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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Feminist Perspectives
- Sprache: Englisch
Women's awareness of the threat and reality of sexual violence is now perhaps more than ever publicly acknowledged. Yet this fact continues to be almost wholly ignored. This new study, based on in-depth interviews with 60 women, is the first to cover the experience of a range of forms of sexual violence over women's lifetimes. Drawing on feminist theory, developing a critique of male research and quoting extensively from the women interviewed, it developes feminist thought in several key areas: the similarities and differences between forms of sexual violence; the ways women define their experiences; and the strategies women use in resisting, coping with and surviving sexual violence. The author stresses the importance for all women of recognizing the incidents of sexual violence in their lives and seeing themselves and other women as survivors rather than victims. In highlighting the ways in which the media, the criminal justice system and even the "helping" profess ions contribute to the trivialization of sexual violence, she demonstrates the necessity of women organizing collectively to end this suffering.
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Seitenzahl: 519
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Copyright © Liz Kelly 1988
First published 1988 by Polity Pressin association with Basil Blackwell.
Editorial Office: Polity Press, Dales Brewery, Gwydir Street, Cambridge CB1 2LJ, UK
Basil Blackwell Ltd 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kelly, Liz
Surviving sexual violence.——(Feminist perspectives).
1. England. Sex offences
I. Title II. Series
364.1’53’0942
ISBN: 978-0-7456-6743-0 (Multi-user ebook)
Typeset in 10½ on 12pt Plantin by Cambrian Typesetters
Printed and bound in Great Britain byMarston Lindsay Ross International Ltd,Oxfordshire
Acknowledgements
Guide to transcription of interviews
Introduction
1 ‘Sharing a particular pain’: researching sexual violence
2 A central issue: sexual violence and feminist theory
3 The knowledge explosion: an overview of previous research
4 ‘It’s happened to so many women’: sexual violence as a continuum (1)
5 ‘It’s everywhere’: sexual violence as a continuum (2)
6 ‘I’m not sure what to call it but …’: defining sexual violence
7 Victims or survivors?: resistance, coping and survival
8 ‘It leaves a mark’: coping with the consequences of sexual violence
9 ‘I’ll challenge it now wherever I see it’: from individual survival to collective resistance
Notes
Select bibliography
Index
Whilst ‘breaking the silence’ has become a feminist cliché in the past few years, it encapsulates an important fact. Feminism has provided a context in which many women, throughout the world, have been enabled to name their experiences of violence and abuse and to speak openly about them. This book was made possible by 60 women who chose to be part of this process. It is dedicated to them and all survivors of sexual violence.
As with any book and/or research project, there are many others to whom I am in debt for their support, advice and critical comments. I thank all of the following for their particular contributions: Catriona Blake, Louise Dunne, Annabel Farraday, Sophie Laws, Su Kappeler, Emma Kelly, Mick Kelly, Mary Macintosh, George Okey, Kathy Parker, Jill Radford, Isobel Ros-Lopez, Penny Snelling, Betsy Stanko, Michelle Stanworth, Marga Suvaal, my local refuge support group, the British Sociological Association working group for women doing research on sexual violence, the Incest Survivors Campaign, the Rape in Marriage Campaign, and the Trouble and Strife Collective.
Whilst transcribing the taped interviews on which this book is based I became aware of problems involved in transposing the spoken to the written word. Meaning in the spoken word is often conveyed through gesture, tone of voice and emotional expression. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to this issue in the research literature; the methods used in linguistics and conversational analysis are far too detailed for a number of in-depth interviews (in this case over 160 hours of tape). In order to retain some of the meaning that is lost in transcription, I developed a method for coding tone of voice and emotional expression. This guide explains aspects of this transcription coding which appear in the quotations from interviews:
A dash (—) indicates a jump; the spoken word is seldom as coherent as the written.
Three dots (…) indicate a passage of speech has been deleted.
Six dots (……) indicate a long pause.
Italics indicate that the word or words were stressed.
Emotional expression is recorded in brackets after the passage of speech it refers to: for example (angry), (ironic), (upset).
As I was thinking about the introduction to this book, two statements on the radio drew my attention. A woman speaker at the 1986 British Trade Union Congress urged trade unionists to take the ‘epidemic’ of cervical cancer seriously. In a commentary on international terrorism a male reporter stated that something must be done ‘about the plague of violence that threatens our basic human rights’. When the incidence of cervical cancer is defined as an ‘epidemic’, what word could adequately reflect the vastly greater incidence of sexual violence in the lives of British women? When the impact of international terrorism is represented as a threat to basic human rights, what words could illuminate the fact that it is domestic terrorism which more directly threatens countless women’s lives across the globe?
These examples do not simply illustrate the power of rhetorical speech. They highlight a deeper, more fundamental point: that it is only in relation to certain issues that such forms of argument are considered to be justified. When radical feminists point to the appalling incidence of sexual violence we are seen by many as hysterical and, even by other feminists, as placing too much emphasis on women’s victimization. Most men and many women do not want to acknowledge the extent of sexual violence in, and its impact on, women’s lives. It is still illegitimate for us to refer to it as being of ‘epidemic’ proportions, threatening women’s ‘basic human rights’. Yet a cursory reading of the UN Declaration on Human Rights in the light of recent feminist studies of the prevalence and impact of sexual violence highlights how many of these ‘basic human rights’ are still to be secured for women.
Surviving Sexual Violence is part of a growing body of feminist scholarship, primarily undertaken in but not restricted to first world liberal democracies, which documents the extent to which women’s and girls’ rights to life and liberty are threatened daily. That such a fundamental assumption of liberal democracy is tenuous for the majority of the population yet not a major source of concern, suggests that there are vested interests at stake here – men’s interests.
