexual violence. Language used throughout newspaper articles often implies that sexual violence just “happens,” as though there is no actor or explanation for it.

By making perpetrators invisible, we ignore important power dynamics at play. Perpetrators — not alcohol, not being at the wrong place at the wrong time, not miscommunication — are solely responsible for sexual violence. Failing to acknowledge this ignores the power that perpetrators wield, placing responsibility for ending sexual violence on the wrong people: potential victims, bystanders and advocates.

Campus administrators and educators should work to ensure that perpetrators are made more visible in discussions of sexual violence prevention. For example, rather than only focusing on teaching potential victims how to avoid being assaulted, we should spend more resources teaching people not to rape. Focusing on perpetrators as the cause of sexual violence may contribute to increased community accountability for their actions. People will begin to see the perpetrator — not alcohol or miscommunication — as the key problem.

12.01.17
by

Supporting Queer Survivors Of Campus Sexual Violence

Note: this blog post was originally published on our career advice column on Inside Higher Ed (here). Nicole Bedera is a graduate student in sociology at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality with emphases on sexual violence, masculinity and queer women. Dr. Kristjane Nordmeyer is an associate professor of sociology at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. Her teaching and scholarship focus on gender, sexuality, research methods, cats and Scandinavia.

Queer women are commonly the targets of sexual violence on college campuses. Approximately one in five lesbian students and one in three bisexual women students are sexually assaulted before they graduate. Beyond these statistics, little is known about the experiences of queer survivors of sexual violence.

To fill these gaps in the literature, we are conducting a qualitative study using interviews with queer survivors of campus sexual assault. In this article, we will offer recommendations for how university faculty members, staff members and administrators can effectively support queer survivors.

First, we share two women’s stories — one who used campus resources and another who intentionally did not — to discuss some of the challenges of providing campus resources to queer survivors. All names are pseudonyms, and some details have been changed.

Ashley, a pansexual woman, was deeply involved in social justice initiatives at her university. When another member of the LGBT club raped her, her proximity to social justice organizations made her feel trapped. Originally, Ashley wanted to keep her sexual assault quiet, but she told her supervisor at work to access scheduling accommodations, not knowing that her supervisor was a mandatory reporter. Ashley was forced into an unwanted investigation of her assault.

Because her friends were involved in social justice groups, including the judiciary board that would hear her case, Ashley felt pressured to tell everyone about being raped. Her friends were initially supportive, but their roles in campus proceedings around sexual violence made it difficult for Ashley to know how much of what she shared would stay between them. Rumors and controversy about her sexual assault led her to feel unwelcome in the campus LGBT club.

Taken together, the investigation and the LGBT club’s reaction to her sexual assault pushed her out of the club, making Ashley feel as though she had no control over what happened after her rape and that she had lost her safe space on campus.

Lydia, a lesbian woman, was sexually abused as a child, struggled with drug addiction and had little support from her family since they did not approve of her sexual orientation. When she was raped twice during her first year of college, it never occurred to her to seek out campus resources. Trauma was commonplace in her life, and she felt more traumatized by events in her past than by being recently raped.

Lydia did not think that campus resources were intended for people with histories of violence, trauma and addiction — people like her. She doubted that she would relate to other survivors or that service providers would understand her nonchalance toward victimization. Although she displayed many signs of trauma, including self-blame and flashbacks, her past experiences with other service providers made her reluctant to seek support. And Lydia was probably right; the campus support network for sexual assault survivors was likely unprepared to manage the complexities of her sexual orientation and other past traumatizing experiences.

These two women’s experiences may appear to have little in common, but their stories overlap a great deal. Both survivors felt a mismatch between their needs and what campus resources could offer. Ashley experienced that mismatch firsthand. Lydia’s fear of a mismatch kept her from seeking help altogether. Both survivors suffered from their colleges’ inability to adequately provide for queer victims.

Below, we present seven suggestions for campus service providers and others who work most closely with students about how to better support queer victims through campus resources.

