Handbook on Sexual Violence (37 page)

Throughout this part of the book evident tensions emerge between the different disciplinary levels of analysis classically articulated, particularly by the inevitable inherently different emphases offered by psychology as opposed to sociology. This tension is particularly captured in Ruth Mann’s practitioner commentary around the question of responsibility. If it is accepted that the individual is responsible for their offending behaviour, that carries with it quite different implications than if it is accepted that responsibility lies at the level of societal values. Carefully situating her exploration of this kind of tension within the hotly contested debates as to whether offender treatment for sexual offences in particular is about punishment, rehabilitation, or what she calls ‘professional quackery’, Mann suggests that there is some value in getting men to challenge their own behaviours without rendering them deviant or abnormal. The is a position that lends some weight to Brown’s thoughtful analysis of matching what is known about particular offenders and their propensity for committing particular kinds of sexual crimes.

Taken together these
chapters draw our attention to three themes: the problem of definition; the problem of measurement; and the efficacy of Kelly’s work. In what follows we shall say a little about each of these themes in turn.

The problem of definition

All the contributors allude to this in different ways. Vetere addresses this most explicitly. Her clinical and therapeutic approach demands a non-judgemental stance towards behaviour in order to ensure the participation of the family or couple for whom violence is a problem. However, from her approach we get an important message: violence needs to be understood in its context, particularly if the desire is to change the nature of the violence perceived to be problematic. This, of course, is a highly individualistic approach to understanding violence. As Jones also points out, violence is societal. What is considered to be acceptable and/or unacceptable (sexual) violence (as in times of war for example) is structural and political. Thus individual behaviour maybe validated in some politico-structural moments in time and not in

others. Moreover, as both Jones and Phoenix comment, what is understood as sexual violence is also cultural. Our contemporary understandings of acceptable and unacceptable sexual violence needs to be set against a backcloth of changing social attitudes towards sex (the cultural drive for more and better sex might be a case in point) in which what might be considered degrading and by implication abusive some time ago may not be the case contemporarily. In a different way, Brown too is concerned with definitional issues, but in this case in the context of offenders. The need to differentiate different kinds of violences (a point that is well developed by Sylvia Walby and colleagues in Chapter
4) that differentiate different types of offenders, whose behaviour may become overlaid in some kinds of crime and not others, adds an important dimension to our understanding of what sexual violence actually means and to whom.

The problem of measurement

Logically following on from definitional issues, there are clearly problems with measurement: who does what to whom and when. The nature and extent of sexual violence has been historically a moot point between feminist-informed research and more ‘official’ statistics on this issue. Classically stemming from the outrage caused by the work of Amir (1971), who in analysing police data on rape suggested that in one in five cases the woman precipitated what had happened to her, feminists have worked hard to challenge not only the conceptual basis of such work, but also what it is that police statistics actually record. Adopting survey methodologies that asked women about their lifetime experiences, this work clearly pointed to not only the conceptual shortcomings of the notion of precipitation but also the shortcomings in assuming what is was that police statistics actually captured. Lifetime experiences of sexual violence suggest a picture of its nature and extent that far outweighed the picture presented by the police. More recently, as Jones points out, criminal victimisation surveys, and international violence against women surveys, have become increasingly more sophisticated and sensitive in their capacity to measure the extent of sexual violence and that data illustrates that it is for the most part a behaviour that men direct towards women. What is less clear is the extent to which this constitutes the complete picture. All the contributors here have been careful to point out that whilst there is increased awareness contemporarily of both homosexual as well as heterosexual sexual violence between men, between women, and committed by women on men, with perhaps the exception of some work done with prison inmates and that produced by campaign groups like Stonewall, our vision of this kind of sexual violence is severely distorted by the lens of heterosexuality assumed in much mainstream measurement work. Thus whilst the sexual violence has been sexed, it remains to be truly gendered.

The value of Kelly’s continuum

What is particularly interesting about each of the contributions to this part of the book is not only the importance that they all attach to the intervention made by Kelly in the 1980s in significantly shifting both the conceptual and empirical debate forwards on the question of sexual violence, but also the way in which each of them adds to and develops this intervention. This is despite the fact that each of these interventions starts from a very different place. Jones, for example, adds to Kelly’s continuum by adding breadth of understanding to the way in which societal conditions condone sexual violence ranging from cultural presumptions relating to sexual mutilation through to rape and murder in times of war. These additions remind us of the myriad ways in which sex is used to control both individuals as well as populations. Brown, on the other hand, adds conceptual depth to Kelly’s work by thinking through the implications for our understandings of offenders. Her intervention challenges the normalisation of a relationship between men and sexual violence by problematising both types of violences and their link with types of offenders. Thus we are left with the view that neither are all known offenders mad nor are they all potentially capable of the same kinds of offending behaviour. In a very different way Vetere embraces an appreciation of the processes that underpin both the expression of sexual violence and its therapeutic management. This perspective reminds us that even in violent relationships there are other interpersonal dynamics that bind people together. So, whilst one aspect of their behaviour might be problematic, it does not mean that they are totally ‘mad’ or ‘bad’ but can be worked with, encouraged to reflect on their behaviour and change. Finally, but by no means least, Phoenix’s discussion offers a serious challenge to the conflation of sexual violences found in the way in which the intimate and the economic become bound together within prostitution. Arguing for context specificity in our understandings of the relationship between sexual violence and prostitution, her analysis reminds us that prostitution is quite a complex business in which the image of the prostitute as victim is only one part. All contributions point to the contemporary recognition that the relationship between sex and the recourse to sexual violence is not sex or heterosexual specific, offering further enhancement to the contribution of Kelly. However, where they all agree is in the recognition that gender is one key problem that underpins sexual violence(s).