During the six months I was writing this book, a number of instances, or consequences of, sexual violence occurred to women in my social network: for example, an incest survivor attempted suicide twice in a week after a BBC Television Childwatch programme triggered her memories; a woman’s life was temporarily devastated when her ex-husband raped her; two women were attacked near to their homes; a student’s sense of safety was so undermined by a peeping tom that she left college; an incest survivor discovered her son’s girlfriend was being abused; during ‘rag’ week, a woman teacher was pinned to the ground by several young men in masks and then photographed; three women were beaten up by their husbands/male lovers and, in just one week, in the refuge for battered women I work in one woman had a miscarriage and another her leg amputated as direct consequences of the violence they had experienced.
Despite feminist campaigns and actions in many countries which have, to a greater or lesser extent, made sexual violence a public issue, the prevalence and impact of sexual violence in women’s lives is still not publicly acknowledged. In this context it is vital that the extent and range of sexual violence continues to be documented. Limiting our work to this, however, can result in women being seen as ‘inevitable victims’. This book also records the other side of women’s experiences: our resistance and strength in coping with and surviving abuse. Any woman who has gone through this process (and any woman who has supported another woman through the pain and despairing moments) will recognize the connection between victimization and survival. This book attempts to validate that knowledge and make some of it accessible to those without it.
Surviving Sexual Violence is based on a feminist sociological research project and has two basic aims: to present the ‘findings’ of the study; and to validate and give voice to women’s experience and understanding.
There are points at which these two aims sit uneasily with each other, where to present the ‘data’ I have chosen to use figures and tables. I hope that overall the book can serve several purposes for different audiences. It is a record of doing feminist social research; it presents detailed findings about the prevalence of sexual violence in the lives of 60 women; and it makes the voices of these women central to chapters 4 to 9.
Chapter 1 documents the process of conducting the research in the context of a broader discussion of what constitutes feminist research. Chapter 2 explores feminist theory which attempts to account for the link between men’s interests and the abuse of women and offers some reflections on how to define sexual violence and on several contemporary debates. Chapter 3 presents a critical overview of the recent dramatic increase in social science research on rape, incest and sexual abuse and domestic violence. Chapters 4 and 5 build on some of the insights in feminist theory and suggest looking at sexual violence as a continuum, both in relation to extent of sexual violence and the range of men’s behaviour that women experience as abusive. Chapter 6 highlights how it is in men’s interest to deny this range and limit definitions of sexual violence, thus making defining one’s own abuse a difficult and complex process for women. Chapters 7 and 8 document the side of women’s and girls’ experiences of sexual violence that is usually ignored – the extent of resistance during assault(s) and the variety of coping strategies used in coming to terms with the consequences of sexual violence. Chapter 9 reflects on how individual survival might be transformed into collective resistance in order to end sexual violence in the lives of women and girls.
Which parts of the book an individual reader reads, and the order in which they read them, will depend on their own needs and concerns.
‘It’s only since getting a bit closer that I found out that one way and another it’s happened to most women. Something similar, be it with their lovers, their husbands or whoever, has happened to them.’
‘Because this society sanctions it, so long as it’s alright to slag off women, to joke about women, there’s always going to be the other end of the spectrum, where actual violence starts …… and ends.’
‘I felt more resentment about sex roles and the day in day out, as I see it, degradation of women. That’s affected me more than the violence. But the violence has been part of it too. It has erupted through my rebellion against all the suppositions about women.’
These three quotations from the interviews on which this book is based encapsulate the three core themes that run through it: that most women have experienced sexual violence in their lives; that there is a range of male behaviour that women experience as abusive; and that sexual violence occurs in the context of men’s power and women’s resistance.
The issue of violence against women has been an important focus for feminist theory and action in the current wave of feminism. The first rape crisis line was established in the USA in 1971 and the first refuge for battered women opened in England in 1972. Thousands of projects and groups now exist world-wide, offering safety, support and advice to women who have been abused. Campaigning and supportive work has also been undertaken around the issues of incest, child sexual abuse, pornography, prostitution and sexual harassment. Women in or from particular countries have also focused on forms of sexual violence specific to their culture.1 Globally, the amount of work, often unpaid, undertaken by feminists around this issue is incalculable.
Getting and staying involved
In 1973, after five months in a Women’s Liberation Group, I joined a group which aimed to set up a refuge for battered women. I did not consciously choose to work on the issue of violence. I simply wanted to ‘do something’. I became one of the founder members of the refuge group in my home town and, to the amazement of some (though not me), I am still an active member. Whilst in the subsequent fourteen years the group and I have changed enormously, it was there that I gained self-confidence, skills and an understanding of sexual violence and it is still the base for my feminist work and politics.
It was through supporting women in crisis, discussing theory and practice with other activists and comparing what I knew with what I read that the ideas informing the study on which this book is based arose. I noticed how many women had experienced more than one form of sexual violence yet these forms were separated from one another in feminist service provision, campaigning and research. This separation in practice contrasted sharply with the theoretical discussions of ‘violence against women’. During the 1980s, a number of other studies have been published which address one or more of these issues,2 but, at the time I began, most published work focused either on a specific form of sexual violence or on theoretical issues which assumed, rather than discussed, the links between forms of sexual violence. Experiences were seldom placed in the context of women’s lives and, at that time, there was very little information or discussion about either incest and child sexual abuse or the long-term impact of sexual violence. I started the research project, therefore, with three main aims: to talk to a wide range of women about all the forms of sexual violence they had experienced; to explore how the various forms of violence were connected; and to investigate the long-term impact of sexual violence on women.
