Sexual Violence Against Women: Article Analysis

A lot of the articles that we read this week hit home, like many cisgender women, transwomen and people assigned female at birth I have been harassed and assaulted multiple times. When I was younger I thought that sexual violence against women was something that you should only really report if you were raped. Girls getting groped and messed with seemed normal as so many girls and older women explained that "boys mess with girls when they like them". In "Girls View Sexual Violence as Normal" I read similar experiences, to my own. Many 13 year olds interviewed in this article believed that, "men are unable to control their sexual desires" (Hlavak, 2014:1) this just shows that young girls are being socialized to believe that essentialism makes
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) provided data that showed that 20 percent of girls experience physical and sexual violence from dating partners (Silverman et al. 2001), and sexual assault accounts for one-third of preteen victimization (Finkelhor and Ormrod 2000). There were also findings that young girls experience violence everyday, "...girls are harassed at parties, in school, on the playground, on buses, and in cars" (Hlavak, 2014:344). With sexual harassment and assault occurring so often, it is understandable how young girls can come to believe that their peers behavior is acceptable. It shows that our society has issues with the sexual-objectification of women, double-standards, and with using essentialism as an excuse for the sexual violence against women. Women are still being placed into the role of the victim and are being
Parents should teach their children to have respect for one another and to speak up when touched inappropriately. We should also teach them what it means to be touched inappropriately. We should teach children how to defend themselves and not to be ashamed. In terms of heterosexual violence against women, men can practice begin more aware and educating themselves on rape culture, physical and emotional violence, and their overall privilege as men. They can stand up for women that are in violence situations rather than be a bystander and lastly ask themselves, "how can I change my own thinking about how women are treated". For sexual assault against men we need to start showing more of it and explaining that men can be raped victims too. We need the media to stop portraying male rape victims that were raped by other men. We also need for them to stop painting rape victims as vulnerable, but instead as