Sampert, S. (2010). Let me tell you a story: English-Canadian newspapers and sexual Assault myths.

Canadian journal of women and the LawRevue Femmes et Droit. 22(2). 301-323. doi:10.3138/cjwl.22.2.301

Myth No. 1: Sexual Assault Is About Uncontrollable Male Lust, Not about Violence The most frequently used myth in both the national and local stories was the myth that represented sexual assault as an inherently sexual act. Benedict calls this the most powerful myth about rape because it ignores the fact that rape is a physical attack. Myth No. 2: Innocent Men are Regularly Accused of Sexual Assault and Women Regularly Lie about It. Myth No. 3: The Perpetrator Is the Other Myth No. 4: The New Myth That the Perpetrator Is Female and the Victim Is Male Myth No. 5: Men of Good Standing Do Not Sexually Assault Women Perpetrators marital status or solid reputation is another aspect of the mythology of sexual assault crimes. Discussing his status casts doubts on the victims insistence that an assault occurred. If the perpetrator has a sexual outlet, he has no need to sexually assault. Discussing the assailants solid reputation suggests that as a good citizen, he would never sexually assault a woman. This notion belies the fact that so-called good citizens and married citizens have been found guilty of sexual violence. Myth No. 6: The Victim Provoked the Sexual Assault Another myth in 2002 was the idea that the victim provoked the sexual assault, and it was included in newspaper accounts warning women about rapists operating in their neighbourhoods.
Manderson, L., Bennett, L.R. (2003). Violence against women in Asian Societies. New York, NY: Routledgecurzon.

The term gender-based violence (GBV) will be used to violence against women (VAW) in order to focus on the importance of female gender as a structural determinant of health and a significant marker of inequality, injustice and the ill treatment associated with violence and abuse. No society ill-treats its men as badly as it ill-treats its women. Gender-based violence forces submission at an individual level and, by engendering fear, defeat, entrapment, humiliation and a sense of heightened vulnerability, enforces womens inferior social ranking and subordination in the wider society. GBV is a public health issue both because of its high prevalence across the life span more than 20% of women in a range of countries report that they have experienced violence in

their lifetime and because of its multiple and severe physical and mental consequence (WHO 1997). The effect of the failure to protect womens human rights has been an escalation of violence against them. This escalation is probably most conspicuous in the precipitous increase in sexual trafficking, but arises with respect to all kinds of violence and abuse. Governments are expected to respect, promote and protect human rights of all citizens regardless of their differences. Women continue to be expected to be excluded from the definition of human and are not treated as if born free and equal in dignity and rights to men. This fundamental human right identified by the United Nations in 1945, is either neglected or transgressed while the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW 1981) remains unsigned or is implemented only patchily in the six Asian countries that are signatories. The responsibilities of women as wives and mother are highlighted, while their rights are ignored and their roles as citizens are downplayed. Gender-based violence is an emblematic rights violation because it violates a number of absolute human rights. When such violence results in death, it obviously violates the absolute right to life. When violence involves entrapment and total coercive over every aspect of a womans life, the right to freedom from slavery is negated. When GBV includes repetitive, escalating physical, sexual and emotional abuse, it violates the absolute right of every human being to live free from torture. In addition, GBV violates the right to safety and security of person, to live in freedom from fear, and to exercise freedom of movement. Womens right to justice and redress is legislated away. If there are no laws, or if the laws are perceived to be incapable of delivering justice, women will not report violence, and this can, in turn, create the false impression of its low prevalence. If the right to health is a fundamental human right, governments should be expected to provide opportunities for health to all its citizens. An analysis of gender differences in patterns of health and illness is mandatory to understanding the ways that violations of womens rights give rise to the negative health outcomes disproportionately experienced by them. The extent of rights violation that occurs will radically affect the production of health and illness. The links between health status, female gender, unequal treatment in society, and the violation of womens rights as human beings, are less well-researched. The protection and promotion of womens human rights to dignity, privacy, safety, education and information re critically underpin the likelihood of women being able to exercise their rights to health and well-being. A human rights perspective complements and extends existing understandings of the links between the social environment and health by addressing explicitly the relationship between the responsibilities of governments and the rights of individuals. Gender differences in health may be particularly significant in this regard. Identifying which human rights, including reproductive rights, have been violated may provide a more sensitive and accurate measure of