Throughout the research and the writing of this book I have remained involved in both my local refuge group and several national campaigning groups. I was not involved in these groups because I was doing research and I did not ‘use’ them as sources of data. Involvement did, however, contribute in very direct ways as there was a continual exchange of information, ideas and support. Within the literature on research methods there is no term which covers this form of contribution, perhaps best described as ‘active participation’. There is equally no term to cover the fact that I have talked to at least as many women again informally about their experiences of sexual violence as the 60 I interviewed. Whilst I kept no records of these conversations, I made mental notes if new insights emerged. As most women were interested in the research, I was able to discuss my current ideas and receive valuable comment and feedback.
But what is feminist research?
Feminists have, since the early 1970s, criticized a range of academic disciplines for being gender blind.3 As more feminists undertook research, increasing attention was paid to how research was done and the term ‘feminist methodology’ appeared within sociology. Being a feminist sociologist means that my discussion of research practice refers directly to my own discipline but many of the points I want to make apply across disciplinary boundaries. Part of my criticism of the discussion within sociology is that it ignores feminist research in other areas.
For a considerable period of time, I accepted, almost without question, that there was a feminist methodology, which drew on the practice of consciousness raising in stressing the importance of women’s experience. Sophie Laws notes that within much of the sociological literature feminist research has been defined in terms of interviewing women. She suggests that this is in part due to a simplification of the original intention of consciousness raising.
The original purpose of consciousness raising, where women speak about their own experiences to other women, was to discover what women have in common, in order to produce theory about women’s oppression. Now this last stage seems to have been forgotten and women speaking, whatever it is about and whatever they say, is seen as A Good Thing.4
She argues that much of the recent discussion of feminist methodology is linked to this interpretation and that, in a wider context, the focus on individual emotional release has become the most important function of consciousness-raising (perhaps accounting for the recent growth of self-help groups and feminist therapy).
This challenging interpretation led me to reconsider my perspective on feminist research and to see how limited the discussion of method had become. Rather then define certain methods as feminist, Laws asserts that what distinguishes feminist research is the theoretical framework underlying it. She suggests a minimal definition of feminism as ‘a belief that women are oppressed and a commitment to end that oppression’.5 For research to be feminist it must be predicated on both the theoretical premise and the practical commitment: its purpose being to understand women’s oppression in order to change it. Feminism is, therefore, both a mode of understanding and a call to action.
Research is not feminist simply because it is about women and, equally, feminist research need not have individual women as its subjects. This definition allows for the fact that there is more than one theory explaining women’s oppression and that a variety of research methods and sources of data can be, and are, used in feminist research. A major point of Laws’ analysis is to reassert the importance of theory, partly in response to the prioritizing of experience by writers such as Liz Stanley and Sue Wise.6
A further limitation of the prioritization of experience is raised by Hester Eisenstein.7 If women are to use only their own experience, or that of women similar to them, as the basis of their feminist politics and research practice, how are we to understand and take account of the differences between women? Prioritizing experience at the expense of reflection and theory can lead to a ‘politics of identity’. In her attempt to make feminist theory inclusive of Black women’s experience, bell hooks suggests that the ability to see and describe one’s own reality ‘is a significant step, but only a beginning’.8
Whilst accepting these critiques of the ‘politics of experience’ there is still a sense in which one’s experience is fundamental to feminist research. Feminist researchers are themselves women and they are, therefore, located within the group whose oppression they seek to document, understand and change. This locating of oneself within the group one is studying is not the same as Howard Becker’s suggestion that sociologists take the side of the ‘underdog’.9 Feminist researchers do not have the privilege of choice; they are themselves within the underdog category. Angela McRobbie draws out one of the implications of this: ‘Feminism forces us to locate our own autobiographies and our experience inside the questions we might ask’.10 Feminists doing research both draw on, and are constantly reminded of, their own experience of ‘the concrete practical and everyday experience of being, and being treated as, a woman’.11 This does not mean, however, that it is only our experience, or the experiences of other women, which will be reflected in research; at least one feminist has suggested that we should study men.12 Moreover, it is crucial that we explore the specific nature of our own experience, and that of the women who might be part of our study, in order to understand how it might differ from other women’s.
Helen Roberts uses the sociological concept of ‘reflexivity’ to describe the process through which feminist researchers locate themselves within their work. Unlike non-feminists, we do not choose reflexivity as one research practice amongst many; it is integral to a feminist approach to research. Roberts notes that in being honest about this we
expose [ourselves] to challenges of lack of objectivity from those of [our] male colleagues whose ideological insight does not enable them to see that their own work is effected in similar ways by their experience of the world as men.13
The debate within sociology as to the discipline’s status as a science, and the role of objectivity and values within this, has a long and complex history. The feminist critique of the construction of knowledge within a patriarchal framework has raised yet further questions.14 To question the usefulness and, indeed, possibility of objectivity does not mean that feminist researchers reject any principles for ensuring that their work contains honest and accurate accounts. Barbara Du Bois, for example, maintains that feminist research should be: ‘passionate scholarship … [which] demands rigour, precision and responsibility to the highest degree’.15
This discussion suggests that, whilst there are grounds for defining research as feminist, there is not, as yet, a distinctive ‘feminist methodology’. Many of the methods used by feminist researchers are not original. What is new are the questions we have asked, the way we locate ourselves within our questions, and the purpose of our work. Given the short history of feminist research, perhaps we should shift our attention from discussions of ‘feminist methods’ to what I now call ‘feminist research practice’.