Represent a diverse array of victimization experiences. Knowing about and preparing for victims with a variety of experiences and identities is important. Be honest about what groups you have considered and display the information openly to help victims make the best decisions for themselves. Remain open to hearing about other types of victimization and varied effects on victims and take their criticisms of your organization to heart — and to your next policy meeting.

Recognize the prevalence of revictimization. Revictimization is incredibly common among all sexual trauma survivors, but especially pervasive in queer populations. Further, previous trauma related to coming out or sexual orientation-based harassment may change the way they see and experience sexual victimization. Queer survivors may have already had bad experiences with service providers that pose an additional barrier to effectively supporting them. They may also be so used to trauma that they struggle to recognize when they need help, especially since they often need different services than those typically offered. For example, Lydia did not need someone to walk her through what to expect as she coped with trauma, but she could have benefited from speaking with someone who could help her to understand a cycle of abuse perpetrated by many different people.

Provide opportunities to get to know campus services. Opening an official investigation or agreeing to the emotional labor of months of therapy is a big commitment, especially when a survivor is unsure of an office’s support for queer victims. Hosting other lower-impact events that allow survivors from diverse backgrounds to meet recognizes the needs of queer survivors in a way that can build trust and helps them find a supportive community.

Link survivors to a range of different services, including those offered off the campus. Survivors who are well integrated in social justice groups on the campus probably know some of the people who run or participate in campus services. Provide them with alternatives that will not force disclosure of their sexual assault to a friend, employer, professor or staff member. Help them plan for and navigate conflicts of interests on the campus and choose other sources for support. In case the institution is ill equipped to support queer survivors, such guidance should include external resources — but that option should not be offered in place of improving on-campus programs.

Help queer survivors understand what they have to lose. Just as with other victims, queer survivors are often sexually assaulted by people they know. Disclosing the details of their sexual assault may destabilize their social group — which may be one of the only safe spaces for them on the campus. Service providers must strategize with queer survivors about how to choose whom to trust with their story and how to navigate a once-safe space that is now dangerous. Similarly, facilitators of campus queer spaces must know how to remove sexual assailants and manage the controversy surrounding violence within the group.

Be candid about mandatory reporting requirements. Investigations like Ashley’s can disempower victims. Students should know that they are speaking to a responsible employee before they disclose information that will force them into an investigation. This is especially important for students whose relationships with faculty and staff members have become blurred through friendship. Remind students who hint at disclosure of your responsibility to report through the U.S. Department of Education mandate and Title IX policies. Allow them to feel out their options by answering their questions about a “hypothetical situation” about the reporting process and available resources to survivors.

Collaborate. Whether you belong to a queer organization or you provide services to sexual assault victims on campus, you need to extend a hand to work together, particularly with the students most affected.

Queer sexual assault survivors in higher education deserve autonomy and resources to meet their distinct needs. By working with them, we can create a more inclusive approach to victim advocacy.

11.03.17
by

3 Questions Researchers Should Ask About Sexual Violence

Jessica Harris and Chris Linder

Harris & Linder

Note: this blog post was originally published on our Inside Higher Ed career advice column (here). Dr. Jessica C. Harris () is an assistant professor of higher education and organizational change at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Chris Linder () is an associate professor of college student affairs administration at the University of Georgia.

Starting in 2016, we began conceptualizing and co-editing our book, . When people ask us what exactly the book is about, we often reply that it provides a critical approach to campus sexual violence. Since the book was published, we have reflected on what we learned from the editing process. But even more, we find ourselves asking what makes this book and our work critical. What does a “critical approach” mean, especially as it relates to campus sexual violence?

While our answers are always changing, we understand that critical approaches to sexual violence account for systems of domination, power and privilege. Critical approaches challenge dominant ways of knowing and expose hidden assumptions that are often taken for granted. Critical approaches center the lived experiences of minoritized individuals who are pushed to the margins by those systems of domination, dominant ways of knowing and hidden assumptions.