womens social position and experience within a given socio-cultural setting than traditional measures of socio-economic status. Gender inequality and vulnerability to risk of violence Economic, social and cultural rights as well as the right to development have been neglected in comparison with civil and political rights. These rights play an extremely influential role in health and must be taken into account in any discussion of GBV. The structurally weaker position of women in all societies educationally, occupationally and economically almost guarantees that a state of economic dependency and/or poverty will characterize the lives of the majority of women. The problems of marginalisation and extreme poverty for women are increasing as gender-based disparities in income increase, and as economic and social inequalities within and between countries continue to widen. The mental health costs of these rising inequalities are being seen in rising rates of common mental disorders amongst the poorest women in developing countries undergoing restructuring. Human right cannot flourish where girls and women are deprived of access to education, food, shelter or health care. Being born female ensures double jeopardy with regard to access to these basics. Access is blocked because of the higher rates of poverty amongst women, but within poor communities and poor households, it is also blocked because of gender discrimination and preferential treatment of boys and men. When womens social and economic rights are transgressed and they experience unequal rights regarding property, marriage, divorce and inheritance, GBV is facilitated because many women lack an alternative means of survival apart from dependence on a violent partner. The denial of womens economic rights, and the perpetuation of poverty, thus promotes the perpetration and the perpetuation of violence against them. Gender Roles and Violence At each of these levels, gender norms, bias and discrimination intrude to influence judgement, affect behaviour and reduce the likelihood of justice. For example, the right of women to receive justice when they have been raped flounders at several levels. Women may not be believed, may lack awareness of their legal rights, be unable to pay for legal representation, be subject to insensitive forensic examination, and receive unfair and gender-bias forms of cross examination and ill treatment by the police. Honour and shame To understand the experience of GBV, we need to ask questions about ownership of different kinds, including with regard to ownership and access to womens bodies within and outside marriage, to public and private space, and to different times of the day and night.

Violence is a tool of terror and its use can be seen to relate directly to male assumptions about privileged access ad ownership. While women have less power over their lives than men, they are schooled in social myths as to who, when and where is rather safe than dangerous. Although the reality is the inverse of the social myth regarding safety and danger, such myths encourage the belief that women have a high level of control over what happens to them and hence should accept responsibility for the violence they experience. Blame and shame is assigned to the woman who has been sexually assaulted rather than to her perpetrator. Her reputation suffers and she is made to feel worthless when violence is inflicted. Social blaming and self-blaming both reinforce the fiction that violence is a natter over which individual women can exercise control, whether through behaviour, demeanour, dress, cooking, housekeeping, sexual performance or fertility. Policing the public-private divide Rape is a specific tool of terror. Rape and its threat are among the most brutal ways in which male privilege over the occupation and ownership of the public space is expressed. Women are taught that they cannot move around freely at night without facing violence, but the violence itself is not posited as the only problem. The temerity of a woman who thinks she can walk in safety at that time is also seen as problematic, and therefore, when harassment or attack occurs, there is little sympathy for the victim or outrage at the violation of her body or her right to freedom and movement. In contrast, when men are attacked at night, they are not subject to the same slurs on their motives for being out, precisely because it is assumed that they have the right to be there in the first place. Violence of all kinds is associated with severe, long lasting physical, mental and emotional effects. Some of these ill effects are compounded by lack of access to any redress or justice. Psychological suffering is likely to be compounded by womens inability to make public the violation that they have endured. In the case of the teasing just mentioned, anguish, inadequacy and a sense of powerlessness occur because girls feel unable to acknowledge the teasing: this would suggest and understanding of the sexual innuendos of comments and gestures. A number of contributors show how women subjected to violence, rather than the men who inflict violence, often assume responsibility for defending family honour by remaining silent about it. Caring for others and individual rights The exercise of rights can be socially and legally reinterpreted as evidence of provocation for sexual violence. The difficulty for women in identifying their rights is compounded when additional cultural value is placed on the importance of the welfare of the group and the family unit over the individual.

