Wars and Invisible Girls,Shadow Industries,and the Politics of Not-Knowing

This article begins in the interior of Mozambique during the country's post-independence war with the stories of three girls variously affected by violence. It then follows girls' war experiences in general out from the frontlines to wider international locales where girls face domestic violence in their home communities and civil and labor violence at the hands of (shadow) transnational profiteers; who reap billions of dollars yearly on children's factory, domestic, and sexual labor. The article is set in an overall theoretical framework that explores how a politics of invisibility - literally of 'not-knowing' - has developed in which little public information is available on children's human rights violations or on the political tactics and economic gain that have attended to these violations.     

Political transition and sexual and gender-based violence in South Africa,Kenya, and Zimbabwe: a comparative analysis

This article draws on research conducted in Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe that focused on violence in the context of political transition. The paper examines the relation between political transition and sexual and gender-based violence in the three countries. The paper argues that it is critical to recognise sexual and gender-based violence as bound to systemic gendered inequality if such forms of violence are to be addressed and mitigated when periods of violent conflict end.     

The work of disabled identities in intimate relationships

This article details a thematic analysis of disabled men and women’s accounts of past and present intimate relationships. Drawing upon the sexual stories of 25 disabled people, informants’ intimate relationships are explored as a site of emotional work, and as a site of other forms of (gendered) work. This article critically questions the work carried out by informants and considers the ways in which it was shaped by their lived experiences of gender, sexuality, impairment and disability. The article concludes that the requirement to carry out forms of work within intimate and sexual life constituted a form of psycho-emotional disablism.     

Everyday Restriction: Central American Women and the State in the Mexico‐Guatemala Border City of Tapachula

Media coverage and emerging scholarship have brought increasing international attention to the urgent humanitarian crisis facing Central American transmigrants as they navigate landscapes of violence in Mexico. While stories of Central American immigrants who remain in Mexico are largely absent from this coverage, there is arguably a “Central Americanization” occurring on the southern border through this permanent settlement. Central Americans choosing to establish themselves in the border state of Chiapas do so in a socio‐spatial and political context defined by the introduction of “progressive” state‐ and national‐level migration policies on the one hand and the persistence of discrimination and violence on the other. We know little about the implementation of these policies on the ground, namely how they are applied and the impacts they have on the immigrant experience in Mexico. To begin to fill this gap, this paper focuses on the experiences of Central American immigrant women living in the Mexico‐Guatemala border city of Tapachula. Employing a feminist geopolitical lens, which encourages conducting research and analysis at diverse scales, it examines their everyday interactions with low‐ to mid‐level representatives of the Mexican state as they seek to avail themselves of their legal and social citizenship rights, and the impacts of these interactions on their livelihoods. This article argues that low‐ to mid‐level officials’ actions reveal the importance of a form of extra‐official, subtle, yet pervasive regulation through which immigrant women are denied rights they are entitled to, inducing negative impacts to their livelihoods, which I term everyday restriction.     

Sexuality and the city: exploring the experience of minority sexual identity through storytelling

This article explores the discursive construction of sexual identity through organizational storytelling, in the London office of a global investment bank, InvestCo. Work on the identity of sexual minorities in work organizations is rare, and even more so in the context of an institution such as a bank. Minority sexual identities have largely been ignored by the organizational studies and diversity literatures, but organizations and the researchers who study them, are starting to turn their attention to this previously silenced population. A major difficulty for researchers in this area, and one which has been well researched and documented in other areas of identity construction, is how to access and research this area. This article puts forward the idea that storytelling is an effective way of exploring this still sensitive topic. The results of the research are presented according to different ways in which minority sexual identity is constructed in organizations. This includes a discussion of social identities, displayed and hidden identities, changing identities, accepted and castigated identities and finally congruent and incongruent identities. The article also identifies themes which emerge from the stories about the stories themselves; themes of hidden identities, mistakes, victimhood and resistance. Although of relevance to those interested in the experience of sexual minorities in organizations, the storytelling discursive approach opens up the subject's experiences to a wider audience interested in diversity, discourse theory, ethnography and organizational life in general. The level of access is unusual and the double level story telling research approach could be of use in other areas.     