As a result of our reflections, we wrote this essay to further explore critical approaches to campus sexual violence research. We interrogate three seemingly straightforward questions that researchers must re-evaluate with a critical lens in an attempt to eradicate — not just prevent — campus sexual violence.

Whom Are We Studying?

Whom we study may be, for some researchers, the most straightforward question within campus sexual violence research. When examining the existing research on campus sexual violence, one might discover that we, as researchers, study women students and sexual violence or perhaps men as perpetrators of sexual violence. Straightforward populations, right? But if we aim to critically interrogate campus sexual violence, we should be very skeptical of seemingly straightforward answers, because they are often riddled with assumptions and essentialism.

For example, for those of us who study women students, whom do we mean by “women”? Do we really mean white women? Or do we mean women across racial and ethnic identities? Are we only including cisgender women students without naming them as such?

We must be clear as to what we mean when referencing identity and whom we study. Clarity not only helps the reader understand whom they are reading about but also helps avoid further minoritization of already minoritized campus communities. For instance, claiming that research focuses on women when it really only accounts for white cisgender women maintains an assumption that white cis women are the prototype, or norm, by which all women’s experiences are measured and understood. We must be explicit from the beginning (not just in our methods sections) about whom we are researching.

When we are explicit, we can identify who is represented within campus sexual violence research and who is not. Being explicit allows us to center students who hold identities that are rarely, if ever, centered in such research. For example, when it is made explicit that research on men and women students who are survivors of sexual violence refers to cisgender heterosexual white men and women survivors, we can readily identify a gap in research that explores the experiences of trans and/or women of color and/or men of color survivors. In being explicit, we can identify the intersections of identities that have not yet been accounted for, and may be masked, within existing research.

What Are We Studying?

In our research, we must also interrogate what we are studying. When asked, “What are you studying?” we might answer, “Campus sexual violence.” Or we may answer, “Sexual violence prevention” or “The connection between alcohol and campus sexual violence.” Indeed, those latter two replies may be common, as the majority of research on campus sexual violence focuses on sexual violence prevention and/or sexual violence and alcohol.

But unfortunately, focusing only on surface-level issues like alcohol use or abuse masks and maintains systems of oppression that influence sexual violence on campus. In short, researchers exploring those topics often gloss over the deeper “What?” of sexual violence.

If we aim to eradicate sexual violence on campus, we must move beyond research that interrogates individual or surface-level issues. We must shift what we explore so that our research interrogates systems, issues and contexts that influence and perpetuate such violence. Researchers should ask, “What systems, structures and histories must we focus on in an attempt to better interrogate and destabilize a culture of campus sexual violence?”

For instance, researchers have repeatedly explored how alcohol intensifies men students’ sexual aggression, which may influence their perpetration of sexual violence. Here, the “What?” centers on sexual violence, alcohol and male aggression. But if we asked a different “What?” question, we challenge the assumption that alcohol is the precursor to male aggression and, subsequently, sexual violence. If we interrogate what it is about the campus context, the campus drinking culture and the patriarchal systems and sexist environment that encourages and condones men’s aggression as a tool to dominate others, then we may be better equipped to dismantle the roots of sexual violence.

When Are We Studying?

As we worked on our book, we came across an article that referred to campus sexual violence as an epidemic. That word, in connection with campus sexual violence, did not sit well with us. We could not put our fingers on why exactly we were uneasy, so we looked up the word “epidemic” in an online dictionary. Webster told us that an epidemic “affects a disproportionately large number of individuals within a population, community or region at the same time and is characterized by very widespread growth or extent.” The response in our heads was simply, “No.”

Why? Because claiming that sexual violence is an epidemic is to negate and excuse the violent finding and taking of the United States. Specifically, it excuses how white men, throughout history, have used rape as a tool of colonization, domination, terrorization and control. For example, white colonizers introduced a patriarchal and white supremacist system to the North American continent through the rape of indigenous women’s bodies. Their violent terrorization not only asserted control over those women’s bodies but also over indigenous culture.

