Reconsidering how we think about sexual violence

Over the last decade, philosophers have paid significant attention to the topic of sexual violence. Much of this work is socially engaged, building theory from analysis of real-life cases and empirical work on sexual violence. Various philosophers have employed concepts from the social sciences, such as “unacknowledged rape” and “rape myths,” in analyzing epistemic problems related to sexual violence. They have appealed to empirical research that identifies barriers to the reception of victim testimony and documents the rarity of false reporting. But, little attention has been paid to how the phenomenon of sexual violence is studied and the processes by which scientific understanding of sexual violence is produced. In contrast, in the disciplines that undertake empirical research on sexual violence, these questions have recently received extensive attention in the face of claims that research practices have limited and distorted understanding of the phenomenon of sexual violence. In what follows, I sketch the recent history of sexual violence research and the emerging critiques and argue for the relevance of these debates to philosophical work on the topic.

As well as sparking changes in mainstream culture and the law, the anti-rape activism of the 1970s and 1980s revolutionized academic research on sexual violence. At that time, the mainstream understanding of sexual violence was based on psychoanalytic psychiatry. Sexual violence was seen as a rare event perpetrated by “sexual psychopaths,” while concepts such as the “rape-precipitating” personality painted victims as complicit in and even inviting the abuse they suffered. This account was so ingrained that sexual violence was initially rejected as a cause for action by many in the second-wave feminist movement. However, as more women shared their experiences in consciousness-raising groups, activists developed a political analysis that connected sexual violence to gender inequality and challenged the authority of dominant understandings in the legal, medical, and cultural domains. At first, these activists engaged in vigilante justice against perpetrators and provided care and support for victims, but the focus of campaigning gradually shifted to legal reform.

While mainstream feminists campaigned for broadened legal definitions of rape, academic women translated feminist activism into a research program. Lynda Holmstrom’s participation in consciousness-raising groups as a sociology doctoral student motivated her to study the experiences of victims after rape, which led to the identification of “Rape Trauma Syndrome” as a common and treatable sequela of sexual violence. Ms. magazine backed Mary Koss’s innovative surveys that discredited the methods employed by Justice Department statisticians and substantiated feminist claims that sexual violence was endemic. These efforts were encouraged by a wave of research grants. An early federal response to feminist protests about sexual violence was the establishment of a government agency, the National Center for the Prevention and Control of Rape, that allocated funding for investigation of sexual violence. Other government agencies, such as the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, expanded their research agenda to include sexual violence. The overall effect was a greatly expanded empirical research program investigating the causes of, effects of, and responses to sexual violence. This research generally incorporated the commitments of mainstream feminist accounts of sexual violence, assuming that sexual violence is a common and serious event in women’s lives, that victims are not to blame, and that cultural attitudes provide social scaffolding for sexual violence.

Although this feminist-aligned research program contributed to a transformation in mainstream understanding and management of sexual violence, there is growing concern that the account it presents is seriously distorted. Next, I sketch three developing criticisms of how sexual violence is studied.

First, there is evidence that the main research samples used for the study of sexual violence skew our understanding of the phenomenon. Setting aside the well-documented drawbacks of the most frequently studied population (college students), research in this field relies heavily on help-seeking samples with, for example, two-thirds of sociological studies using institutional data. However, it is estimated that less than a third of those victimized engage with institutional support services. Exclusionary features of institutional services have been documented for some groups, including the absence of resources tailored to lesbian, gay, and bisexual survivors and the predominantly white staffing and cultural norms of these institutions. Assault characteristics and other factors also have an effect. Overall, it is likely that help-seeking populations differ significantly from those that do not seek formal help. Major population surveys appear to avoid this problem since the study sample is designed to be demographically representative. However, these surveys are not powered to accurately estimate rates of sexual violence in some demographic groups, even though special techniques have confirmed major differences in incidence and type of assault among population subgroups. Decisions about which demographic categories are relevant have also skewed the survey data. For example, until very recently neither survey collected data on sexuality or gender identity. Furthermore, both find a high incidence of sexual violence in the group with the lowest household income, but extremely low-income groups, such as those in group homes or institutions or unhoused, are excluded from participation in either survey.

The point is not that research on sexual violence needs to be more “inclusive” (although it does) but rather that these methodological choices have produced a persistent gap between empirical findings and the phenomenon being investigated. Empirical studies purport to inform us about the phenomenon of sexual violence. If the experiences of sexual violence that they capture differ systematically from those they do not capture, then our understanding of the phenomenon will be likewise skewed.

A second line of criticism concerns the framing of sexual violence as a crime problem. A huge swath of research focuses on the criminal justice response to sexual violence including characteristics of victims, perpetrators, and assaults that correlate with reporting to the police; beliefs and attitudes of police officers, prosecutors, and jurors; and factors affecting the outcome of prosecutions. The goal of these studies is to increase recognition of sexual violence as a crime in order to increase rates of reporting, prosecution, and conviction. Although this research often finds fault with criminal justice procedures regarding sexual violence, the underlying assumption is that sexual violence is a problem that can (and should) be addressed by the criminal justice system, once that system has been reformed. This assumption justifies the continued concentration of research resources on the criminal justice system even though decades of research and reform change have failed to change criminal reporting or prosecution rates. This assumption also rules out other explanations for low rates of formal reporting, for example, that the type of help even a reformed criminal justice system can offer does not meet victims’ needs. Within this framework, it is not possible to ask whether criminal justice procedures are suited to managing sexual violence.