One of the crucial distinctions between feminism and other theoretical perspectives is that its theory and practice are not specific to academia or designed with research in mind. Feminist researchers hold beliefs and principles of practice in common with many more outside the research community than within it.
One of the basic principles of feminist practice has been to challenge relationships based on power and control. An important aspect of this has been a commitment to the conscious sharing of knowledge and skills. This clearly has implications for research where power, knowledge and skills are not shared equally between researcher and researched. Liz Stanley and Sue Wise in chapter 6 of Breaking Out argue that research inevitably involves power relationships, if only because the end result is filtered through the consciousness of the researcher. More importantly for them, it is impossible to truly understand another’s experience.16 The contradictions that this raises for feminist research leads them to suggest that, not only must feminist researchers locate themselves within the research question, but that the only research practice that truly reflects feminist principles is a form of ethnomethodology which draws primarily on the researcher’s own experience. Unfortunately, this leads us back to the problems associated with the prioritizing of personal experience noted earlier. It also invalidates much of the feminist research published to date! In fact, Stanley and Wise’s shift in their analysis of their own experience of obscene phone calls does not rely solely on the experience itself but directly reflects shifts in feminist analysis of sexual violence: from stressing victimization to including women’s resistance.17
They are, however, correct in highlighting the fact that issues of power and control are problematic for feminist researchers. One group of feminist researchers has published a detailed and honest account of the complexity of power sharing in research.18 They contrast the ease of changing interview practice with the difficulties of opening out analysis and writing. Whilst they tried to find ways of sharing these later stages of the project, many of the women who participated did not share the researchers’ politics.
Whether or not to confront groups or individuals with interpretations of their lives which are radically different from their own is an ethical question faced by anyone attempting critical social research. This is particularly true when the researcher’s interpretation is not only different but potentially threatening and disruptive to the subject’s world view.19
Furthermore, their decision to reflect the range and complexity of women’s experiences, by including life-histories and extended quotes, was questioned by many of the participants who urged them to include more analysis: ‘They were hesitant about being negative, but were clearly critical. What they wanted, they said, was more of our sociological analysis. They wanted us, the researchers, to interpret their experience to them.’20
Other honest accounts of the problems encountered by feminists in attempting to democratize research practice have been published recently.21 Hilary Barker, in her discussion of feminist community work, suggests that we are in danger of creating a ‘false-equality trap’ whereby feminists deny their own possession of knowledge and skills in order to minimize differences between women. Rather than a sharing of power this is, in fact, a denial of its existence.
The majority of feminist discussions of method, to date, have been limited to discussions of how to change interviewing techniques. We have yet to explore in as much depth other research methods and the possibility of changing how we analyse and document our research findings. Drawing on the traditions of action research, particularly the practice of researchers in the Third World, might provide some new insights.22
The issues are, however, even more complicated than this. The position of, and options available to, feminist researchers vary according to their choice of research topic and methods and, perhaps most importantly, research subjects. The issues of power and control are different in a study of women in a local community compared to one focusing on male professionals. There are further, and different, sets of questions where research is based on analysis of texts or statistical data sets.
Feminist research is relatively new. Rather than foreclosing development through limited definitions of ‘feminist methodology’,
we should be exploring a range of approaches and encouraging honest accounts of the problems of translating feminist group practice into feminist research practice.
How the research was conducted – feminist research practice
To record truthfully and fully the history of a research project would require a book in itself! Most accounts appear in appendices and are reconstructed and sanitized descriptions of the research methodology; the problems, doubts, changes of direction that beset all research are censored out. This has been referred to as ‘hygienic’ research or ‘the chronological lie’.23 Nevertheless, some honest accounts have appeared in volumes which deal with the ‘reality’ of sociological research practice.24 The discussion of the methodology of this project will be presented in the context of a description of my feminist research practice.
The first stage of this project involved the construction of an interview guide and four pilot interviews. Two decisions I made at this point had major impacts on the project methodology. First, I decided to do the pilot interviews with friends and meet a second time to discuss the interview style and content. Second, I decided to discuss the redrafted interview guide, revised following the pilot interviews, with both academic colleagues and friends. The women who did the pilot interviews felt that hearing their own tape gave them time to reflect on and add to what they had said and this resulted in the decision to return a transcript of the interview to each woman and to do follow-up interviews with them. The discussions on the revised interview guide resulted in the inclusion of a final section which focused on the future rather than the past. This meant that potentially distressing interviews could end on a positive, forward-looking note. It was the cooperative framework in which the pilot interviews and discussions took place which resulted in these crucial methodological developments.
The final draft of the interview guide began with reflections on childhood and moved through adolescence to adulthood. Questions about a range of possible experiences of sexual violence were thus placed in context of women’s lives. The wording and placement of questions about sexual violence was carefully chosen in order not to presume shared definitions. For example, a question on whether women had ever felt pressured to have sex came much earlier in the interview than the question about ever having been raped. This both encouraged disclosure of incidents that women found difficult to define and made possible the analysis of definitions in chapter 6. More detailed questions, cross-referenced as far as possible, covered experiences of rape, incest and domestic violence.