In performing socially-approved gender roles, women are typically charged with the responsibility of maintaining family integrity and ensuring social stability. Violence is socially acceptable in the service of preserving a higher good, family integrity. However, the positing of this higher good reinforces a gender ideology of female sacrifice by reinforcing the notion that there is always something more important than women, their rights and their well-being. Gender roles that condone and legitimise violence, together with gender-based inequalities, result in the perception and treatment of women as lesser human beings than men. The socialisation of women to see themselves as inferior human beings and second-class citizens also constitutes an ideal grooming process for their acceptance of violence and ill treatment. The influence of narrow, rigid gender roles, on the one hand, and GBV, on the other, reduces the space available for action and change in both material and emotional and conceptual senses. Space for action There are real difficulties in trying to gain acceptance by moving within and not being seen as a risk to tradition, religion or family values, while at the same time trying to effect change and bring about social reform. Another indication of the size of the conceptual space available for discussion of GBV is the selection of the types of violence singled out for attention by non-government organizations (NGOs) and governments. The concepts of woman and human being can finally become coterminous rather than marginally overlapping, as they tend to be at present. Resisting Violence If abusive behaviours cannot be named, they cannot be contested or resisted intellectually or emotionally. A woman without any income who cannot pay for contraceptives or read the health information that might protect her, is unable to determine the number and spacing of the children she wants. When gender-based discrimination, violent and inequality dictate that women lack safety, autonomy, decision-making power and access to adequate income, many other aspects of their life and health necessarily remain outside their control, including exposure and susceptibility to gender-based risks to ill health. Implications of a rights-based approach Pay attention to those groups of people whose health status is compromised and who are failing to have adequate health services delivered to them. Women affected by violence constitute such a group. Programs The causes of GBV are interlocking and embedded at every level of society the individual, family, community and the broader society, including its laws and institutions. It is

vital that GBV is dealt with in its entirety and all its complexity. All programs and health services used by women need to expand their scope to include a recognition and response to violence. The 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights defined violence against women as any act of gender-based violence resulting or likely to result in harm to women, and occurring in the family, within the general community, and perpetrated or condoned by State. We would want to include both prostitution and trafficking as activities where violence against women is endemic. Thus in different countries at different times there may be a focus on only certain forms of violence as violence against women. Key developments in relation to violence against women during the 1970s and 80s included the growth of refuge movement (especially Womens Aid) and the movement against rape (especially Rape Crisis); and the growing visibility of sexual violence in public and media campaigns. It can be seen as part of the success of pressure from womens organisations and feminists that violence against women should be taken seriously. On especially positive area has been the first major funding by government of projects related to violence against women, through the Crime Reduction Program (CRP). There has also been a tendency for the government to establish policy documents and consultations that seem to promise a wider range of action than actual legislation delivers. There has been an increasing emphasis on criminalisation within the private sphere, and attempts to change practice within the criminal justice and other sectors. The overall aim of the Programme was to enhance the understanding of the causes of the various forms of violence to the person and to increase knowledge about how violence might be prevented, reduced and eliminated. Methodology is not simply a posh way of saying method. Methodology is a complex political process concerned with establishing the contested connections between the epistemology (questions about what can be known, and the interrelationships between knowledge, experience and reality), theory (ideas about how things work), and ontology (categorisation and classification of these ideas and how they fit together). Feminist research focuses on gender and gender inequality. Gender violence is a reflection of as well as something that constructs gender inequality. Although feminist research may not involve female participants, it is still grounded in womens experience. Rejection of the standard academic distinction between the researcher and the researched.

Feminist authors are starting to acknowledge research that is on a more equal footing or where the researcher is less powerful in the relationship. Such openness is also required by the third characteristic often associated with feminist research: that of enabling the women and other marginalised groups to be heard and their experiences valued. Enabling the voices of women to be heard involves a democratisation in the process. True participatory research is where one designs the project together with the activists, practitioners or group prior to gaining funding. Feminist research has not simply, however, attempted to provide a space for womens voices to be heard. There is a strong case for taking peoples accounts for their experiences as a necessary element of knowledge for gendered lives and actual power relations. Rape illustrates both the necessity of grounding knowledge in experience, and the impossibility of treating experiential knowledge as simply true. For instance, Painter and Farrington (1999) of their study of rape in marriage found out that women may not interpret the violence they suffer as rape at the time but may later come to define it as such. They acknowledge the voices and experiences of the individual but do not seek to suggest that this is representative of all survivors. The fourth key characteristic associated with feminist methodology is an assertion of the importance of politically active and indeed emancipatory research. This can be achieved through enabling women and childrens voices to be heard by practitioners. A fifth characteristic often associated with feminist methodologies is reflexivity which is the process of standing outside and gazing back to see what we came from afar. The net issue that is particularly pertinent to feminist methodology linked to gender and violence research is that of the emotional and physical wellbeing of the researcher and the researched. The researcher should at all times be conscious of the possible effects of the research (be it the process or the publication) on the researched. Where the participant has already suffered emotional and/or physical harm and may suffer further as a result of the research and its implications must be discussed with them in full. Even in such harassment is occurring, whilst researching gender violence there is a strong potential of the researcher suffering emotional pan, fear, anger, being overwhelmed, feeling powerless and sometimes experiencing flashbacks to previous abuse before, during and after the research process. Such research can also be a life changing experience for the researcher. Hope that we can help the survivors be heard, hope that we can change the institutional responses, hope that we can change the society, hope that one day we might see an end to violence.

