THE REPRESENTATION OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE

PRIMARY OBSERVATIONS FROM

AN EUROPEAN RESEARCH

lAURA TERRAGNI AND EMANUELA ABBATECOLA

UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA

Laura Terragni (laura.terragni@c2i.net) is the author of the first paragraph, The Building up of a Social Problem

Emanuela Abbatecola (eabbatec@panet.it) is the author of the second paragraph, Stories of Ordinary Violence. The Padua’s Case

For any comments contact us by e-mail.

European Research Team: Renato Stella, Laura Terragni, Emanuela Abbatecola, Valentina Rettore (Padua’s University); Svein Mossige (Olso’s university); Ignasi Pons i Anton (Barcelona’s University).

1. The building up of a social problem

Sexual violence is far from being a new phenomenon. Historical inquires, as well as anthropological ones, analysis of laws, have shown how this phenomenon is widespread across different time and cultures.

What is indeed fairly new is the attention given to this phenomenon. In the last few decades there has been an enormous increase in the debate and in the research on this topic.

This result is undoubtedly related to the effort posed by the women movement in enlightening the condition of women and the violence that is embedded in the patriarchal system. Researches undertaken on abuse in the family, as well as sexual exploitation, have asserted that violence against women is far from being well understood in the framework of a clinical/pathological model, but, instead, we have to look to the social/cultural roots of it.

What is particularly relevant is the contest in which “gendered relation” take place. Concept as power, dependency, citizenship, are undoubtedly key words in approaching this phenomenon. Moreover we have to consider that cultural values related to the definition of feminine and masculine roles, together with social norms related a family ideology constitutes an essential back ground that shapes the social contest in which this problem is situated.

Having reliable figures on this phenomenon is one of the most difficult task we have to handle: given on one hand the high number of violence that “are never known” and the differences in the way crimes related to sexual violence became available as statistical data.

But it is indeed clear that sexual exploitation against women do not seem to be a fading phenomenon. This statement is particularly relevant if we look at the different role that women play now in most western countries.

The growing of a full women citizenship, economic autonomy, participation in political and cultural life, gave undoubtedly to women a more central position in the society and affected the policy making. In the last decades women acted as relevant social actors, promoting, among the others, initiatives “sensitive” to the topic of domestic and sexual violence. They made this problem “visible” , a relevant social issue.

But, in a way, we are facing now a gap between the “public discourse” on violence at a social level and what happens in the “every day” encounter situation among men and women.

new questions

It is the presence of this gap that constitutes one of the most relevant “puzzle” in analysing the phenomenon of violence toward women.

To put it in simple words we can ask ourselves why after thirty years of debates, researches, violence toward women –also in countries that more then others have experienced an higher degree of transformation regarding gender roles- is still such a widespread phenomenon?

Considering this aspect, here only briefly summarised, we think that it is important to find answers to these questions:

1. Is the violence that women experience today different from the one they experienced in the past?

2. Is the theoretical framework that early feminist scholars utilised to understand the phenomenon of violence still enough to understand the present condition?

When we say that the violence that women experience today could be in some way different form the one they experienced in the past we refer to different aspects. First of all we refer to the fact that “what is considered violence” is subjected to transformation in definition. This is not true only if we consider juridical aspects (that are, of course, very important) but also to the individual perception of what constitutes a “violation” of one’s own intimacy. Just to make an example we can say that only very recently sexual violence that happens in the marriage framework has been identified as “violence”. And this not only in the juridical codes but, what is more significant, also in the way women perceive a certain behaviour of the husband as an abuse. Another example is the one related to “sexual harassment”: where is extremely clear that the kind of behaviours that (accordingly also to the EU document) are considered as a violation of one’s own intimacy and willingness has expanded enormously if we just look at some years back.

We are in a way facing a phase in which the definition of what is violence is subjected to deep transformations, both at social and at individual level. This kind of process is not at all a “neutral one”, but is deeply engendered: it as to do with gendered negotiations of limits and boundaries, and to the power to enforce new kind of definition of violence. And of course this mean that a certain definition is not simply “given” but is subjected to transformation, different interpretation accordingly to specific contests.

The second questions is related to what we before underlined as a possible paradox. The fact that in many European countries, despite trends towards more equality, the tendency of violence toward women is not “dropping”.

In a way the fading of the patriarchal system didn’t turn out to be so effective in stopping the violence. We are not questioning now the validity of these theories but we wonder if there something new in the gender dynamic that these theories are not fully capable to enlighten, and if it is necessary to rethink these theories accordingly to the transformation that had occurred. Diana Russel has already stated this point, and we can find echo of this debate also in the Giddens’ hypothesis that violence is now a male answer to a weakened power to control women. What is indeed interesting is that already in… Chappel, making a comparison on data in sexual abuse in United States and in Sweden, pointed out that in a more permissive society (as was at that time the latter, and still is) men are less able to sustain a deny.