The majority of research on sexual violence has used convenience samples of women drawn mainly from medical or social service caseloads or crisis centres. In some way, therefore, the abuse has been made public. Given that one of the research aims was to reach women whose experiences had not been made public, and that to study the long-term impact of sexual violence required at least a one-year gap between the assault and the interview, these potential sources were rejected. As the interviews were to be detailed and potentially distressing, I felt it was important that women choose to participate. A voluntary sample was, therefore, decided upon. I began using the methods recommended in textbooks; letters and notices in newspapers and magazines. Whilst there was some response, it was not likely to produce the sample of 60 set for the study. Women had approached me at talks I gave on a variety of topics expressing interest in the research. I, therefore, adapted this to research needs and visited as wide a range of women’s groups as possible (for example, community mother and toddler and return to work groups, women’s studies groups, nursing and social work training groups). I also adapted a strategy used by several US researchers: a notice with tear off strips which were placed in a community bookshop and a health fair organized by the Community Health Council.25 Pauline Bart calls this a ‘multi-varied approach to purposive sampling’.26
The majority of volunteers came as a result of the talks I gave. As one of the effects of sexual violence is decreased trust, it is not surprising that women are wary of volunteering to take part in a project about which they know very little. Several sociologists have stressed the importance of establishing and maintaining trust in sociological research.27 Face to face contact with the researcher offers the interviewee the possibility of an initial assessment of the researcher’s ‘trustworthiness’. This was confirmed when several women revealed, during follow-up interviews, how they had tested me out before agreeing to be interviewed. ‘I’m reluctant to talk to people about it … It was several weeks before I decided to approach you. I thought I’d sum you up first’ (laughs).
All women expressing an interest in the research were sent a letter explaining the aims of the project and what participation would involve, a return letter to arrange the first interview or state their reasons for not participating, and an information sheet on support services. By far the majority of those who expressed interest were interviewed. There were, however, some practical problems getting back in touch with some of the young women from pre-nursing training and several women from one of the return-to-work groups withdrew. I was later informed by the tutor of the latter group that those women who had told male partners about the prospective interview had been ‘persuaded’ not to participate.
Before I began interviewing, I had devised a sampling system which involved interviewing four groups of 15 women: 15 with self-declared experiences of rape, incest and domestic violence (45 in all) and a comparison group of 15 women who did not have to have experienced sexual violence in order to participate. The possibility of a control group which could only include women without experiences of sexual violence was rejected for two reasons. First, one aim of the project was to investigate the range of women’s experiences. Second, the absence of experiences could only be assessed by actually doing an interview. Several recent studies have highlighted the problematic status of control groups.28
After ten interviews, I became more concerned to document the range of sexual violence women experienced and more aware of the fact that women may not necessarily define incidents of sexual violence as rape, incest or domestic violence. The sample was, therefore, reassessed. The self-declared groups were reduced to 10 in each and the comparison group increased to 30. The 60 interviews were coded according to whether the woman had volunteered on the basis of having experienced rape, domestic violence or incest (three groups of 10 women) and, in the case of the comparison group, whether or not they had, during the interviews, discussed an experience which they defined as rape, incest or domestic violence (two groups of 15). Where tables are presented they reflect this coding: the thirty women in the self-declared groups appear in columns headed R (rape), I (incest), DV (domestic violence) and the thirty women in the comparison group are split between C1 (women who did define an incident as rape, incest or domestic violence) and C2 (women who did not).
Whilst this sample is limited by the fact that it is self-selected, there was a considerable range within those interviewed with regard to age, class of origin, marital status, work experience and sexual identity. There are, however, two important qualifications to its representativeness. Most importantly, by far the majority of women interviewed were white British. Two women of mixed race and two white immigrants were interviewed. The areas in which the interviews were done have very small ethnic minority communities. I spent considerable time wondering whether I should deliberately seek Black women participants outside these geographic areas. For a number of reasons, some of which I would now reconsider, I decided against doing this. In order to take account of the issue of race I have taken care to search out research where race has been addressed and I have read the work of Black women on feminist theory and sexual violence. The second qualification is that a larger percentage of the sample than the population in general had had some kind of further education.
My interviewing style reflects that used by other feminist researchers; a rejection of the ‘objective’ aloofness and the refusal to enter into dialogue.29 It is difficult for me to envisage being detached when I remember how shaken many women were during or after the interviews. Many commented that they had never talked through their experiences in such depth before and on a number of occasions interviews had to be stopped because women were visibly distressed (all chose to complete the interview). I often spent as much time talking with women informally as in recording the interviews. These conversations ranged from specific requests for information, to reflections on aspects of the interview, to discussions of preliminary research findings.
Interviewing and transcribing the tapes was much more time-consuming and emotionally draining than I had anticipated. I had little idea of how complicated and frustrating these activities could be. For example, several interviews were done with young children in the room, all of whom insisted on playing with or shouting into the microphone, and several women had speech patterns which meant parts of sentences were inaudible.
Interviewing is a skill. My skill developed over time as I sensed where to ask a further question, when to just listen, and where to leave space for women to think. It is not just talking, although a good interview may feel like a stimulating conversation. It involves the interviewer being aware of a number of things at the same time and juggling priorities. After transcribing several tapes I became aware of how problematic it is to directly transpose the spoken to the written word. Mishearing one word can change the meaning of a whole passage of speech, and meaning in the spoken word is often conveyed by tone of voice and gesture. Several women also commented on this when discussing reading their transcript. In order to retain as much of this meaning as possible I developed a method for coding expression and tone of voice (see the Guide to transcription of interviews on p. vii above). Whilst transcribing I also noted any questions or points that required clarification on a follow-up sheet and wrote any more general insights or questions on file cards.
When copies of the transcript were sent to women, a note was included asking them to note any corrections, qualifications or additions they wanted to make. Follow-up interviews were done with 47 women. Each of these interviews began with a series of questions about participation in the project, reactions to reading the transcript, whether or not there were any changes women wanted to make and whether or not they had remembered anything in the intervening time. Questions specific to each woman’s first interview followed.
