"I Wasn't Raped, but...": Revisiting Definitional Problems in Sexual Victimization (From New Versions of Victims: Feminists Struggle With the Concept, P 57-81, 1999, Sharon Lamb, ed. -- See NCJ-182872)

• NCJ Number: 182875
• Author(s): Nicola Gavey
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 25 pages
• Sale Source: New York University Press
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter explores issues involved in defining sexual victimization.

Abstract

The chapter claims that there are murky issues at the interface between (hetero)sex and sexual victimization. It talks about and against rape and sexual victimization (as though these are straightforward terms) at the same time as it destabilizes these categories, in the belief that this is an important part of the same fight at a different level. The chapter traces some of the changes in research on rape and sexual victimization over the past two decades and considers some of the implications of the new feminist social science approach. In particular, it considers three points that raise the need to revisit current conventions for conceptualizing sexual victimization: (1) the concept of the unacknowledged rape victim; (2) the loose distinction between rape and attempted rape; and (3) the use of the term "sexual victimization" to refer to a broad range of arguably normative coercive heterosexual practices. The article tells at least two, potentially opposing, stories about feminism and sexual victimization. When either story is told on its own as an unproblematic account, that may leave a fertile space for backlash to take hold or feminist writers themselves may unintentionally become part of the backlash. Notes, references