Conclusion: gendered inequality

Each of these contributions in their different ways centre gendered inequality as significant in the production of social relationships that produce sexual violence, whether that inequality is at the level of the interpersonal or at the level of the structural. Whilst Kelly’s work was part of a significant shift in attention from a focus on victim blaming to a focus on naming men as not only responsible for but with a vested interest in the sexual control of women, since that time our understandings of the nature and extent of gendered

inequality have become both wider and subtler all at the same time. As other chapters in this book illustrate, our appreciation of workplace harassment or the use of cyberspace as sites of violence have emerged, as has our appreciation of the ways in which that has been manifested. At the same time much more work needs to be done on the specific ways in which gender (not sex) is utilised as a resource in the different contexts in which sexual violence manifests itself. How gendered inequality is handled, however, is also cross- cut by other structural variables, whether that be class, ethnicity, or sexuality. Each of these cross-cutting relationships produce visibilities and invisibilities in who is seen to be doing what to whom and when. There is still a long way to go before we fully understand how and when gender, as opposed to any other variable, is the salient one that results in some people (male and female) becoming victims or perpetrators of sexual violence.

References

Amir, M. (1971)
Patterns of Forcible Rape
. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Daly, K. and Bouhours, B. (2009) ‘Rape and attrition in the legal process: a comparative analysis of five countries’. Forthcoming in
Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research
, 39. Downloaded October 2010.

Lovett, J. and Kelly, L. (2009)
Different Systems: Similar Outcomes
. London Metropolitan University: CWASU.

Matza, D. (1964)
Delinquency and Drift
. New York: John Wiley.

Smart, C. (1989)
Feminism and the Power of Law
. London: Routledge.

Chapter 7
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Psychological perspectives on sexual violence: generating a general theory

Jennifer Brown

Introduction

This
chapter takes a psychological perspective on sexual violence. In particular it looks at theoretical levels of analysis against the background provided by Kelly’s (1988) conceptualisation of the continuum of violence. The chapter will argue that Kelly’s formulation, which is articulated in terms of quantum, i.e. a prevalence continuum, is helpful at the descriptive stage of theorising but is limited in terms of explanation and predictive requirements of theory. The present chapter offers a qualitative addition to Kelly’s thinking as a way to develop our understanding of the different types of sexual violence; and, further, challenges Kelly’s conceptualisation of sexual violence as being solely normalised rather than pathologised.

Marx (2005) outlines what we know about sexual violence after 20 years of research (see Box 7.1).

This suggests that sexual violence is part of the routine of life and is something that most women experience in some shape or form. Indeed Kelly argues that sexual violence is connected to everyday aspects of male behaviour and cites as an example street sexual harassment where women are subjected to comments about their figures and/or lascivious wolf whistling while walking in public places. Sheridan
et al
. (2003: 150) note that ‘stalking is an extraordinary crime, given that it may often consist of no more than the targeted repetition of an ostensibly ordinary or routine behaviour.’ Kelly is critical of psychological explanations, which are couched in terms of an underlying pathology, because she suggests that violent behaviour being part of normal life as something to which women adapt or minimise is among the reasons for it remaining such an under-reported crime. She is also critical of research that identifies a plethora of subtypes of rapists together with a failure to link any pattern of personality characteristics causally to rape. This presents

Box 7.1
Summary of findings from sexual violence research (Marx 2005)

1. Sexual violence is a common experience; lifetime prevalence in US suggests 20 per cent of all women will be victims of sexual violence.
   

2. It is a life-altering experience for those who experience it, effects can be pernicious and long lasting and include psychological, behavioural, and physical consequences (including STD, chronic pain disorders, anxiety, depression, substance misuse, sexual problems and interpersonal difficulties).
   

3. The validity of reports of sexual violence is often questioned and survivors blamed for their assault.
   

4. Consequences for survivors often trivialised or ignored by family members, friends, police, legal officials, and mental health professionals.
   

5. Stigma and shame attach to survivors.
   

6. Demographic factors are associated with severity of reactions as are previous sexual trauma, pre-existing psychiatric conditions, availability of social support, neurological functioning and peritraumatic variables.
   

7. Intervening treatments are not always successful (factors such as intense anger, disassociation, substance abuse, personality disorders, inability to emotionally engage associated with failure to respond to treatment).
   

8. Risk of sexual assault is not evenly distributed: previous childhood sexual abuse is a strong predictor of subsequent sexual victimisation (also maladaptive coping, affect regulation difficulties, maladaptive interpersonal behaviours, and difficulties in recognising threats).
   

9. Cognitive therapies found to be particularly efficacious.