Vulnerability and Victimization: Rethinking Key Concepts in Feminist Discourses on Sexual Violence (original) (raw)
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Vulnerability and the Feminist Politics of Sexual Violence
2019
This thesis asks: how does understanding vulnerability enable feminists to engage with sexual violence? Whilst there has been a 'return to vulnerability' (Murphy 2012: 70) in the recent feminist literature, sexual violence is notably absent. These contributions to the field emphasise the shared character of vulnerability, focusing on it as an ambiguous ontological condition (Gilson 2014). This is in contrast to activist antiviolence movements of the 1970s that articulated a 'structural' account of vulnerability, where women's disproportionate vulnerability to sexual violence was a point of departure. The thesis will argue that an intersectional feminist politics of sexual violence needs to take a two-dimensional approach to vulnerability and incorporate insights from both the structural and ontological perspectives. It begins with a historiographical argument, which is that the affective and institutional legacy of the sex wars, debates on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s that saw discussions about women's sexuality polarise into 'pro-sex' and 'antipornography' positions, has resulted in the academic aversion to thinking vulnerability and sexual violence together. By considering in detail the contributions of Andrea Dworkin and Judith Butler on the questions of vulnerability and sexual violence, thinkers associated with anti-pornography and pro-sex perspectives respectively, I disrupt this oppositional narrative. In the process, I pave the way for my own perspective, which argues that sexual violence politics must be able to both i) counter the weaponisation of gendered vulnerability by reactionary movements and ii) challenge sexual violence, as an endemic social issue. I contrast the mainstream #MeToo movement with Tarana Burke's grassroots, black feminist, original Me Too movement in order to draw out the intersectional implications of my argument. Burke's Me Too demonstrated the radical potential for a sexual violence activism that begins with vulnerability in both its ontological and structural dimensions. Chapter four Judith Butler, vulnerability and livable lives: from performativity to precarity 4.1 Judith Butler, the philosopher's feminist 4.2 Butler's positive spectral presence 4.3 Contextualising Butler's focus: gender, vulnerability and violence 4.4 The relationship between vulnerability and violence 4.6 Linguistic vulnerability 4.7 Corporeal vulnerability 4.8 Vulnerability and sexual violence in Judith Butler 4.9 Conclusion Chapter five Mobilising vulnerability in sexual violence discourses 5.1 The political purchase of gendered vulnerability 5.2 Feminism and anti-feminism in vulnerability discourses 5.3 Reactionary mobilisations #1: racialising vulnerability 5.4 Oppositional vulnerability in racialised sexual violence discourses 5.5 Reactionary mobilisations #2: the vulnerable cisgender woman 5.6 Two-dimensional vulnerability and victims of sexual violence 5.7 Conclusion Chapter six Vulnerability, Me Too and feminist sexual violence activisms 6.1 Introduction: The return of sexual politics 6.2 Tarana Burke's Me Too movement: A movement of survivors 6.3 Intersectional activism and the problem of prisons 6.4 The viral #MeToo movement 6.5 Oppositional vulnerability and the viral #MeToo movement 6.6 Vulnerability and sexual violence activisms 6.7 Conclusion Chapter seven Conclusion: Vulnerability and bodily autonomy 7.1 Bringing sexual violence into vulnerability studies 7.2 Collating the contributions of the thesis by way of bodily autonomy 7.3 Vulnerability: what now and where next? Reference List 10 In the 'self-help-terrain' Ewa Ziarek writes how 'from books to talk shows, vulnerability signifies a risk that has to be managed by individuals themselves or is reclaimed as a new virtue to be cultivated' (2013: 67)
Attending to vulnerability in sexual violence research
Feminism & Psychology
Within research on sexual violence, womxn who have been raped are positioned as “vulnerable” participants, while researchers tend to occupy positions of “invulnerability”. Drawing on vulnerable moments from a research project which explored womxn's experiences of rape in South Africa, this paper proposes a (more) vulnerable engagement with narratives of rape. Through attending to how vulnerability is implicated in issues of silence and agency, shame, and my own failures to witness the experiences of my participants with care, I explore the epistemic and ethical possibilities of an affective approach to researching rape. This approach asks us, as researchers, to attend to the moments during our research in which we are affected, moved and disrupted.
Feminist Reflections on Vulnerability: Disrespect, Obligation, Action
SubStance, 2013
The central question I want to explore here is whether there can be a different discourse of vulnerability outside the hold of biopolitics, security, and self-management. Can vulnerability signify a different intersection between politics and ethics apart from risk management on a global or individual scale? Can it be mobilized by feminist politics and ethics? On the level of politics, vulnerability, I would like to propose, has two contradictory meanings, which are nonetheless connected. In feminist and anti-racist struggles, vulnerability is intertwined first of all with subjection to racist and sexist violence, with bodily injury and extreme destitution. In other words, it signifies the damaging and indeed disastrous effects of domination and power. Yet vulnerability also has a positive meaning: it can be reclaimed as a condition of intersubjective freedom, action, and political engagement. Consequently, what is opposed to violence and disaster is not personal or national security or risk management. On the contrary, the commitment to security perpetuates biopower, and thus compromises the conditions on which the practice of freedom itself depends. Thus, what I propose as an alternative to risk management is the struggle for more expansive notions of freedom and justice.