When violent histories are acknowledged, it becomes clear that sexual violence has not become an epidemic. Researchers must account for this history throughout the research process — from the conceptualization of research questions to the writing up of data. When asking questions, analyzing data and writing reports, scholars must be sensitized to the fact that sexual violence has always been around and disproportionately affects and violates communities of color.

Additionally, we must be careful not to implicitly contain campus sexual violence to a specific time period. We have read many articles and books that introduce readers to campus sexual violence through recent Title IX legislation and the 2011 Dear Colleague letter from the Office for Civil Rights. In fact, we may be guilty of this in our own writing. We encourage scholars to reach before 2011 and beyond current legislation, and acknowledge that sexual violence has always held a violent presence within this country and on college campuses.

Researchers must not forget that, while some may frame sexual violence as an epidemic — a disease that affects the United States — rape is a symptom of larger social diseases, including white supremacy, patriarchy, colonization, ableism, , capitalism and other oppressive systems. Moreover, research must interrogate how U.S. institutions of education not only exist on the very land in which these individuals and communities were violently assaulted, but also how they rest upon the histories, values and (colonial college) systems that this use of force helped to construct.

11.03.17
by

Teaching About Sexual Violence: Think Intersectional

Note: this blog post was originally published on our career advice column on Inside Higher Ed (here). Jamie J. Hagen is a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Boston researching gender and security. Her most recent article is “Queering Women, Peace and Security.” She is also an independent journalist and writes about queer politics and reproductive justice.

Intersectionality And Sexual Violence

In a year in which sexual harassment and rape have made national headlines, classroom discussions about the topic of sexual violence are more important than ever. The classroom can provide a place to consider the larger power structures in place for both victims and survivors of sexual violence as well as the perpetrators of it.

I research and write about people who are often left out of conversations about sexual violence, specifically lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer survivors. Academics who research and/or teach on sexual violence often overlook LGBTQ people in their work because this population does not fit the perfect-victim narrative. The work that I do as a feminist security scholar offers a distinctive look at how assumptions about sexual violence play out in the classroom and our research.

Those pushed to the margins of society because of their sexual orientation and gender identity experience unique vulnerabilities to violence that are missed when we overlook those identities. By including conversations about homophobic, biphobic and transphobic violence in discussions with students about sexual violence, instructors can broaden the framework in crucial, intersectional ways. To better understand sexual violence, instructors should work to bridge attention to anti-LGBTQ violence with attention to patriarchal social norms that drive acts of sexual violence. Making such connections can better inform students about how sexual violence and gender-based violence impact men, women, queers and gender-nonconforming individuals.

Problematic Assumptions About Gender

In my research, I focus on the context-specific analysis of sexual violence in conflict-related environments. Since the 2000 passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, such violence has drawn much more attention, even leading to the establishment of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics. This center came out of the Preventing Sexual Violence initiative championed in 2015 by former U.K. Foreign Minister William Hague and the special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie.

Yet such high-profile attention to wartime sexual violence presents challenges as well. For example, some feminist international relations scholars find the new “rape as a weapon of war” narrative that has gained much media attention incomplete or even unhelpful. Part of the resistance is to the framing of women as primarily victims of violence rather than change agents in global politics. A “Monkey Cage” blog post by Kerry F. Crawford, Amelia Hoover Green and Sarah E. Parkinson about the language of sexual violence as a “weapon of war” explains, “Narratives that focus on a narrow subset of sexual violence — strategic rapes, with rhetorically convenient perpetrators and victims — are powerful but dangerous.” When those assumptions minimize or erase the agency of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, it can hinder any efforts to move toward community-based solutions. Another troubling aspect of this frame is how it can neglect to consider the prevalence of sexual violence before and after times of conflict.

One common assumption about sexual and gender-based violence is that it is about sex — that is, sexual desire or attraction. It is actually about power. This is critical to understand when it comes to finding ways to respond and prevent this violence. Another assumption is that men are only perpetrators of sexual violence, while a growing body of literature highlights boys’ and men’s experiences as victims of such violence. Rosemary Grey and Laura J. Shepherd write about the danger of “absent presences in our analysis” when it comes to men and sexual and gender-based violence.

