Violence Against Women

1. Violence Against Women A Social Structural Approach Leeat Granek

2. Childhood Sexual Abuse • a sexual interaction between a child and an adult or between two non adults in which coercion is used.

3. Who are the Victims? • 1- common in families in which members are emotionally distant- without intimacy, cohesion, or open displays of affection. • 2- common in families with rigid, traditional family structures. • 3- common in families with a number of conflictual relationships, but especially between families.

4. Consequences for the Survivor • Immediate effects seen in children’s emotional, social, cognitive and physical functioning. • As adolescents, they may also be more likely to exhibit signs of depression and social withdrawal and are also more likely turn away from home, be sexually active and to contemplate suicide. • Most commonly reported psychological effects include shame, guilt, fear, disgust, distrust, feelings of isolation, hostile and aggressive feelings towards the perpetrator and anxiety.

5. Courtship Violence • refers to aggression between unmarried adolescents or young adults in dating like relationships. • includes verbal aggression like screaming and name calling to stalking and physical violence involving the use of weapons.

6. Who Abuses? • Relationship Only perpetrators appear the most ‘normal’ and engage in only ‘mild’ psychological and physical abuse and are not aggressive outside the dating relationship. • The violent/antisocial type are usually male and are likely to be aggressive inside as well outside the dating relationship and to have witnessed domestic violence and parental physical punishment. • The histrionic/preoccupied type are usually female and they are likely to have experienced childhood sexual abuse and parental physical punishment. In relationships, this type tends to be intensely expressive, reactive and dependant.

7. Consequences of Courtship Violence • lack of motivation, low energy, poor concentration, poor academic performance, hyper arousal, substance abuse, PTSD, depression, low self esteem, eating disorders as well as sexually risky behaviors, unwanted pregnancy and sucidality.

8. Acquaintance Sexual Assault and Rape • refers to instances in which one person engages in sexual behavior against another’s will. • this includes unwanted sexual contact like forced kissing or fondling to attempted rape and rape.

9. Who Rapes? • Alcohol abuse, athletic affiliation and fraternity membership are associated with sexual aggression towards women among college men. • a history of family violence; • an early and varied sexual history including many sexual partners; • a history of delinquency; • acceptance of rape myths; • an impulsive personality; • hedonistic and dominance motives for sex. • Lower than average sense of self worth; • lower religiosity; • as well as peers who condone and encourage sexual conquests.

10. Consequences for Women: • fear and anxiety, phobias, depression, diminished self esteem, sexual dysfunctions, nightmares, and PTSD • alcohol or drug use and dependency and behavioral deviancy • injuries associated with the attack itself as well as chronic health problems such as pelvic pain, excessive menstrual bleeding, vaginal infections, gastrointestinal problems, headaches and not to mention std infections and possible pregnancy • Other long term conditions include excessive weight loss, eating disorders, substance abuse and sexual dysfunction. • Many rape victims feel helpless and devalued. • Women frequently feel guilty and blame themselves for the rape.

11. Rape Myths: • Rapists are strangers. • Only deviant men would consider raping a woman. • Women ask to be raped; they could avoid rape if they wanted to. • Women routinely lie about rape. • Pornography provides a safety valve or catharsis that makes men less likely to rape.

12. Sexual Harassment • “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when 1- submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individuals employment; 2- submission or rejection of such by an individual is used as a basis of employment decisions affecting such individual; or 3- such has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with an individuals work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment”. (EEOC, 1980).

13. Consequences for Women: • psychological symptoms including anxiety, depression, decreased satisfaction with life, and symptoms of PTSD. • lowered self-esteem, self blame and impaired social relationships. • College women who were sexually harassed report feeling negative about themselves, their peers, their professors and their campus and are more likely to leave school without graduating. • Harassment at work is also associated with higher levels of depression, absenteeism and a greater desire to leave the company.

14. Why is Sexual Harassment an Important Issue? • Sexual harassment emphasizes that men typically have more power than women in our society. • Sexual demands are often coercive because women are offered economic or academic advantages if they comply and harmful consequences if they say no. • Sexual harassment dehumanizes women and treats them in a sexist fashion; women are seen primary as sexual beings rather than as intelligent and skilled employees or students. • Women are often forced to be silent victims because of fear and the need to continue either in the workplace or at school. • If sexual harassment occurs in a public setting, without condemnation from supervisor, many onlookers conclude that sexist behavior is acceptable.