‘She Knew What was Coming’: Knowledge and Domestic Violence in Social Work Education

Social Work educators are aware that within any class of social work students there are likely to be students with first-hand experience of domestic violence. The Writing Stories project was designed to engage students with social policy learning using experiential accounts. An unintended outcome of the project was the disclosure of students' experience of domestic violence. The accounts of violence offer an interesting juxtaposition with the formalised academic story of violence. This paper, by drawing on the concept of banality, aims to uncover how knowledge is presented in those stories and what challenges this may pose for educators. Feminist research highlights the need for researchers to enable women to tell their stories. Social work values also stress that service-user experience should be central to theorising and knowledge production. However, within an educational relationship these stories also need to be examined for how they can both provide a basis for knowledge and compete with, clash or resist other forms of knowledge. The key argument is that neither the formal, academic forms of knowledge, nor the experiential should be privileged. Instead, it is by working across a spectrum of epistemological methods that practice is best contextualised.     

An intersectional approach to military sexual violence

Despite over 15 years of targeted prevention efforts in the U.S. military, incidence and prevalence rates of sexual violence have remained consistently high. While there has been an abundance of research on military sexual abuse, most studies have explored the issue through reporting isolated demographic variables that correlate with sexual violence vulnerability. However, intersecting oppressions based on race, gender, immigration status, class, sexuality, and other social locations produce diverse risks, experiences, and responses to sexual abuse. In the military context, factors such as branch, rank, unit, deployment status, and combat experience also shape experiences with and responses to sexual harassment and assault. This article argues for an intersectional approach to understand military sexual violence to better unpack the immensely varied sexual abuse experiences that service members may have. Additionally, prior research on the relationship between the military, masculinity, and sexual violence has often ignored the fluidity of masculinity and the myriad of ways in which gender, violence, and victimization are related. In advocating for an intersectional approach to research on military sexual violence, this article also challenges assumptions of a static military masculinity. Finally, an intersectional perspective can reveal the inadequacy of policies, practices, and research that assume a uniform victim experience.     

The “ethical loneliness” of male sexual violence survivors in Northern Uganda: gendered reflections on silencing

In this article, I explore the gendered silencing of conflict-related sexual violence against men and of male survivors’ lived realities in Northern Uganda using the frame of masculinities. Utilizing Stauffer’s conceptual framework of “ethical loneliness,” I elucidate how male survivors’ experiences of sexual violence are characterized by various layers of externally imposed silences by different actors and institutions often over decades. I demonstrate that the harms experienced by survivors in Northern Uganda are characterized by silence, isolation and abandonment, “compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being heard” and constituted through multiple rounds of neglect. Exemplified through the narrative of a male survivor, I argue that in particular, the externally imposed silencing by institutions designed to listen entrenches further harms. I unpack how these layered silences are gendered and conditioned by socially constructed incompatibilities between masculinities and vulnerabilities, which disallow men to openly speak about their sexual violations and to seek services and support. Working with the concept of “ethical loneliness,” I propose a novel theoretical framework for analyzing the effects of externally imposed and gender-specific silencing with wider utility beyond male sexual violence, applicable to survivors of political and wartime gendered violence more broadly.     

Education and affinity? pedagogies of sexual citizenship in LGBTIQ youth support videos

ABSTRACT

This article provides an analysis of some of the ways in which educational resources for youth frame identity, sexuality and normativity within broader contexts of support and sexual citizenship. It focuses on online video resources for young people produced in Australia by the LGBTIQ support and curriculum advocacy organisation Safe Schools Coalition Australia and by the Minus18 Foundation. Developed as part of the larger All of Us educational package, these videos are explicitly pedagogical, presenting the viewer with ‘real life’ experiences from a range of young Australians. We consider the work the All of Us videos do in engaging with concepts of sexual citizenship, particularly as they seek to help young people navigate multiple forms of belonging and support. Of special interest is a series of tensions between normalising tendencies and the complexification of identities, communities, intimacies and belongings. While the videos may be perceived to operate within largely normative conceptualisations of sexuality, they explore ways of building affinity, peer support, and alternative ways of being that extend well beyond the logics usually offered by these frameworks.     

