Lecture 8: collective sexual and gender-based violence (1): collective offenders

Question 1

When is sexual/ gender-based violence collective?

Answer 1

• Causal responsibility: when the violence is committed by a collective.
• Collective responsibility: when the violence is being facilitated, encouraged or condoned by a collective/ society.

Question 2

Collective causal responsibilities

Answer 2

Responsibility for violence in a sense of being the cause of the violence (like being the perpetrator) when violence is being committed in a collective.

Question 3

Collective political responsibilites

Answer 3

Responsibility for being the solution to the problem (like the government being able to intervene during violence) –> violence facilitated, encouraged or condoned by a collective/ society.

Question 4

Male homosociality

Answer 4

Male homosociality is bonding of the same gender (in this case among males).

Question 5

Homosociality and gender-based violence (GBV)

Answer 5

Homosociality plays an enormous role in committing (collective) sexual violence. Peer homosocial cultures (consisting of men) can promote violence against women. Collective GBV expresses and maintains gender hierarchies of power. It’s not the group membership per se, but the norms that foster and justify collective abuse (like homosocial norms).

Example: sexual harassment is often committed in a group due to bragging to peers, showing of and norms between men.

Question 6

Societal responses to collective sexual violence

Answer 6

• Community protection of predators: in a group attack it’s harder to say ‘everyone of these predators had a psychological problems, and that’s why they did it’. This is why collective sexual violence often raises questions about the whole community (‘all Muslims are like this’).
• Outrage at out-group: sexual collective violence often produces a lot of outrage at ‘the other’ groups. Responses to collective GBV are strongly informed by broader group conflict.

Question 7

The role of the media in GBV

Answer 7

The media shaped the dominant ‘frames’ of the events. Frames both produce and limit the meaning of events (like the societal responses to GBV).

Example: ‘migration is the cause of GBV’.

The media’s coverage on GBV influences:
- The societal responses to violence.
- How policymakers define and adres the problem.
- How individuals make sense of what happens.

Question 8

What shaped how journalists report on GBV and collective GBV?

Answer 8

• Journalists personal ideology
• Factors external to journalism (institutionalised sources and primary definers)
• Factors internal to journalism (internal organisation of the newspaper, masculine newsroom culture)

Question 9

Tailhook and the construction of sexual harassment in the media

Answer 9

More than 90% of the Tailhook stories relied on official government sources (which tried to cover up the story), rather than victims stories, producing a dominant class and gendered relations. There was almost no investigative reporting and victims only appeared in the press when they actively contacted alternative media themselves.

This caused a performative effect of the scandal: it accelerated the debate on sexual violence in the military.

Question 10

The New Year’s attack in Cologne and the media’s construction of this

Answer 10

The response to this collective GBV was strongly informed by a broader group conflict (like racism). Framing strategies were used by the media: comparison was made to the harassment in Egypt (Taharrush) and it was blamed on the culture of (a part of) the perpetrators.

This sparked discussion on:
- Dangers of immigration
- Dangers of Muslims
- Moral panic strengthened the support for revision of criminal law
- Now conviction of sexual assault can lead to deportation.
- The incident was used to silence feminist and anti-racists.