Re-visiting the Continuum of Sexual Violence

1. Re-visiting the Continuum of Sexual Violence NE SV conference November 2012 Email: l.kelly@londonmet.ac.uk Twitter: @ProfLizKelly

4. Where the continuum concept came from • Liz Kelly PhD in 1980s • For much of 20C VAW seen as rare, committed by deviant men, dysfunctional families • Who decides what is abusive, what matters? • Connecting the horrific with the everyday • incest as an exaggeration of patriarchal family norms (Herman, 1981) • rape as the end point of ‘socially sanctioned continuum of male sexual aggression’ (Marolla and Scully, 1979) • how the ‘typical’ and the ‘aberrant’ shade into one another • Is located in patriarchy/gender order – not just adding and counting violence, but in context which influences meaning and consequences

5. The 1987 concept • ‘a basic common character that underlies many different events’ – the many forms of coercion, abuse and assault that are used to control women • ‘a continuous series of elements or events that pass into one another and cannot be readily distinguished’ – categories are not discrete: sexual harassment/ assault/rape; smuggling/trafficking • Was not intended to be linear or imply anything about seriousness – the ‘more or less’ referred to prevalence

6. The continuum of non-consensual sex • Pressurised sex • Coercive sex • Rape • The boundaries are not fixed and women might discuss similar events but name them differently

8. Trafficking/smuggling as binary and as a continuum

9. ‘Nothing Really Happened’ • Paper written with Jill Radford in 1990, drawing on data from two projects • This phrase common in women’s accounts – they described things that had happened, involved fear, but they minimised – it could have been worse • Unlikely to name or report these common experiences as they do not count as ‘crimes’

10. Examples • I was kerb-crawled too, earlier this week. I hate this sort of thing. It happened again later in the day, when I was walking home. I was in tears by the time I got home, nothing happened, just comments, but I was intimidated. • I have been frequently harassed by kerb-crawlers. It happened even when I was pregnant. There were several incidents about a fortnight ago, though nothing actually happened… It makes me sick and angry. I don’t go out much alone now, I resent that enormously.

11. A different understanding of terrorism • I often get angered by men’s comments and at nights. Nothing happens, but it’s a form of terror. You can tell they know it’s terror by the way they laugh and that • All these things are everyday harassment, the background against which our lives are lived. Not much happens but it is threatening and calculated to intimidate women – to terrorize us • I was on the tube the other day and a man was making racist and insulting sexual remarks. He was white and said I was a snobbish black tart and he knew what was good for me, all that sort of talk, but he didn’t do anything. It makes me really sick

13. Continuum of experience in individual women’s lives • Most women recall at least one incident of intimate intrusion in their lifetime and many report multiple experiences • Most common is harassment • Range within CSA, within IPV (lecture on measuring violence)

14. Continuum of Impacts, meanings and consequences • Having to factor personal safety into everyday activities/limited space for action • Bruises, broken bones, disability, HIV/AIDS, death • Having one’s sense of self, safety and trust in other human beings undermined/destroyed • Is dishonouring, disgracing, stigmatising across cultural contexts • Impacts on earning power/achievement/loss of livelihood/place in society • Few women become perpetrators many more are extraordinary activists and practitioners

15. Critiques of continuum • Has no frame for seriousness • Hierarchy of harm? • Left out sexual exploitation/sex industry • Does not include ‘harmful [traditional] practices’ – FGM, forced marriage, honour based violence

16. Critique conted • Lynne Segal, Slow Motion – blurs lines so that all heterosexuality is problematised, all men guilty, violence inherent in masculinity • Wants differentiation of men and violences – distinguishing ‘violent rape’ and those in relationships (p248), and why some violate and others do not

18. “Such violence constitutes a continuum across the lifespan of women, it cuts across both the public and the private sphere and one form of violence often reinforces another”

19. What counts and what are we measuring? • Prevalence methodology requires exclusive analytic categories • Where framed as crime this is interms of ‘incidents’ • Poor fit with IPV which is a pattern of coercive control (Stark, 2007) • Implications for 1 in 4 figure?

20. Law, crime and harm • Law also requires strict demarcations • Gradations of ‘seriousness’ • Incidents • All sit uneasily with continuum • Course of conduct offences exceptions • Sweden ‘gross violation of integrity’ • Not just safety but women’s freedom

22. Other potentials • The continuum of agency – constraints on/space for action • Extending to include structural and symbolic violence – Srila Roy and Ava Kanyeredzi • Women connecting their own experiences – Fiona Elvines • Historic continuum of oppression within a family of women – Ava Kanyeredzi

24. Connecting to gender equality and women’s freedom • Incremental social democratic gains stalled (Bea Campbell and Sylvia Walby) • Violence as a core, and relative independent, pillar of gender orders – eg Nordic countries, development income generation projects • Need new theoretical framings • R W Connell – gender orders, gender regimes, gender relations • Anne Morris ‘abusive household gender regime’ • Eva Lungren – gender constitution through violence