Almost 75 per cent of the women had remembered additional incidents of sexual violence, or aspects of incidents they had discussed, between the original interview and the follow-up. Several women made detailed comments and revisions on the original transcript; one woman sent me her transcript 18 months later and added important information which she had not trusted me with at either of our two formal meetings. No one felt the interview had been a negative experience; 85 per cent described it in very positive terms and felt that they had learnt things through their participation. A number of women stated explicitly that they valued having the transcript, both as a record of the past and a marker for the future.
‘Actually I’m quite surprised, I’ve found it really helpful. I can’t think about it so talking is the only way of admitting it ever happened … I have never talked in that concentrated way before … I think I like myself a lot more, I feel quite brave really.’
‘I felt a lot better after I’d talked about it because it’s been a lot of years and I’ve never really talked openly about it to anyone.’
It is in the style of interviewing, the return of the transcripts, and the content of the follow-up interviews that my feminist research practice is reflected. The return of the transcripts meant that the women who participated controlled the content of their interview. Follow-up interviews allowed what Shulamith Reinharz calls ‘joint interpretation of meaning’ to take place,30 and I was able to assess the impact of the research on women. The value of these aspects of research practice were evident in the importance women placed on seeing their experiences written down. It enabled recognition of their strength in survival and a documenting of the positive changes they had made in their lives.
It was during our second meeting that many women asked questions about whether their experiences were ‘typical’ and asked me to describe the most important things emerging from the research. This enabled discussion of the themes and analysis I was developing. I did not assume that women would want to take part in this process, but the interest in it suggests that there may be ways of making this a more formal part of research methodology. One possibility I would now consider is a third meeting in which the researcher discusses with small groups of participants preliminary findings and analysis.
I should note that for several of the women who had never talked through their experiences with anyone before, participation in the research raised difficult issues and I felt I had a responsibility to offer what support I could. I put four women in touch with each other on the basis of their similar experiences and three women went on to join a local self-help support group. A number of women stayed in touch with me for some time after their interviews were completed. They phoned or wrote letters, either telling me that a problem we had discussed was now resolved or wanting to discuss some recent event. While I always felt touched by the trust these responses demonstrated, there were times when I also felt overwhelmed by the emotional demands. I was constantly aware of how important my grassroots feminist involvement prior to the research had been. It had prepared me, in part, for the fact that some women might need support after doing the interviews and provided me with knowledge of, for example, the law and housing that I was able to pass on.
Analysing the transcripts was a lengthy and laborious process. I rejected the traditional method of cutting up copies and filing them thematically very quickly as answers to questions often contained passages relevant to several themes. I developed a system of numerically coding answers which meant that the basic information in all the interviews was condensed and available in a relatively accessible form. As there were no pre-set categories and responses to code from, each interview was analysed twice so that categories which emerged from later transcripts could be checked against those analysed earlier. By using coloured highlighter pens, it was relatively easy to distinguish the sub-samples from one another on charts which included all 60 women’s responses. From this process I built up less complex summary tables. For example, each specific incident of sexual violence women recalled was written down and this formed the basis of the life-cycle chart which appears in chapter 4. Throughout the analysis I respected women’s own definitions of their experiences. This resulted in the use of two new categories ‘pressurized sex’ and ‘coercive sex’ and the development of the concept of ‘the continuum’ (see chapters 4 and 5). By the time I ran through the transcripts to check the coding I had decided on the basic themes I wanted to focus on, all direct quotations which related to these themes were written on file cards.
By this point, I had heard each tape twice, read each transcript at least four times, and the information extracted from them had been recorded in a number of different ways. Writing up the project involved using the file cards containing ideas and quotes in conjunction with the numerically coded tables. The concepts used and the themes I have chosen to focus on emerged from and are grounded in the experiences of the women interviewed.
Reflexive experiential analysis
I have already noted the importance for feminist researchers of locating themselves within their research questions. Shulamith Reinharz has documented her journey through a variety of sociological methods to what she calls ‘experiential analysis’.31 She argues that rather than ignoring our own feelings, responses and experience, we should focus on these human responses as they are precisely what enables us to understand social reality. This chapter ends, therefore, with some selected examples of the impact of doing the research on me, and how paying attention to my own experience resulted in important shifts in understanding.32
Vulnerability
I began the project by reading extensively. Very soon I felt overwhelmed by an awareness of male violence. Many research methods texts recommend this ‘immersion’ in the topic but they seldom reflect on the impact this might have on the researcher. I became more conscious of how surrounded women are by images, comments, jokes and real events connected to sexual violence. It became impossible to watch television, read a newspaper, go out to the cinema or a pub, travel, walk alone or even at times have a conversation without being reminded of this in some way. I began to notice instances of sexual violence in books and films that I had previously enjoyed.
I became increasingly concerned about my own safety. For the first time in years I felt scared walking alone at night. I resisted this fear, told myself that it was irrational, that I was no more at risk than six months previously, that everything I knew about male violence told me that women had more to fear from men they knew in their own homes than from strangers. As I began interviewing I was more directly reminded of the threat and reality of sexual violence. This was the period when extensive media attention was given to the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders and several rape cases. When I visited Leeds, I sensed an atmosphere of fear amongst women. Jalna Hanmer’s and Sheila Saunders’ Leeds study found that during this period 83 per cent of women restricted their movements (18 per cent were already not going out alone, or at all, at night).33 This increased awareness of how strong the fear of attack can be and what enormous effects this can have on women’s freedom was a product of all these factors. All women develop coping strategies in order to live with their level of fear, but these are tenuous – changed for women in Leeds by the actions of one man (aided and abetted by the police and media), for me by doing research.
