An Examination of Sexual Violence Against College Women

Ali Marnon

Intro to Gender & Sexuality H

T/Th 12:30-1:45

Blog Topic: Sexual Violence against Women

Article Review #1

 

Gross, Alan M., Andrea Winslett, Miguel Roberts, and Carol L. Gohm. "An Examination of Sexual Violence Against College Women." Violence Against Women 12.3 (2006): 288-298.

            In the article “An Examination of Sexual Violence Against College Women,” Gross, Winslett, Roberts, and Gohm conduct a study to look at the “occurrence and correlates of a wide range of forms of sexual victimization in a population of women since enrolling in college” (290). This study looks at 903 women enrolled in college. They used women who are in sororities and introductory psychology classes as their study subjects. Through their study, Gross et al. look at the various forms of sexual violence that can occur, who perpetrates sexual violence, and what kind of influences that alcohol can have on a sexual violence encounter. The authors of this study main point is to look at sexual violence against college women and factors that affect sexual violence.

            One of the pieces that Gross et al. look at in their study are the types of sexual violence that are performed. They also look at how prevalent each of these forms are amongst women enrolled in college. According to the research, “Being physically forced to engage in kissing or petting” was the form of sexual violence that was the most common (292). Of the 903 college women that were included in the study, 13.3% of them experienced this form of sexual violence (292).  Another form of sexual violence that’s identified in the study is “having unwanted sexual intercourse because they felt it was useless to try to stop their partner’s sexual advances” (292). This is the second highest form of sexual violence indicated in the study with 9.1% of the participants indicating that they were victims of this violence (292). One of the forms of sexual violence that have lower percentages of occurrence is being “engaged in oral or anal intercourse or vaginal intercourse as a result of a man using his strength to hold her and force her to engage in these acts” (292). Those involved with oral or anal intercourse had a response of 2.7% and those involved with vaginal intercourse had a response of 3.2% (292).

Knowing what types of sexual violence are prevalent is important. However, it is also important to know who is perpetrating these forms of sexual violence. How can we protect ourselves if we don’t know who to watch out for? According to the participants responses, boyfriends were identified as “the most common sexual aggressor” (293). 101 of the participants indicated that their boyfriends were the ones to commit sexual violence against them (293). Others that were identified as sexual aggressors were friends, acquaintances, and strangers. Looking at this list, you would assume strangers may be one of the more prevalent sexual aggressors. However, only 2% of the participants indicated that they were sexually assaulted by strangers (293). This would mean that most sexual violence is committed by someone that the victim knows. 73 of the victims indicated that they were sexually violated by their friends (293). 52 of the victims surveyed said that acquaintances were the ones who committed the sexual violence they faced (293). Who commits the sexual violence can also depend on what kind of sexual violence is occurring. Looking at the research conducted by Gross and his colleagues, if you are looking at sexual violence that is committed because the “partner appeared too aroused for them to try to stop them”, the boyfriend was the perpetrator almost half of the time (293). If you are looking at friends committing the sexual violence, they are usually the perpetrators in instances where “kissing and petting occurred as a result of the man’s use of physical force” (293). Acquaintances are mostly the perpetrators in instances of sexual intercourse “when the woman was incapacitated by alcohol or other drugs” (293).

            After looking at the types of sexual violence and the different perpetrators that commit the forms of sexual violence, you have to look at other factors that can lead up to sexual violence. One of these factors can be being inebriated by alcohol. According to the study, “39% reported having consumed alcohol at the time of their coercive sexual experience” (293). Being inebriated by alcohol could cause some to misinterpret signs of unwanted sexual advances. It could also cause a victim to not be able to fight back against the unwanted sexual violence. The study also looked at the statistics of the male having consumed alcohol before the sexual violence. “45.1% of the abusive experiences were reportedly associated with male alcohol consumption” (293). I believe that having ingested alcohol, a male may become more sexually aggressive than he would have been before the alcohol, causing him to push for sex more than normal, which leads to unwanted sexual advances.

This article relates to my topic of sexual violence against women since it looks at the topic of sexual violence against college women. It is a good article to start looking at my topic. It shows different forms of sexual violence that are committed, different people that could commit sexual violence, and what could influence the sexual violence. Part of this class is to look at sexuality. According to our class syllabus, “As a source of physical pleasure, physical pain, emotional fulfillment, psychological shame, and income, sexuality has wide influences on people’s lives” (Currans, 2014). Some of the types of sexual violence that were described in the article could be a way for a man to experience physical pleasure. They may get off on dominating a women and taking advantage of them. For the women, this can cause physical pain and psychological shame for them. For class, we read the pieces by Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan entitled “Feminisms”, “First Wave Feminism”, “Second Wave Feminism”, and “Third Wave Feminism”. There was a section in the reading entitled “Violence” (Pilcher & Whelehan, 173). In this section Pilcher and Whelehan state that “A broader approach defines violence as behavior which harms others, either physically or emotionally” (Pilcher & Whelehan, 173). Obviously, being sexually assaulted can cause physical harm and emotional harm. The authors even discuss rape and sexual harassment as forms of violence in the article (Pilcher & Whelehan, 173). One way in which the two articles differ is that Pilcher and Whelehan look at the larger forms of sexual violence such as rape (Pilcher & Whelehan, 173) whereas Gross et al. look at smaller, less known forms of sexual violence such as having sex because they were too afraid to stop it as well as larger concepts of rape (Gross et al., 292). Before reading this article, I thought that perpetrators of sexual violence would mostly be strangers. Looking at the study’s findings, I was surprised to find that a lot of the time it would be someone the victim knew. I haven’t really given a lot of thought to the idea of sexual violence before this so this article answered more questions for me than leaving me with questions unanswered. However, I did wonder, after looking at the statistics, why they didn’t include ways to help prevent sexual violence in their conclusion. I also wish that the authors would have discussed the idea of same-sex perpetrators of sexual violence and the prevalence of it.