A full picture of those who face insecurity because of their gender requires a context-specific analysis of which individuals may be most vulnerable to rape and other forms of gender-based violence. An intersectional feminist analysis of this violence must account for racial, ethnic, religious, social and political drivers of violence. It is essential to recognize the intersecting systems of oppression when it comes to understanding and responding to sexual and gender-based violence.

Queering The Conversation

Stories about LGBTQ people are often absent from discussions about sexual violence in the classroom and in research. That is true despite findings that LGBTQ students are more likely to experience sexual harassment on college campuses. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center provides an overview of violence over the past two decades pertaining to sexual violence and individuals who identity as LGBTQ. Sexual harassment between same-gender peers is also a concern. All of the studies point to the need for more research on this topic, and some note the difficulty of studying LGBTQ individuals as a monolithic group when the assessment of the needs and experiences of each group individually is necessary.

Antiviolence organizations that respond to violence targeting LGBTQ individuals offer some insight into how the sexual violence conversation is already shifting. In the forward to the anthology Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices From Within the Anti-Violence Movement, Reina Gossett writes about how work to address sexual violence has evolved over the last decade along with cultural shifts regarding what is considered sexual violence. Gossett explains, “More and more people are naming interpersonal and institutional sexual violence as inextricably linked to other forms of oppression. More and more people are working to reframe who exactly they mean when they say survivors of sexual violence, and more focus is going towards centering strategies that work through prevention, intervention, reparations, accountability and ultimately collective liberation.”

The collection Gossett introduces links to disability justice, sex worker rights, gender self-determination, queer and trans liberation, and prison-industrial complex abolition. Considering how race, ethnicity, social class, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, and disability impact a person provides necessary contexts to framing acts of perpetuating sexual violence, as well as navigating society as a survivor. As a blog post for Ms. notes, “Educating students, for example, about preferred gender pronouns, the connections between sexual assault and hate crimes, racialized gender stereotypes, and how people with different physical and mental abilities express consent, should be part of a comprehensive antiviolence strategy.”

Classroom discussions about sexual violence can be improved in important ways by queering assumptions about both perpetrators and survivors of sexual violence and gender-based violence. Those leading these conversations should consider the following five questions:

  • How do you define sexual violence? How do you define gender-based violence?
  • How can we move the conversation in the classroom and in research about sexual violence beyond common assumptions about who is a survivor and who is a perpetrator?
  • Which voices are we including in discussions to understand and respond to sexual violence? Including perpetrators as well as survivors is important.
  • Is the conversation about sexual violence intersectional? For example, an intersectional conversation will avoid white savior tropes and heteronormative assumptions.
  • Do you discuss the role of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia as they relate to sexual and gender-based violence? How do hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity relate to this conversation? Consider providing context about how cis privilege, monosexism and heteronormativity influence assumptions about who is a survivor of sexual and gender-based violence and how this limits our frame of understanding.
10.20.17
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A Call For LGBTQ-Inclusive Research On Sexual Violence

Note: this blog post was originally published on our career advice column on Inside Higher Ed (here). Sarah A. Stephens is completing her bachelor of arts in sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is currently finishing an honors thesis about survey methodology in IPV and LGBTQ research. She may be reached at her website, Please Stand Up.

Sexual Violence Research Must Be LGBTQ Inclusive

For as long as I can remember, I have heard other people say, “Rape isn’t about sex — it’s about power.” The word “power” itself is not gendered, but in the context of sexual violence dialogue, that sentence is gendered. In the early days of sexual violence and intimate partner violence research, “power” became synonymous with “patriarchy.” Nowadays we hear about “toxic masculinity” and “rape culture,” but the conversation is still highly gendered and heteronormative.

Before I address sexual violence in academe, I want to provide some background and context for my interest in the subject. When I first came out in 1994, I identified as a lesbian; today, I identify as queer. For much of my young adulthood, I was behaviorally bisexual. This means that even though I identified as a lesbian, I was not exclusively involved with feminine people.