As I listened to women’s descriptions of incidents of sexual violence, many of which occurred in the context of their having challenged men, my fear focused on a particular man with whom I had had several political confrontations in the past and who had explicitly threatened me once at a party. Coincidentally, he seemed to appear regularly in places where I was. I occasionally felt I was a character in a thriller and that he knew where I would be. I understood then that the threat of violence is certainly not limited to unknown men in the public sphere but is present in explicit or complex and subtle ways in many of the interactions women have with men.
The impact of the threat of violence was ‘brought home’ in another way much later in the project. The ex-husband of a woman who had contacted the local refuge group got access to my home phone number and address. He harassed me for over a month and during one phone conversation threatened to kill me. The response of the police to this was, to say the least, unhelpful. I was angry at how easily my sense of safety in my own home could be undermined. He knew where I lived, knew my phone number, possibly even what I looked like and what my movements were. All I had was his name, and the knowledge that the local police felt his desire to find his ex-wife was more important than his threat to my life. I understood how threatening and disturbing so called ‘nuisance calls’ are and how women living in violent relationships have to cut off from the violence in order to survive as I shifted from feeling scared and vulnerable to refusing to think about about might happen, as it restricted my life too much.
The cumulative impact of all these experiences resulted in the realization that the constant threat of violence in a woman’s life could result in extreme emotional distress which was unlikely to be recognized by any professionals from whom she might seek support. I often felt my fear would have been defined by many as paranoid and irrational, and, in fact, at times I attempted to convince myself that this was the case.
One aspect of the issue of vulnerability was specific to my daughter, then ten. As I read more about incest and child sexual abuse I became increasingly distrustful of all men. Accepting that my suggestion that most women experience sexual violence in their lifetime also applied to her and her friends, another generation of women, distressed me and I became concerned to protect her from what seemed, at that point, almost an inevitability. The comments from women about the warnings they had been given in childhood and how confusing these were meant that I tried to discuss carefully and honestly with her what abuse was, that men she knew might try to abuse her trust, and that if anything did happen she should tell me.
Whilst working through these personal issues and trying to come to terms with the literature on child sexual abuse, I saw how easy it is for men to choose to define children’s openness and affection as sexual. How easy it is to abuse children’s trust that adults know what is right. Adults, particularly adult men who assume the right to discipline children in violent and/or humiliating ways, have enormous power over them. I understood how this power is reproduced through the denial of children’s rights, to knowledge, autonomy and choice.
Remembering
Whilst interviewing and transcribing, buried memories of my own emerged: I remembered five separate incidents of assault or harassment from my childhood and adolescence. The fact that this also happened to a woman who transcribed several interviews, and to many women when they read their own transcripts, resulted in my paying attention to how common the forgetting of painful or confusing experiences is.
The experiences I remembered from childhood were all ones which I did not understand or was confused by at the time. I identified with the women I interviewed when they talked about not having the words to tell anyone, or even understand, what was happening. This in turn led me to explore, in much more detail than I would have done otherwise, the process of defining sexual violence (see chapter 6). I realized the power of naming, and why much of the work done by feminists around violence against women has been to name and redefine forms of violence.
Personal relationships
I had anticipated that listening to women’s experiences of sexual violence would affect me emotionally. I did not expect to be affected by the discussions of childhood and family relationships that began each interview. My reactions were certainly linked to my personal history; I grew up in a Catholic, working-class, extended family; my mother died when I was 12.
Coming to discussions of mother/daughter relationships without a mother, yet being one, undoubtedly gave me a particular perspective. I either reacted with envy when women talked of developing close relationships with their mothers or felt upset if women were negative and judgemental about their mothers. In trying to understand these responses I realized how I had cut off from my feelings about my mother’s death. This occurred at the same time as I was trying to make sense of the immense amount of mother-blame in the literature on incest. I slowly came to see the trap that most mothers are in and why some (but by no means all) abused young women blame their mothers. To children, mothers are powerful and children develop unrealistic expectations of them. Mothers are expected to know, in an almost telepathic way, when something is wrong and to be able to solve the problem. When, for whatever reason, children feel their mother fails to understand or protect them, they may experience this as betrayal. Incest survivors are certainly not the only women who feel betrayed by or angry with their mothers.
At this point, I was beginning to look at forms and experiences of violence in terms of a continuum (see chapters 4 and 5). I noticed how many women’s fathers were controlling, seductive and/or physically violent: father-daughter incest being an extension of this much more common and acceptable pattern. Feminists have been surprisingly silent about fathers, almost without noticing reinforcing the traditional psychological view that mothers are the all-important influence in children’s lives. I suspect that fathers play a crucial role, particularly in relation to daughters; they lay the basis, subtly, coercively or violently, of our fear of male anger and, therefore, our awareness of the risks of challenging men.
It is impossible to describe in words the emotions and reactions that doing this piece of research evoked, and I have only selected a few examples here. It is just as important, though, to make clear that there was another side to this experience: positive feelings and interactions that were sustaining. The completion of the project was, in part, the result of trust that many of the women who were interviewed placed in me and their interest in, and support for, the research in general and me in particular. It was extremely important that the interviews contained both a record of victimization and of women’s strength in survival.
Moving between the interviews and my own experiences and reactions was an integral part of the research methodology. Had I ‘tuned out’ these responses I would probably not have noticed or fully understood the importance of aspects of women’s experience of sexual violence.
In this chapter I explore how sexual violence has been explained and located within feminist theory, paying particular attention to the proposition that male violence has a critical role in maintaining women’s oppression. In the final sections I build on other women’s work to develop our analysis of the links between different forms of sexual violence and suggest a feminist definition of sexual violence. While recent historical research has revealed that men’s abuse of women and children was a key issue in the last wave of feminism,1 the discussion in this chapter is confined to recent feminist theory and practice.