Research on Social Movements and Political Violence

Attention to extreme forms of political violence in the social sciences has been episodic, and studies of different forms of political violence have followed different approaches, with “breakdown” theories mostly used for the analysis of right-wing radicalism, social movement theories sometimes adapted to research on left-wing radical groups, and area study specialists focusing on ethnic and religious forms. Some of the studies on extreme forms of political violence that have emerged within the social movement tradition have nevertheless been able to trace processes of conflict escalation through the detailed examination of historical cases. This article assesses some of the knowledge acquired in previous research approaching issues of political violence from the social movement perspective, as well as the challenges coming from new waves of debate on terrorist and counterterrorist action and discourses. In doing this, the article reviews contributions coming from research looking at violence as escalation of action repertoires within protest cycles; political opportunity and the state in escalation processes; resource mobilization and violent organizations; narratives of violence; and militant constructions of external reality.

If I Am Not Straight or Gay,Who Am I?

Women that are violating heterosexual norms for sexual desire will run into issues about identity. This study explores ways of dealing with sexual identities that seems to provide a workable solution for women when they navigate and negotiate their lives as lesbians in a society dominated by heterosexual norms. The data sources are therapeutic conversations and followed-up interviews with ten women. The stories told by these women fail to fit the phases and the categorizations of the traditional coming out model. In handling dilemmas, ambiguity seems to be a resource to them. Their efforts and solutions are more in accordance with queer theory, when they navigate between dichotomies of homosexual/heterosexual, feminine/masculine, normality/deviance and personal responsibility/coincidence.     

Witnessing the effects of political violence in families: mechanisms of intergenerational transmission and clinical interventions

In this era of globalization, when news about political violence can haunt anyone, anywhere, those whose families have suffered political violence in the past are particularly vulnerable to current distress. Skilled in understanding transgenerational processes, family therapists need to be familiar with the mechanisms by which children are exposed to the effects of political violence suffered by their elders-that is, the ways in which they become their witnesses. This article presents a framework for understanding how the trauma of political violence experienced in one generation can "pass" to another that did not directly experience it, and proposes a model to guide clinical intervention.     

Portraits of emigration: sour milk and honey in the promised land

This article analyzes the moral tones of public emigration stories through an exploratory analysis of newspaper stories published between 1990 and 1993 in a region in Poland with a century-old tradition of out-migration. Media stories are fertile ground for examining values and myths because they negotiate between the micro-level process of individuals constructing meanings and the macro-level process of political economies producing meanings. I identified two sets of contradictory stories: (1) stories about the sending country cast emigrants as either home builders or home wreckers, and (2) stories about the receiving country depicted America as either Horatio Alger's land of possibility or a morally degenerate place where greed corrupts the soul. To explain these contradictions, I compare the institution of migration to (post)modern culture and note that both contribute to social diversity and structural differentiation which lead to value inconsistencies.     

Sexual Orientation,Gender, and Gender Identity Microaggressions: Toward an Intersectional Framework for Social Work Research

ABSTRACT

Professional ethics compel social workers to address all forms of discrimination and oppression. Microaggressions can contribute to health disparities for marginalized groups; yet, little is known about the frequency, mechanisms, and impact of microaggressions on sexual minorities, cisgender women, and gender minorities—particularly for those with intersecting marginalized identities. This article extends microaggression literature by exploring interrelated constructs of sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity microaggressions, and offering recommendations for future research using an intersectional lens to foster an integrated and complex understanding of microaggressions. Implications of an intersectional microaggression framework for social work education and practice are discussed.     

Playing safe: Media coverage of child sexual abuse prevention strategies

This paper examines the media coverage of preventing child sexual abuse. It draws on a content analysis of all press and TV news coverage about child sexual abuse that appeared in the UK during a complete 12-month period. The findings demonstrate that the bulk of the coverage was case-based, for example focusing on the Orkney case. There was very little opportunity for broader discussion of general issues of concern, including how sexual assaults against children might be prevented. The coverage of ‘prevention’ which did exist drew on a very narrow range of debates and was disproportionately concerned with abuse outside the home (abductions by strangers, or abuse within institutions such as schools or children's homes). Discussions about prevention were dominated by reactive news stories generated by particular ‘scandals’. The coverage was also largely drawn from a small constituency of official source agencies (such as government officials, court proceedings and police statements). There were few attempts to address the broader social conditions which might facilitate or inhibit sexual violence or to examine explicitly political analyses of the problem. The paper argues for a more diverse discussion about ways of preventing sexual violence against children, especially assaults by fathers, uncles, brothers and friends of the family. This demands close attention to the ways in which the mass media operate, as well as the priorities of source agencies. The paper points to factors within news production practices which both obstruct and facilitate debate about prevention and concludes by suggesting strategies to promote this issue as a vital part of the public agenda.     