When I was 20, I was involved with a heterosexual cisgender man. Although he would have probably exercised coercive control in any relationship, my sexual orientation intensified the situation. He used my sexuality against me, saying, “Since you’ve been with women and you’re with me now, I cannot trust you with men or women.” From his perspective, because I was (behaviorally) bisexual, I was incapable of monogamy (a tired biphobic stereotype), and therefore he was justified in cutting off the friends that I had, preventing me from making new ones and monitoring my time and actions. He timed me when I rode my bike to 7-Eleven, stating, “If you’re not back in 15 minutes, I’m coming to look for you.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control report “The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Findings on Victimization by Sexual Orientation,” more than 60 percent of bisexual women experience some form of intimate partner violence or sexual violence. As a survivor of IPV, I felt simultaneously validated and depressed upon discovering this information. I knew that I was not alone, but I was saddened that the rate was so high.

Heterosexual, cisgender and LGBTQ people alike experience various types of abuse: sexual violence, coercive control, physical violence, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse, reproductive control, stalking and so on. However, for LGBTQ victims, there are additional layers of victimization that are not present in cisgender, heterosexual relationships.

For example, coercive control may include the threat of being outed, which may result in the loss of employment, housing or child custody. Same-gender IPV is often seen as a “fair fight” from the perspective of law enforcement, counselors and other social workers. And the heteronormative framing of sexual violence and IPV prevents many LGBTQ victims from even realizing that what they are experiencing is abuse. As I sought more information, a hard truth revealed itself.

Two Forms Of Deafening Silence

I am originally from Oklahoma, but I was living in Texas when I came out. Those were not the best places to be queer, especially in the mid-1990s. Additionally, I grew up and came out in a time when LGBTQ people were virtually invisible. Lack of representation is incredibly invalidating and psychologically destructive. It is even worse than being the subject of debate. At least if politicians, the media, researchers and the like are talking about LGBTQ folks, we exist. For me, growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, the silence was deafening.

Today, I am an undergraduate sociology major with an interest in LGBTQ studies and queer theory. I am also 41 years old. I mention my age to highlight the fact that I am not where I am by accident. I am deeply invested — emotionally, psychologically and intellectually — in this field. Despite the awareness I gained last semester about the challenges of being queer in academe, my goals are still to complete my doctorate in sociology and conduct research in gender and sexuality. Specifically, I am interested in how the gendered framing of sexual violence and IPV negatively affects LGBTQ communities and the subject over all.

The 2016-17 academic year was my hardest one yet, and it is because I again encountered that deafening silence — this time, in the context of sociological research. Don’t get me wrong: I knew academe has its issues, just like the rest of society. But I was surprised to find such a complete lack of research published in mainstream sociological journals about LGBTQ individuals and communities. After all, LGBTQ issues are being represented at ever increasing rates. That is where my naivety revealed itself. I thought that if The Huffington Post, National Geographic and Vice News were reporting on LGBTQ issues, I should not have any problems finding articles in mainstream sociology journals. I was wrong.

What I found regarding IPV research in LGBTQ communities came from LGBTQ-specific journals, such as Journal of Bisexuality, Journal of Homosexuality and Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling. Those journals are publishing extraordinary work, and I am grateful they exist. But with every article I read, I thought, “Nobody cares about us but us.” And, as I worked on a research project for a class that required the use of articles from mainstream sociological journals, this thought repeatedly went through my head: “We really are invisible.”

Deafening. Silence. The message that silence sends is that LGBTQ people are not a significant enough population to study and that we have nothing to contribute. I argue that the opposite is true. Understanding of sexual violence and IPV will be stalled until we dig deeper into their underlying sociological phenomena.

Breaking The Silence

I recognize that LGBTQ individuals are a numerical minority. I understand that most people are cisgender and heterosexual. I recognize there are challenges with sampling procedures and operationalization when studying sexual and gender minorities. I can see how people involved in research — from the researchers themselves to the funding sources to the universities in which research takes place — take the stance that resources should go to the largest majority of victims (cisgender, heterosexual women).