Laying the foundations
Three classic works, Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, Susan Griffin’s ‘Rape, the all American crime’, and Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will exemplify three feminist approaches to theoretical writing.2 The first is based on detailed critique of men’s writing, the second builds on personal experience and the third researches and analyses an aspect of women’s experience that malestream thought either ignores or trivializes. All contain analysis and concepts which have been developed in subsequent feminist theory and research on sexual violence.
Kate Millett uses the concept of patriarchy to describe a social and political system in which men control, and have power over, women. She argues that women’s subordination by men has been a feature of the majority of (if not all) past societies and exists across different cultures and socio-economic systems today. Most of her attention is directed towards explaining how patriarchy persists in societies such as the USA, where legal reform has given women equal civil and political rights and in which women have access to education and the possibility of financial independence. She illustrates how patriarchy is reproduced within the family and by the state, ideology and culture. A crucially important, although often neglected, aspect of her analysis is that control in patriarchal societies, as in all political systems, ultimately rests on force.
The term patriarchy has become a contested one, particularly in British feminist theory, and there have been a number of suggestions that it should no longer be used.3 Like Sylvia Walby, I would argue that it is impossible to understand, let alone theorize, women’s oppression without the concept.4 Criticisms of particular formulations, or specific uses of the concept, do not invalidate the concept itself. As Walby writes: ‘These critics move from pointing out very real and important deficiencies in accounts of patriarchy to the false conclusion that all accounts of patriarchy must necessarily suffer from the same problems.’5 Rather than abandon the concept which names the systematic oppression of women by men, feminist theorists should build on previous insights in order to develop more complex accounts of patriarchy.
The most fundamental criticism has been that patriarchy is a universal concept which obscures historical change and cultural difference. There are, however, definitions of patriarchy which do not make such assumptions. Adrienne Rich’s definition, for example, draws on Millett’s analysis, but acknowledges that both the forms of patriarchal control and the amount of power women have within and across societies varies.
Patriarchy is the power of the fathers: a familial-social, ideological, political system in which men – by force, direct pressure or through ritual, tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labour, determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male. It does not necessarily imply that no woman has power, or that all women in a given culture may not have certain powers.6
This definition, and Diana Gittins’,7 defines patriarchal relations in terms of gender and age relations based on power. Rather than removing the power of the father from the analysis, as some (including Sylvia Walby) have suggested, it remains a central focus. Definitions of patriarchy have tended to focus on relations between men and women and/or relations between older and younger men. The relations between men/women and children are seldom specified, or are seen to be only relevant to a type of family form which is no longer characteristic of western industrial societies. Evidence from my research in the chapters which follow suggests that the power of the father is still an important factor in the structure of familial relationships. Retaining the age relation within a definition of patriarchy is necessary if we are to develop our understanding of how the position of women and children within both households and wider structures of social relations are connected. For example, defining households as embodying complex and, at times, cross-cutting power relations based on gender and age enables us to understand and theorize sexual abuse of boys by adult males, physical abuse of children by mothers (both based on age-related power) and physical or sexual abuse of mothers by sons (a transgression of the age relation via the gender relation). Cumulative power (for fathers) and powerlessness (for daughters) are as evident in the structure of the family as in the complex structuring of social relations involving gender, class and race. Furthermore, two studies have suggested that the power and authority of the father is a continuing factor structuring gender relations in paid employment.8
In making force and coercion a central aspect of her analysis, Millett drew on political theory which defined politics in terms of power relations: force being the overt use of coercive power by the dominant group as a resource of last resort. Defining patriarchal relations as political foregrounds the use of force and the control of women’s sexuality as essential features of patriarchal societies.9 A number of writers have developed Millett’s insights.
Marilyn Frye10 suggests that forms of control which remove options and appear to involve co-operation by the subordinate group are preferred in all hierarchical systems: an argument which echoes Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony, and Hannah Arendt’s contention that force is only used when power is in jeopardy.11 Violence is used only when other methods of control have failed as its usage makes coercive power explicit and, therefore, increases the possibility of resistance. Implicit in this analysis is that use of explicit force/violence is in fact a response to the failure of, or resistance to, other forms of control. It is in this context that I argue that male violence arises out of men’s power and women’s resistance to it.
Most political theorists maintain that the monopoly and use of force by those in power has to be legitimized. Historical studies have revealed the extent to which forms of male violence were legitimized by law and tradition.12 In some countries the legal system and social norms still sanction certain forms of male violence. In a number of countries feminist campaigning has undermined much, if not all, of this explicit legitimation.13 Where such change has taken place, however, studies of the practice of social agencies and legal systems demonstrate that implicit forms of legitimation remain whereby only the most extreme cases and forms of sexual violence are criminalized.14
Susan Griffin’s analysis builds on the influence of the threat of rape in her life. She argues that rape is not a sexual crime but a violent, political act; the threat of rape functions as a form of social control which affects all women. Several writers have developed her thesis that a ‘male protection racket’ exists whereby individual men are supposed to protect women from all other men; women become dependent upon the goodwill of their male protector, and more vulnerable to abuse by them.15 This short polemical article also contains many other themes which later writers have expanded on in analysing sexual violence: the social construction of masculinity and femininity; the connections between rape and heterosexual intercourse; and the ideological processes through which women are blamed for men’s violence.
Susan Brownmiller drew on both Griffin and Millett in her attempt to ‘give rape its history’.16