The final issue we wish to consider in relation to feminist methodology is the selection of research tools. Oakley (2000:24) believes that there are two methodological camps: (1) that of the (logical) positivist / scientific / quantitative and (2) that of the naturalist / interpretivist / qualitative. Feminist often favour multiple methods, which may include surveys and large scale data sets. What is particularly important in feminist research is that the approaches adopted come at the topic under investigation in a way that is more likely to reflect the experiences of women and children, rather than distorting them. Making (or Breaking) Commitments One result on the recent shifts in ideas about sex roles is an inevitable increase in friction between women and men, wives and husbands.
Sarrell, L.J., Sarrell, P.M. (1984). Sexual turning points: the seven stages of adult sexuality. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co.

We immediately assume that your memories of adolescent sexual learning arent just memories of excitement and pleasures but include memories of confusion and pain. Because that is what most not all, but most people tell. A man believes that the man is the provider; that he is responsible for sexually satisfying his woman. Some women become irritated when they hear this analogy because they associate menstruation with pain and nuisance, while they imagine first ejaculation to be pleasurable experience. They think its unfair. It may be cold comfort, but the fact that first ejaculation is not an entirely pleasurable experience for about 50% of boys. It occurs, typically, between age twelve and age fifteen. Our data show that only 31% of the boys knew exactly what was happening to them. A full 42% say that the experience left them confused, embarrassed, or fearful, and not solely with a feeling of pleasure. Girls are likely to tell their mothers and/or close friends. Boys, on the other hand, are intensely private about semenarche. According to our findings, only 12% tell another living soul. The first ejaculation is the single most important psychosexual event of male adolescence. It sets a stamp upon the bys feeling about ejaculation and about his sexuality. Menarche and semenarche have this in common, then: Both mark a special moment in time when, biologically, we change from girl to woman and from boy to man; and both are complex psychosocial events, which may leave a permanent stamp on our sexuality. In some societies, erotic feelings and overt sexual behaviour are permitted and are expressed throughout childhood. At the age of twelve or thirteen, boys and girls are fully initiated into the world of adult sex.

Clearly, teenager Mangaians are not faced with the same psychosocial issues as are Western teens. They seem to have virtually no guilt, no shame, fear or inhibitions to overcome. By contrast, American children have a dozen or more years of learning during which, typically, sex is shrouded in shameful mists; hands are removed from genitals with outraged glares, and information is withheld or parcelled out grudgingly. Perhaps one reason we need a prolonged adolescent-youth phase in our culture is to allow enough time to rid ourselves of all the negative messages we have received over three years concerning sex. A large share of guilt and shame about sex comes from childhood learning about masturbation. Between 80 and 90 percent of parents believed that most children masturbate (which is true). However, 40 percent believed that masturbation is immoral, sinful and harmful. Their fears ranged from the idea that children could get sick from germs getting onto their hands, to the concern that it would make the penis too large (believing that, like any muscle, exercise it too much and it will be overdeveloped). In spite of direct threats or subtle injunctions, children do masturbate. In examining the sexual histories of adults, we hear how wide a range of experience this can be, some people say they have always masturbated since their earliest, dim, recollections of early childhood. This was often as a casual sort of self-pleasuring and play, but tinged with a sense of furtive and kept secret. Many men and women tell us they knew the word masturbation for a long time before they connected it with their own self-pleasuring. At puberty, there are hormonal, anatomical, and physiological changes not to mention psychosocial changes that affect masturbation behaviour. As we have already stated, boys begin to ejaculate and are likely, soon afterward. In girls, the clitoris enlarges from its prepubertal size and may focus a girls attention. Even with pubertal changes, though , not all adolescents masturbate. At the time they enter college, about five out of six males are masturbating. Eventually only one male in twenty does not masturbate. In 1969 and early 1970s, the data we collected on the sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of women students showed that about one-third of them masturbated a statistic that exactly agreed with the Kinsey findings for this age group. Starting in 1973, there was a sudden and steep rise in the number of women students who said they masturbated. More college women today accept the idea that masturbation is healthy. What role does masturbation play in a young persons sexual unfolding? The answer will obviously vary from one person to the next. It can be very important, positive force when there is not a great deal of guilt or conflict. Masturbation can provide important lessons for each of us about our own sexuality. When we masturbate, we experience the physiological changes of sexual response, and these become familiar. We learn that kinds of stimulation are pleasurable.

