Sexual Violence Against Women: Article Analysis

A lot of the articles that we read this week hit home, like many cisgender women, transwomen and people assigned female at birth I have been harassed and assaulted multiple times. When I was younger I thought that sexual violence against women was something that you should only really report if you were raped. Girls getting groped and messed with seemed normal as so many girls and older women explained that "boys mess with girls when they like them". In "Girls View Sexual Violence as Normal" I read similar experiences, to my own. Many 13 year olds interviewed in this article believed that, "men are unable to control their sexual desires" (Hlavak, 2014:1) this just shows that young girls are being socialized to believe that essentialism makes
women less sexual than men and that it is therefore acceptable for young boys to touch girls inappropriately because they are born more sexual than women. I can also identify with not wanting to make things a "big deal" (Hlavak, 2014:1) when I was younger, like many of the girls interviewed. We are taught that brutal rape is a big deal, but we still try to find ways to make the reality of the situation easier for us, and in doing so easier for those that assault us.

In Hlavak's article, Normalizing Sexual Violence: Young Women Account for Harassment and Abuse we learn that some young girls take their experiences into their intimate relationships.
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) provided data that showed that 20 percent of girls experience physical and sexual violence from dating partners (Silverman et al. 2001), and sexual assault accounts for one-third of preteen victimization (Finkelhor and Ormrod 2000). There were also findings that young girls experience violence everyday, "...girls are harassed at parties, in school, on the playground, on buses, and in cars" (Hlavak, 2014:344). With sexual harassment and assault occurring so often, it is understandable how young girls can come to believe that their peers behavior is acceptable. It shows that our society has issues with the sexual-objectification of women, double-standards, and with using essentialism as an excuse for the sexual violence against women. Women are still being placed into the role of the victim and are being
blamed.

In "Intimate Partner Violence" I was glad to read more about males who are sexually assaulted. Women are so often painted as weak and more vulnerable to sexual violence than men that are society seems to forget that men and young boys also endure sexual violence. There is great stigma around heterosexual men being assaulted by homosexual men and a lack of belief that women can sexually assault men. Men have to deal with stigma that connects to masculinity and strength if they are assaulted by a female. Our culture is also not very open to the belief that a man can be raped like a woman can (Dr.S, 2015:2). Our society has not only made sexual violence an issue for female victims but for victims in general.

I think that the only way to stop this is by educating ourselves.
Parents should teach their children to have respect for one another and to speak up when touched inappropriately. We should also teach them what it means to be touched inappropriately. We should teach children how to defend themselves and not to be ashamed. In terms of heterosexual violence against women, men can practice begin more aware and educating themselves on rape culture, physical and emotional violence, and their overall privilege as men. They can stand up for women that are in violence situations rather than be a bystander and lastly ask themselves, "how can I change my own thinking about how women are treated". For sexual assault against men we need to start showing more of it and explaining that men can be raped victims too. We need the media to stop portraying male rape victims that were raped by other men. We also need for them to stop painting rape victims as vulnerable, but instead as
survivors.