What is clear, particularly in some European countries, is that the patriarchal system is far from being a “normative model”.

The modernisation of the society, the tendency toward a stronger individualisation, affected also the gender relationship. Women and men tend to enter in relation to each other with higher expectation of equality and autonomy. The degree of negotiation between partners is much more higher now than in the past, given the fact that classical division accordingly to gender role are now less taken for granted.

In a way we face now with a greater intensity then not in the past a higher degree of uncertainty about roles and reciprocal expectations. Some traditional codes that have guided generations of men and women are nowadays simply fading away, without that others, that are indeed emerging, had rooted.

the unisex ideology trap

There is, further more, a last aspect that we should consider. And id what we can define as the “unisex ideology trap”. More and more girls grow up in a social environment that tells them that “there are not differences”. We are not saying that girls tend to grow up in a “fantasy world”, but what appears as clear is that girl tend to be less aware of the still existing gender gap, power asymmetry, traditional element that still constitutes a strong back ground in guys socialisation.

In this respect we think that girls could face a higher risks (or it would better to say a different risk then in the past) of being victims of abuse. On one hand this could be the case when certain situations leads to different interpretation accordingly to gender. For example guys could interpret as permission to sexual intimacy some kind of signals that for girls do not have this meaning at all. And what is relevant to say is that so often is the guy’s interpretations the one that has more power in a public discourse. One an other end it is also possible that girls tend to fail to recognise, in contest of a relationship, abusive act as such (at least for a certain period) because if far too much contradictory with their self image and the image they have of the other. Moreover , even if abuse is recognised, it is less probable that it is interpret as a result of the fact that that relation is gendered, and that that act is in the framework of that gendered relationship.

aim of the research project

We think that it is in the arena of this uncertainty and “differential but in a way more hidden gendered power” that violence finds one of this way. And this is the arena that we would like most to investigate with a specific focus on the experiences of young women and men in the contest of establishing relationship and in the development of them.

Aim of the research project is to achieve a deep insight in the process of definition of act or a situation as invasive, abusive or violent, in order to recognise which are the most relevant social/cultural factors related to the way violence is perceived at individual level, according to a gender perspectives.

We are interested not only in the evaluation of violence that had really occurred but, most of all, in “border-line” situations, where the evaluation of the situations can be less clear, giving more space to individual beliefs and attitudes to come into surface.

What we think that it is needed is a more full understanding on the pre-condition that make violence as a possible outcome. In a way a step in the “back stage”, a dive under the iceberg surface, where may be serious for of violence doesn’t occur, but still there is something “going on…”

2. STORIES OF ORDINARY VIOLENCE: PADUA’S CASE

In Padua, as well as in other universities which were part of our research team (Barcellona, Olso e Toulouse), we have decided to explore the representation of sexual violence among young university students (age 19-23).

The thoughts we are going to tell you about today are part of the output of works still in progress. They are the first relevant ideas that come up the results of the analyses of three focus group (one was all male, one female and the other was one mixed) concerning sexual violence, sexual abuse and harassment, comments that go way beyond the issue, and allow us to reason about female and male and gender relationship representations.

male and female narration: the strength of symbolic power

A first remark is that narration of sexual violence among women and among men, adopts narrative codes which are extremely different according to the nature and contents of the narration.

Male narration (male focus) is “objective”, analytical and rational. Guys observe this issue from an outsider point of view, with detachment. They analyze mechanisms that could favor harassment, incomprehension between women and men, courting dynamics, different feelings about what intimacy is; they say that occasionally they might have contributed to making potentially annoying advances, but the real problem stands elsewhere, the real harassers are other guys and real violence is relegated to a pathological dimension characterized by exceptionality.

Guys talk, whereas girls talks of themselves.

Female narration (female focus) is all centered on subjective, daily, pervading, tangible, almost normal experience. The point of view is not an external one anymore and the telling Ego is an Ego which was often injured by small or greater violence, minor humiliations as well as heavy violations, stories that can recounted within a group where mutual understanding is a consequence of common feelings and experiences.

Girls during their narration don’t make distinctions, as guys do, between heavy violence and small harassment, even if they’re perfectly aware of the difference. So, the memory of a kiss stolen by force within a dark room, too, can remain impressed in her mind for years, and undermine somewhat the trust in the other sex:

“We used to be really good friends and it came as shock to me, it was the embryo of distrust in male specie ”.