But the fact that IPV and sexual violence are found in lesbian and gay relationships proves that there is more to the phenomenon than cisgender, heterosexual men victimizing cisgender, heterosexual women. Which leads back the sentiment I echoed at the beginning: sexual violence is not about sexual activity or desire — it is about power.

I also recognize that masculinity is held in higher esteem in our society than femininity, which lends itself to more abuse of power. I am not saying that sexual violence has nothing to do with toxic masculinity; I am saying that toxic masculinity is not exclusive to cisgender, heterosexual men. For example, cisgender lesbians and trans men can also be misogynistic and/or abusive. Additionally, we are all socialized in rape culture, regardless of our identities. Including LGBTQ individuals in IPV and sexual violence research has the potential to shift the focus from seeing sex as a variable that is used to explain prevalence (he did it because he is a man) to one variable among many. These variables could include economic status, drug and alcohol abuse, history of abuse in childhood, or internalized biphobia, homophobia or transphobia.

Sociology is well suited to this inquiry. While criminology and feminist studies argue about gender symmetry in IPV (such as whether women abuse men as much as men abuse women), sociology could be, and should be, asking different questions. For example, how do power and dominance relate to ideas of gender, and how do those ideas manifest in all types of relationships? How do power and dominance intersect with race, ethnicity, social class, gender identity and expression, disability, and sexual orientation? How can queer theory be incorporated into sociological research, particularly to understand sexual violence?

It is time that we start finding answers to those questions. It is time to recognize that even though LGBTQ people are a numerical minority, we have distinct insights and contributions to offer. The lives of all victims of sexual violence and intimate partner violence depend on it.

10.06.17
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Hogging: The Intersection Of Fatphobia And Sexual Violence

Note: this blog post was published on our career advice column on Inside Higher Ed (here). Dr. Jeannine A. Gailey is associate professor of sociology at Texas Christian University. She is the author of the book, The Hyper(in)visible Fat Woman: Weight and Gender Discourse in Contemporary Society. Her work has also appeared in journals such as Social Psychology Quarterly, Fat Studies Journal, Deviant Behavior, Critical Criminology, Qualitative Research, and Journal of Gender Studies.

Fatphobia And “Hogging” on Campuses

In 2004, I read an article in the Cleveland Scene magazine about a practice known as “hogging.” Hogging, according to the article, is a practice wherein men — usually college-aged — attempt to pick up women they deem fat or unattractive for sport, to win a bet or for sexual pleasure. What is implied is that these women are “hogs” — and, of course, the women are unaware that they are the targets of this malicious game. I was appalled to learn that this sort of thing takes place. Unfortunately, when I started asking some of the men whom I knew whether they had ever heard of it, it was not a surprise to them.

A graduate school colleague and I began searching the literature to see whether anyone had ever written about this. We found nothing scholarly. But we were able to find quite a bit of information about “hogging” on various websites wherein college students blogged about drinking, sex, drug use and so forth.

So my colleague and I decided to conduct our own study on the practice, which was published in 2006 in Deviant Behavior. We collected everything that we could find online and designed a study to interview heterosexual college men about their sexual relationships. None of the men we interviewed admitted to engaging in the practice, but all but two knew what hogging was. In fact, we never even used the term. We simply asked them whether they had ever heard of a practice where men try to pick up women they deem fat or unattractive as part of a bet or for sex, and they responded, “Yeah, hogging.” The most disturbing finding was that they all thought it was funny.

The students we interviewed talked about their friends or fraternity brothers giving prizes to the guy who had sex with the fattest woman, in addition to multiple ways in which their friends humiliated the women with whom they had sex. These encounters almost always involved alcohol and began at parties or bars. They talked about taking large women to their car for oral sex and then kicking them out, calling them derogatory names, or having a “rodeo.” A rodeo?