Violated subjects: A feminist phenomenology and critical theory of rape
2002
Underlying theories of rape in legal philosophy are assumptions about the relationships between rights and property, self and others, mind and body, public and private domains, subject and object. Philosophers who study sexual assault by focusing almost exclusively on the law of rape often fail to interrogate their implicit ways of conceptualizing subjects and the harm done to them. In particular, these analyses often overlook the impact of rape on the development of personal identity and understanding of self. This project provides an analysis of the wrongness of rape that considers rape not as a moment of nonconsent, but as a stage in an experiential process that includes, but is not limited to, the violation of rights. By integrating the philosophical methods of phenomenology and critical theory with current writings on the philosophy o f rape law, rape trauma, and critical race theory, this study develops a descriptively lull theory of rape that takes the experience of the survivor as the point of departure. A philosophically rich understanding o f the harm o f rape emerges when approaching the issue through the lived realities of women who have been subjected to sexual violence along with a critical social theory of how the social, historical, and material conditions inform that experience. R ep ro d u ced with p erm ission o f the copyright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout perm ission.
Intersubjective Vulnerability, Ignorance, and Sexual Violence
Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, 2015
Throughout this chapter, I seek to explain ignorance of a particular pattern of susceptibility, susceptibility to sexual violence, in terms of a deeper ignorance, that which concerns the phenomenon of vulnerability in general. In the first two sections I present the methodological background for this inquiry, considering first how ignorance is schematized by philosophers engaged in social criticism, and then how vulnerability has been conceptualized in relationship to ethical and political concerns. The third section sketches the forms taken by ignorance of vulnerability, focusing on the particular case of ignorance concerning rape and sexual assault. I propose that many types of ignorance are under-girded by one particular type: willful ignorance. Moreover, in relation to rape and rape culture, this kind of ignorance takes the form of denials of the fundamental nature of vulnerability as a social and corporeal condition.
Feminism and the False Dichotomy of Victimization and Agency
NYL Sch. L. Rev., 1993
for materials, conversation and comments and to Suzanne Brackley and Stephanie Manes for research assistance. A Brooklyn Law School Faculty Research Grant generously supported my research and writing. This essay is part of a larger project on tensions within feminist legal theory and practice. 1. This theoretical framework has been called "dominance feminism." "Dominance feminism" is used "to describe that strand of feminist (legal) theory that locates gender oppression in the sexualized domination of women and the eroticization of that dominance through pornography and other aspects of popular culture.... Catharine MacKinnon would probably be described as the primary-and most visible-exponent of this theory" but there are a "range of feminists who have worked theoretically and, often through political practice, to raise consciousness about male sexualization of and aggression against women.
Theorising vulnerability and male sexual victimisation
This UK study is about perceptions and constructions of male rape among police officers and agency practitioners. This paper seeks to particularly understand and explain the relationship between vulnerability and male sexual victimisation in the UK. It employs gender and sex-ualities frameworks to elucidate the connection between vulnerability and male rape, offering primary data (N ¼ 70). The data consist of police officers and voluntary agency practitioners. I aim to make sense of male rape discourse through the participants' voices since they intimately serve male rape victims/offenders on a one-to-one basis. Because of the lack of male rape research specifically looking at this nuanced area that I seek to explore, this paper will attempt to open up a dialogue regarding male rape not only in an academic context but also in a policy and practice context. This paper also offers suggestions for policy and practice to better deal with male rape victims and to tackle gender inequality and injustice both in a social and criminal justice context. Ultimately, I argue that male rape is often mistakenly considered as a 'homosexual issue', so gay and bisexual men who have been raped are regarded as unmasculine or, in other words, not 'real' men. Myths and misconceptions of male rape have serious implications for the way societies, the criminal justice system and the voluntary sector view and treat these victims.
2018
This thesis presents a feminist discourse analysis of interviews with four women who have experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives. By giving a voice to women who have experience sexual violence, we gain insight into the multiple ways that they make sense of their experience and deal with it in the aftermath. I argue that women are impacted in this process by the dominant discourses surrounding sexual violence in our society: the responsibilisation and trauma of rape discourses. I submit that these two discourses combine to create a ‘two-stage victim test’ for women to ‘pass’ in order to be seen, and see themselves, as legitimate ‘victims’ of sexual violence. Through a close reading of women’s narratives, I evidence the impact of these discourses and the discursive techniques utilised to reject them. I conclude with a call for the disruption of the dominant discourses, which can be harmful to women, and call for alternative, counter-discourses.