While, within male narration, violence is only extreme, rape, and the rapist is an ill person, an insane, within female narration violence shows different aspects, and the threat could originate from an old friend, from a some age neighbor, a nice guy met on vacation. Violence doesn’t derive from a pathology, but is something that girls interpret as a reaction to the loss of the power which is traditionally granted to men:

“Man is more insecure, he needs other guys’ judgment and protection….and in my opinion there are situations where he can’t accept to be humiliate and he hurts you in someway; if he can’t hurt you psychologically or you’ve hurt him too much, the only way is physical violence ”;

“Woman has always been inferior to man…and for this reason man has always considered himself at a higher level…when he meet a woman who makes him feel inferior, something happens inside him, and he says ‘I am the man’…at this point he begins to consider her as a thing ”.

Violence as an illness; violence as peril always in ambush within the relationship with guys, ‘normal’ guys.

Violence as an exceptional dimension; violence as part of one’s daily experience.

Violence as narration of something apart from oneself; violence as narration of oneself.

The reasons why guys talk whereas girls talk of themselves are varied, and partially connected to one another.

That male and female narration are traditionally different is a common sense notion: women love to tell and listen to stories about themselves, whereas men prefer stories about things. Once again, men tell whereas women tell of themselves.

What is less obvious is that this difference in the narrative codes could derive from a lesser inclusion of women in public life: I’m referring to work and politics, spheres which are as well definable as well as the main sources of male identity (Cavarero, 1997).

In modern society, man (as subject belonging to the male gender) has always answered to the question ‘Who am I?’ by the content of his public action: What I do, I’m what I do (lawyer, teacher or whatever). Male identity is mainly a public identity, which is visible, recognizable, and it is thanks to this external identity that his private role gains legitimacy. On the contrary, female identity has for a long time been a belonging identity, I’m his daughter, I’m his wife, a private identity which is scarcely visible, an Ego which is deprived of his subjectivity.

Consequently, if, as Jedlowski (2000) underlines, to tell means to carry out our own life showing it to someone else, and in this narration we tend both to present ourselves and to search for ourselves, women, who were deprived of a public identity for a long time, could do nothing else but tell their private life’s experience, in order to give recognition to a subjectivity which was otherwise denied.

Girls talk of themselves because women have always done this way.

But there’s something more. In this case the narration becomes the narration of the self not only for cultural reasons, but also because violence is part of everyone’s experience

“It’s crazy, you’ve got the feeling they are isolated situations but…..among us everyone has suffered some kind of violence, even if in different way, but everyone has experienced a shock or a clash with the other sex ”.

What happens when girls and guys confront themselves on this issue?

A first consideration is that the male code becomes automatically the dominant narrative code. Guys, once again, keep an external point of view and talk about something which is considered as extraneous, even to a greater extent than during the male focus. It is meaningful that when asked to talk freely about violence starting from any kind of remark, the first one to talk is a guy who says

“the first thing I can thing about is related to the news on TV ”

Girls immediately conform to this communicative code and show a great concern in order to demonstrate their extraneousness to the problem, and to underline that it has never happened to them.

“….I’ve never had this kind of problem….so I think about it just when I watch the news”;

“according to me, the worst thing is being afraid of going out at night, because I’ve never suffered any kind of violence neither as daughter or as a girlfriend, exc.”.

So, the result of this interaction is a clear-cut narration without degrees of ambiguities: the violent man is an ill person, the limit not to be overcome are well recognizable, universal, even measurable (a guy says “there’re centimeters”). Both in the girls and the guys opinion, violence is something which belongs to the outer world, something visible and therefore controllable.

What has happened to that female world populated by more or less shocking experiences, where meeting guys can easily become a clash?

What has happened to the uncertainty of the concept of limit such as it was underlined by the guys, who are witnesses of advances toward the other sex which are often characterized by misunderstandings?

As always the answers are varied and complex?

The neutrality of narration clearly depends, at least partially, on an embarrassment due to a communicative interaction where the actors represent, at a symbolic level, the antagonistic subjects of a delicate event: victims and persecutors.

The signs of this kind of dynamics are numerous: the initial tendency to switch the discussion from sexual violence to a physical one (long debates on the pedagogic effects of giving a baby a slapping); the girls’ attitude, as previously discussed, to keep violence at a distance (it has never happened to me), since to suffer violence means, also, to feel shame and guilty; the fear, expressed in the male focus, to be misunderstood and mistaken as harassers or violent men themselves.

Anyway, we do believe that there’s something else beyond this, something related to male power symbolic strength.

Simmel wrote “Male sex set himself up as human in general” (1989, p.70), as the strength of men position transforms male sex into the universal human that rules male particular and female particular manifestations. Sex duality is therefore set in order by a sole language, a sole culture, a sole symbolization process that is always masculine. The consequence is that the particular of men is universal, whereas the particular of women is only particular. Masculine is perceived as neutral, whereas feminine is characterized by being different from neutral.

So there, girls’ narrative code, to be shared, switch from feminine to masculine, that means dominant and neutral.

