Surviving Sexual Violence

Liz Kelly

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745667430
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

1

‘Sharing a particular pain’:
researching sexual violence

‘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 ...