Empirical research that is not explicitly focused on the criminal justice system often operationalizes sexual violence as a crime; in other words, events are counted as episodes of sexual violence only if they meet the elements of the legal definition. For example, the feminist-run surveys mentioned earlier adopted a criminal operationalization. Although these researchers intended to challenge official prevalence statistics, by adopting a criminal operationalisation they conceded that events that count legally should be of central concern. Operationalizing sexual violence as a crime limits understanding of the phenomenon. For one thing, this operationalization excludes data related to non-criminal sexual harm, which is needed for a comprehensive understanding of the extent of sexual violence. But, beyond that, legal definitions of sexual violence categories are not consistent across place or time; the borders between criminal and non-criminal sexual violence are porous and shifting. Researchers often manage this uncertainty by using the narrowest legal definition of a sexual violence category. This approach ensures that the incidents of sexual violence studied count as crimes in all jurisdictions, at the expense of excluding incidents that count as crimes in some. Although these practical limitations should call into question the continued use of criminal operationalization, doing so is very difficult if we conceive of what is being measured as criminal sexual violence.

Criminal framing centers events that count legally and confirm the criminal justice system as the primary means for addressing sexual violence. The overall effect is that research on sexual violence is focused on a part of the phenomenon that may bear little resemblance to the whole. Whether or not sexual violence should be seen primarily as a crime problem, the persistently low uptake of legal remedies calls into doubt the value of directing so much research attention to the small proportion of those victimized who report formally.

A third, intersectional critique argues that research on sexual violence has both set aside a political analysis of gender and ignored other dimensions of difference. Second-wave feminists developed a structural analysis of sexual violence as both a manifestation of gender-based inequality and a mechanism for the maintenance of gender-based inequality. These insights were incorporated into research in the form of a focus on women and a commitment to gender universalism, the claim that sexual violence is an experience or form of oppression that all women have in common. But, the political dimension of the feminist analysis was largely ignored. For example, social scientific research usually conceptualizes “women” as a demographic group rather than as a social categorization that reflects inequalities in power. Although structural models of sexual violence are increasingly popular with researchers, these generally continue to conceptualize social categories as individual-level variables and make little reference to power or inequality.

The intersectional critique argues that these conceptual choices and theoretical commitments have had multiple effects on the inquiry into sexual violence. Conceptualizing women as an undifferentiated demographic group has directed attention away from differences in experiences and outcomes within this group and away from differences in power between women that might be explanatory. Furthermore, gender universalism identifies gender inequality as the structural cause of sexual violence. In consequence, connections between sexual violence and other forms of domination have been ignored, as have connections between some women’s experiences of sexual violence and those of other marginalized social categories. The overall effect is that the role of social categorizations other than gender in the production and outcomes of sexual violence has been neglected in mainstream discussion. Again, the claim is that these theoretical choices have distorted the understanding of the phenomenon.

Other questions have been raised, such as why some disciplines are overrepresented and others underrepresented in this field and the effect of medicalization and public health approaches. However, I turn now to the significance of these debates for philosophy.

Some of these critiques clearly apply to philosophical scholarship on sexual violence. Sexual violence has usually been theorized as a product of hierarchal gender relations, and much of this work has had a legal focus, both in the cases taken as paradigmatic and in its theoretical aims. On the other hand, these debates suggest novel questions for philosophical research on the topic. Rather than rejecting previous work, I suggest that these critiques should be taken as a call to expand our theorizing about sexual violence.

For example, there has been significant work on the epistemology of victim testimony mostly in legal or public settings. Research on sexual violence also relies heavily on victims’ testimony; most quantitative research is based on solicited disclosure by victims and qualitative work on victims’ reports of their experiences. But in this domain, unlike the cases usually studied, victims’ accounts of their experiences are taken as default true and uncontested. If the speech of some victims is silenced here too, then the mechanisms through which this occurs are distinct. A complete account of the epistemology of victim testimony should, therefore, include an analysis of these research practices as well as their connection to cultural and interpersonal practices. This could form the basis for a structural account of silencing.

Given the intertwining of the political and the epistemic, these debates should also lead to a reconsideration of the place of sexual violence in political philosophy. To the extent that political theorizing has engaged with sexual violence, it has been in terms of gender domination. If sexual violence is conceptualized instead as a mechanism for creating, maintaining, and reproducing social inequality, then it has claims to be included in theorizing about justice more generally. Clearly, significant philosophical work is needed to flesh out the details of this proposal.

The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender injustice, issues of gender injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Alida Liberman or the Associate Editor Elisabeth Paquette.

Sarah Brophy

Sarah Brophy is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stanford University, with interests in epistemology, political philosophy, and feminist philosophy. Her dissertation project examines the construction of knowledge of sexual violence.