Dominated spontaneously conform their codes to dominant ones (could be gender, ethnic, cultural or language codes) beyond consciousness, as “symbolic strength is a kind of power that affects bodies, directly and magically, without any kind of physical constrain” (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 48).

Whenever the dominant code is interiorized it becomes natural, and the symbolic power shows itself through automatism which are in contrast with the conscious will.

representations: between change and continuity

As we said, the topic of sexual violence, allows us in actual fact, to reason on shared masculine and feminine representations, as well as on the image of gender relationship.

As far as this issue is concerned, what are the signs of continuity and change with respect to the past?

The work that the Padua's team has been carrying out till now seems partially to confirm some results of a Iard research on Italian young people (aged 15-29) of the latter part of this millenium. The research pictures a reality where guys and girls tend to be much closer in relation to shared values, interests, attitudes and behaviors; a frame within which gender representations appear less stereotyped than in the past, and relationships characterized by a greater egalitarianism. Areas of traditionalism, however, persist, mainly related to interpretation of the maternal role. The relationship within a couple is characterized by interchangeable domestic roles and co-participation in family maintenance, but this egalitarian representation does not persist in relation to child care and education topics(Buzzi, Cavalli, de Lillo, 1999).

As far as their attitudes and evaluations are concerned, Padua's guys and girls too, appear to be more similar to one another. However, behind a way of reasoning which is formally politically correct lies a language where the choice of certain words often reveals a gender relationship representation which is somewhat traditional, at least in relation to sexuality and courting. So the narration is filled with guys who try it on and girls who are easy or serious, who give in readily or yield more slowly, with courting based on the implicit role of the man who hunts and the woman who seduces and then withdraws.

Generally speaking, the representation of male sexuality is apparently taken for granted, non-problematic and traditional. Both guys and girls speak about a kind of man who acts instinctively, who hides his own feelings towards sex less than girls, a man who, no matter what, is always up for it, and behaves differently towards his male friends than towards his girlfriend. The only sign of a change is a shy reference to role expectations that men cannot avoid performing (forced to behave like a man?), but it's a façade which is gladly accepted, a minor kind of harm which is often mentioned only for the record.

On the contrary, the representation of female sexuality is more problematic, and there is no agreement on that issue neither among guys and girls nor among girls alone, showing the endless tension between traditionalism and emancipation.

In this case, traditionalism emerges through common topics such as virginity, the importance of the first time, indissolubility between sex and love. We are talking about values which are sometimes shared and sometimes challenged. However, the fact that there is still a need to talk about them is already a sign of a link with the past. Some girls refuse the idea of the stereotyped images of masculine and feminine, but rebellion is bridled by the impossibility to find alternative patterns to those offered by a duality where the dominant codes are the masculine ones. To refuse the traditional female role, though, means to claim a likeness to the male one ("what do you think, girls are like that too"), even if they will not feel totally at ease in that likeness.

Men are this way...women are this way, but can also be that way.

The outlines of the male image are clear-cut, whereas the female ones become blurred in a multiplicity in progress. Moreover, what really strikes us is that the account of men's representation is free from any kind of value judgement, whereas the different female figures are always more or less explicitly judged. Once again, this is because the masculine order, being neutral, needs neither to enunciate nor to justify itself (Bourdieu, 1998); whereas the feminine order, the non-neutral one, cannot avoid definitions and evaluating reflections.

The topical interest of the concept of male power also emerges in relation to the inevitability of the "direction" of violence, therefore men can just be the persecutors never the victims.

A man, guys say, cannot suffer sexual violence from a woman simply because he is not able to recognize it as violence. An daring advances can violate women's, not men's sensitivity, "because a man must take up the a conqueror's role anyway, he can never be the victim".

This implies that, with the only exception of extreme cases, the essence of sexual violence does not lie in the action itself as much as in the meaning we ascribe to that action Therefore, men's position of power allows them not to feel violated if 'daring attentions' come from those subjects who are traditionally perceived as dominated, just as women have been perceived for years and years.

primary observations

The analysis of male and female narrative codes and masculine and feminine implicit narration, shows a scenery which is characterized by a complex as well as somewhat fleeting reality, in a continuous tension between tradition and emancipation.

There is the feeling that male power is still more persistent and pervading than a superficial look might show. The distance between men and women is now shorter and guys and girls belong to similar and communicating worlds; however, these signs of change go together with residues of a patriarchal culture whose symbolic strength is hidden under not so easily visible signs: the duality of narrative codes set in order by the prevalence of the masculine one; the irreversibility of gender characterization of the victim-persecutor relationship; the neutrality, thanks to which the masculine is only described and never judged.

Men's power is still strong, and today, more than ever before, it is also invisible and vague; but, once again, it is precisely from the strength of this symbolic power that we ought to begin, hoping that one day violence will sound less daily and real in the narration of the girls of tomorrow.

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