At orgasm, we discover that we can let go and lose control without any terrible consequences. We learn to integrate fantasies without arousal from touching. All of this can be important for sharing sex with another person. Some mental health professionals believe that masturbation will always be connected with guilt and ambivalence because it involves primitive fantasies that are unacceptable to the civilized, adult mind. Ironically, the liberation of masturbation from irrational fears and the modern attitude of acceptance have generated a new set of problems for some young men and women. They now feel that they should or must masturbate. There are tremendous pressures on young people today to be sexually sophisticated and experienced whether they want to be or not. Some plunge into sex with the idea that once they do it, all their fears and ambivalence will magically melt away. A few months later, they appear in our office in a state of confusion. The fears and ambivalence are worse than ever. About 80 percent of college students have intercourse before they graduate, and most have gone a long way toward putting their sexual inhibitions and fears behind them. It is very upsetting to see how years of psychological growth can be wiped out overnight by one trauma. The kinds of trauma we are talking about are a pregnancy scare, an unwanted pregnancy, an abortion, being raped, or getting sexually transmitted disease. Any of these can be experienced as a punishment for sexual behaviour, and the guilt, fear and shame associated with sex can come flooding back. Half of American young women now have sexual intercourse before they graduate from high school. By contrast, in 1950s, Kinsey found out that by age twenty, only 23 percent of women had lost their virginity. When we were in college, in the Eisenhower-togetherness-grayflannel-suit 1950s, hardly a female admitted to nonvirgin status, not even to her best friends. Now not only is a females first intercourse likely to occur between her sixteenth and nineteenth birthdays, but she is likely to feel proud about it and to tell her best, and not-so-best, friends. The cultural script calls for coolness a kind of low-key enthusiasm that, unfortunately, is not what many girls who experience intercourse for the first time actually feel. Almost all studies agree: The majority have very mixed emotions. A recent study by David Weis at Rutgers University found that one-third of young women felt exploited during their first intercourse. Although about two-thirds of the women said they had experienced sexual pleasure, half of this group also experienced high level of guilt and anxiety. Our daughter was taking an important step in sexual unfolding by asking. What is right for me? Hopefully she will keep on asking, evaluating, and trying to find answers. If she does, she will be like the majority of young people who are deeply interested in questions of sexual values. They dont want to be told what value they should have, but they are eager to think about values.

Peer influence on sexual behaviour and judgements is extremely important. In fact, the sociologist Ira Reiss has found that a students perception of his or peers sexual behaviour is the single most important factor influencing the students sexual behaviour. Notice, we said the students perception not what the peers are actually doing. The opportunity, then, to receive a more accurate picture of peer sexual behaviour is crucial. Virtually all students overestimate the extent of their peers sexual experience. The early Christians separate sex and love. Love was spiritual and holy. Sex was either sinful or just barely acceptable as a means of reproduction within marriage. In the Middle Ages, courtly love became the ideal. The passion of courtly love was fueled by sexual energy, but actual consummation was the enemy of true love. The lady was to be loftily inaccessible. Love combined sexual desire, emotional attachment, and intercourse. The Victorians took the concept one step further by idealizing love within marriage. We are still basically Victorian in our beliefs about love. Although we hear rumblings from time to time of alternative ideals such as open marriage, hardly anyone today questions the assumption that love is some combination of sex and personal intimacy. All these definitions assume that love and sex will be inseparable. Thats interesting because all of us, including these students, know that love or intimacy can exist without sex and sex can be experienced without any intimacy at all. Intimacy usually evolves over time, although we have heard that people describe brief encounters that are intensely close and moving a moment of openness that is an incapsulated intimacy. Boys learn one set of rules; girls learn another. Boys are more likely to learn how to hide feelings and to make less affectionate physical contact. Girls learn the language of emotional expressiveness, are cuddled more, and may even be accomplished flirts by age three. Today, we are more sophisticated: Prejudice between the sexes is more subtle and the ignorance is less profound, but it still exists. Our son found out that both girls and boys were reasonably well informed about their own sex. Girls knew about menstruation and female orgasm. Boys knew about wet dreams, erection, and ejaculation. But both sexes are ignorant about the other sex. Most boys and girls put the pieces of the puzzle together during mid- and late adolescence. They talk to friends, read books, see movies, and attend a sex education course. They have experiences that teaches them not only the facts and the techniques but also the feelings generated by having sex with another person.