15. Wife Abuse • physical abuse can include hitting, kicking, burning, pushing, choking and use of weapons • psychological/emotional abuse can include humiliation, name calling, degradation, intimidation, extreme jealousy, and refusal to speak. • Another form of emotional abuse involves finances when a man withholds money or takes away money from his wife.

16. Who Batters? • men who earn less than their wives • Children who grew up in houses were the father beat the mother are more likely to grow up and believe that wife beating is ok. • Men who abuse are more likely than those who do not to have been exposed to physical violence and shaming by a parents as children and to have developed insecure attachment early in life. • Are likely to be angry and aggressive and lack coping skills

17. Consequences for Women: • fear, terror and mistrust. • They may also feel anxious and have low self esteem • They also suffer from bruises, cuts, burns and broken bones as a result of assault • physiological problems like headaches, sleep disturbances, extreme fatigue, abdominal pain, pelvic pain, gynecological problems and other chronic disorders.

18. Principles of Feminist Therapy (From Matlin, p.411). • Women’s major problems are not internal, personal deficiencies, instead, the problems are primarily societal ones, such as sexism and racism. • Women and men should have equal power in their social relationships. • Society should be changed to be less sexist; women should not be encouraged to adjust to a sexist society by being quieter and more obedient.

19. We must focus on women’s strengths, not on characteristics that are presumed as deficiencies. Women can then use these strengths to help define and solve problems. • We must work to change these institutions that devalue women including governmental organizations, the justice system, educational systems and the structure of the family. • Inequalities with respect to ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, social class and disabilities should also be addressed; gender is not the only inequality.

20. Culture of Violence • “The act of violence is many things at once. At the same instant it is the individual man acting out relations of sexual power; it is the violence of a society- a hierarchal, authoritarian, sexist, class-divided, militarist, racist, impersonal, crazy society- being focused through an individual man onto an individual woman… These acts of violence are like a ritualized acting out of our social relations of power: the stronger dominate the weaker, the powerful and the powerless, the active and the passive…the masculine and the feminine” (Kaufman, 1987, p. 1). • http://www.michaelkaufman.com/

21. Culture of Rape • “What is a rape culture? It is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm” (From the Preamble).

22. “The essential question for us is not whether men are predisposed to violence, but what society does with this violence. Why has the linchpin of so many societies been the manifold expression of violence perpetuated disproportionably by men? Why are so many forms of violence sanctioned or even encouraged? Exactly what is the nature of violence? And how are patterns of violence and the quest for domination built up and reinforced?” (Kaufman, 1987, p. 4). • “Violence is an institutionalized form encoded into physical structures and socioeconomic relations” (Kaufman, 1987, p. 13).

23. Patriarchal Values and the Socialization of Males “Violence as an expression of the fragility of masculinity and its place in the perpetuation of masculinity and male domination…. But in those who harbor great personal doubts or strongly negative self images or who cannot cope with a daily feeling of powerlessness, violence against women can become a means in trying to affirm their personal power in the language of our gender- sex system. That these forms of violence only reconfirm the negative self image, and the feeling of powerlessness shows the fragility, artificiality, and precariousness of masculinity” (p. 17).

24. Learned Behavior • Law/Criminal Justice System • Media • Pornography • External Factors like Unemployment and Alcohol Abuse • Poverty and Low Income • Psychology of Violence- i.e. War, Environmentalism, Urbanization etc.

25. Native Communities and Increased Violence against Women • “Many American Indians recreate the power structures of the dominant culture. That is Indian men often have privilege and authority over Indian women, and Indian fathers and mothers have privilege and authority over children, whereby each may exert violence as a socially acceptable operation of Western patriarchal power. Like other politically, economically and socially disempowered individuals in the dominant culture then, American Indian man may assert male authority violently in their homes and communities against woman children.” (Poupart, p. 8).

26. Change? • According to the feminist principles what are some of thing things we can do to change the culture of violence ? • In your groups, please come up with three points to answer this question. It should be submitted (handwritten) at the end of class to Catalina.