‘All in all it is just a judgement call’: issues surrounding sexual consent in young people’s heterosexual encounters

In the UK, there has been growing concern about young people’s understanding of sexual consent, with the views of young people themselves often lost in academic and educational policy debates. However, the focus on high rates of sexual violence has meant a lack of attention on the everyday negotiation of consensual heterosexual activity, leading to assumptions being made regarding young people’s lack of understanding of sexual consent. This paper emerges from a wider study of over 500 young people which sought to uncover their understanding of the issues. Drawing on data from workshops and the open text responses to an on-line survey the findings presented in this paper show that the majority of heterosexual young people understood the complexity of sexual consent as an embodied process, which can be difficult to define, talk about or practice uniformly. This complex understanding, in which sexual consent is a continuum rather than a dichotomy, has implications for sexual education initiatives. We argue that it is only by providing a closer understanding of how – within consensual sexual activities – young people understand and enact sexual consent through a range of embodied communication strategies that education surrounding sexual assault will become meaningful.     

Belonging: women living with intellectual disabilities and experiences of domestic violence

Women with an intellectual disability are under-represented in domestic violence research, yet they are one of the most vulnerable groups who are at risk of violence and abuse. This article aims to contribute to the domestic violence field by reporting on a narrative dialogic performative study, which utilised a feminist poststructural perspective to explore significant relationships and the concept of belonging in the lives of women with a mild intellectual disability. Four in-depth narrative interviews were conducted. The study found that the women shared similar stories of devaluation and rejection in childhood and hence the women’s search for belonging contributed to their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse in domestic violence relationships. The paper argues that gendered discourses and constructions of intellectual disability regulate domestic violence as a personal problem or way of life for women with intellectual disabilities.     

Family violence laws: Traditional narratives and the (in)visibility of lesbian relationships and lesbian-parented families

Abstract

Feminist advocacy and activism over the last 40 years broke historic ground in shining a light on “domestic” or “family” violence, traditionally conceptualized as male violence against female intimate partners and their children. This has resulted in a large body of research, particularly in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and similar jurisdictions, around the gendered nature of family violence and violence within heterosexual relationships and heterosexual-parented families. As a consequence, the predominant narrative—in political, policy, and advocacy settings—is largely heteronormative. Less research has focused on family violence in non-heterosexual relationships. The data that do exist have employed different methodological approaches and there are limitations on the extent to which they can be compared to the data on violence within heterosexual relationships. However, the existing research does demonstrate that family violence within lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) communities is a significant issue. Even so, the current narrative does not acknowledge this, and predominantly reflects heterosexual norms of intimate relationships and family structures in society. LGBTI relationships are described as “invisible” in policy and practice responses to family violence, due to the failure to acknowledge violence in such communities. This article explores these claims in relation to lesbian relationships in the context of Australian legislative responses to family violence. It considers the extent to which family violence laws in two Australian jurisdictions recognize and frame lesbian identity in intimate relationships and lesbian-parented families. This is considered in light of the emerging conceptualization of family violence in lesbian relationships and lesbian-parented families, as evidenced by the wider scholarly literature on the nature and dynamics of such violence.     

#IAmNotAfraidToSayIt: stories of sexual violence as everyday political speech on Facebook

ABSTRACT

The debate about the power and influence of networked publics often focuses on large-scale political events, activist campaigns and protest activity – the more visible forms of political engagement. On the other hand, digitally mediated activism is often questioned and sometimes derided as a lesser form of dissent, as it is easier to engage in, highly affective, and offers few assurances of sustainability of the change it calls for. But what about everyday political speech online, where social media platforms can contribute to a personalisation of politics? Can social media users express their views online and make a difference? This paper analyses around 3500 Facebook posts stemming from the #ЯНеБоюсьСказати (Ukrainian for #IAmNotAfraidToSayIt) online campaign that was started in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook in July 2016 by a local activist to raise awareness of how widespread sexual violence and sexual harassment are in the Ukrainian society. The paper argues that networked conversations about everyday rights and affective stories about shared experiences of injustice, underpinned by the affordances of social media platforms for sharing and discussing information and participating in everyday politics, can emerge as viable forms of networked feminist activism and can have real impact on the discursive status quo of an issue, both in the digital sphere and beyond it.