One of our participants described as a rodeo to me. He said it takes place when one of the guys takes a large woman home with him to have sex or, as in Michael Flood’s research, a hotel. Prior to the couple arriving, a couple of the men’s friends hide in the room and wait for the couple to start having sex. Once the couple is having sex and it sounds as though they are “getting into it,” the friends jump out with a stopwatch and camera and time how long the man having sex with the woman can hold on to her — hence the name. Not all instances of hogging are sexual assaults, but those in which women are tricked or intoxicated most certainly are — and it seems that is how the majority of these encounters were described.

Why are women of size the — arguably, a form of sexual assault? The answer seems to lie in two basic assumptions, both of which encompass a larger societal phenomenon of fatphobia (the hatred of persons of size): 1) women of size are “easy” and “desperate,” and 2) women of size are viewed as deviant and even deserving of mistreatment.

In subsequent research, including my 2014 book, The Hyper(in)visible Fat Woman, I interviewed women of size about their dating and sexual histories because there was so little scholarship on larger women and sex. In addition, I wanted to try to ascertain how women discuss these occurrences, if they would at all. Not surprisingly, the 74 women I interviewed had a variety of sexual experiences, ranging from one-night stands to loving, long-term sexual relationships (that is, counter to stereotypes and myths about the sex and dating lives of women of size). Unfortunately, the themes of abuse and sexual exploitation were also present in many of the women’s narratives, and most of these women had heard of hogging.

My research on hogging revealed that many of the men thought that women of size do not regularly have sex or receive much sexual attention from men and are therefore “desperate” or sexually “easy.” However, my research with women of size revealed that they have no trouble finding sexual partners. In addition, numerous women revealed that their partners were not “using” them or were with them because they thought they were “easy,” but instead were genuinely attracted to them and cared for them as whole human beings. Some women reported harassment and mistreatment and revealed stories that involved instances of sexual assault akin to hogging, but those were not the majority of their sexual encounters.

In The Hyper(in)visible Fat Woman, I argue that the emphasis on the so-called obesity epidemic in the media, medical establishment and political agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control, works to frame fatness as an individual failing. Persons who are fat are assumed to be lazy, irresponsible, gluttonous and unhealthy. We are told repeatedly that if someone wants to lose weight, all they need to do is decrease their caloric intake and increase their activity level. However, that logic is problematic, because it does not take into account numerous biological and social factors. As the attention on the harms of fat has increased, so has discrimination against people of size — especially women — which in turn makes them vulnerable to developing health problems.

The stigmatization of a fat body affects women differently than men. In contemporary Western societies, women are expected to be normatively attractive (thin) and are given considerably less leeway in their bodily presentation. The “obesity epidemic” has led to a conflation in health and beauty, and because fat is considered unhealthy and unattractive, fat women are under pressure to “fix” both. Women are expected to meet conventional beauty standards, and when they do not, they often experience hostility, prejudice and stigma — or sometimes sexual assault, including the practice of hogging.

During the Obama administration, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to colleges and universities that receive federal funding warning that an institution’s failure to adequately confront a hostile climate of sexual harassment could represent a Title IX violation. In other words, colleges and universities have an obligation to investigate accusations. Failure to comply could mean the loss of federal funding. After the letter was sent, campuses around the country scrambled to ensure that their policies reflected the best practices outlined in the letter. According to this policy, I argue that higher education institutions have an obligation to educate student organizations and, in fact, the entire student body that the harassment (including sexual assault) of students because of their weight, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, or disability status will not be tolerated.

Moreover, to reduce the harms and discrimination experienced by women of size at the societal level, we need to eliminate the rhetoric surrounding the “obesity epidemic.” Rather than emphasizing the harms of fat or the supposed personal attributes that lead to fatness, we should investigate the social conditions that have led to an increase in people’s weights — such as lack of time and resources to incorporate physical activity, food deserts, food quality and poverty. We also have a responsibility to recognize that bodily diversity exists in the human population. Until we as a society stop reducing women to their bodies and holding unrealistic standards for body size and beauty, mistreatment and behaviors like hogging will very likely continue on college campuses and in the broader society.