Gender, free will, and woman-to-woman sexual assault in service provider discourses
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Date
2018
Authors
Malinen, KelleyAnne
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Sage
Abstract
Although still less recognized than man-to-woman sexual assault, awareness of woman-to-woman
sexual assault has grown sufficiently over the past three decades that we should no longer speak of
its discursive emergence as the breaking of hitherto uninterrupted silence. This article begins the
project of exploring and comparing discourses used to frame this phenomenon. Based on a situational analysis of interviews with service providers who had experience supporting survivors of
woman-to-woman sexual assault, this text presents three discourses used to think about this form
of violence: all violence is men’s violence, violence is a choice, and nonviolence is learned. Each
discourse is characterized by a specific relationship between sexual violence, free will/determinism,
and gender and by attendant rules for what can and cannot be said. As such, each communicates
ideological commitments, which reflect and sustain specific approaches to antisexual violence work.
Each seeks to negotiate a sociopolitical context of gender-based oppression and sexuality-based
oppression that includes the risks and realities of silencing and recuperation of survivor speech. The
objective of this article is to enable service provider reflection about the implications of diverse
discourses used to frame woman-to-woman sexual assault and to discourage naturalization of any
given approach.
Description
Keywords
woman-to-woman , social work/social welfare history and philosophy , situational analysis , sexual abuse , research categories , gender-based violence , gender/sex
Citation
Malinen, K. (2018). Gender, free will, and woman-to-woman sexual assault in service provider discourses. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 33(1), 56-68.