Sexual Harassment Psychology And Feminism

This book provides a feminist psychological analysis of contemporary resistance to sexual harassment in and around #MeToo. It explores how women’s assumed empowerment in postfeminist and neoliberal feminist discourses has shaped understandings of sexual harassment and social responses to it. This exploration is grounded in the trajectories of feminist activism and psychological theory about sexual harassment. Lazard addresses the gendered binary of female victims and male perpetrators in contemporary victim politics and the treatment of perpetrators within postfeminist and neoliberal frames. In doing so, the author unpacks the cultural conditions which support or deny who gets to speak and be heard in #MeToo politics. This book will be a valuable resource not only for scholars and students from within the psychological sciences and gender studies, but for the wider social sciences and anyone interested in the psychological grounding of the #MeToo movement.

Collectively, the chapters in this book offer a range of insights into and strategies for advancing the struggle against sexual harassment in the late 1990s.

Sexual harassment in the workplace, date rape, and domestic violence dominate the headlines and have recently sparked scholarly debates about the nature of the sexes. Concurrently, the scientific community is conducting research in topics of sex and gender issues. Indeed, more research is being done on the topics of sexual conflict and coercion than at any other time in the history of the social sciences. Despite this attention, it is clear that these issues are being addressed from two essentially different perspectives: one is labeled "feminist", while the other, viewed as antithetical to the feminist movement, is called "evolutionary psychology", which emphasizes the history of reproductive strategies in understanding conflict between the sexes. This book brings together leading experts from both sides of the debate in order to discover how each could offer insights lacking in the other. The editors' overall goal is to show how the feminist and evolutionary approaches are complementary despite their evident differences, then provide an integration and synthesis. In fact, several of the contributors to this unique volume consider themselves advocates of both approaches. As a stimulating presentation of the dynamics of sex, power, and conflict--and a pioneering rapprochement of the diverse tendencies within the scientific community-- this book will attract a wide audience in both psychology and women's studies fields.

This book will be of great interest to critical theorists and discourse analysts across the social sciences, as well as to students and lecturers in social psychology, the psychology of women, psychology and language, women's studies, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

This text brings together in a single volume a broad sampling of research and theory applying a feminist perspective to the study of psychology. The editors have assembled a distinguished roster of contributors to address such topics as historical and scientific foundations, social issues and problems, relationships and sexuality, and psychological and health issues from a social constructionist viewpoint. Discussions of diversity and development are integrated into each chapter.

Accounting for Rape presents an original perspective on the subject of rape, focusing on both female and male sexual violence. The authors investigate everyday beliefs about rape, to examine how blaming the victim and the normalization of rape are achieved by people in a discussion about sexual violence. They synthesize discursive psychology and a feminist standpoint to explore precisely how rape and rape victimhood are defined in ways that reflect the social, political and cultural conditions of society. By analysing conversational data, Anderson and Doherty suggest that the existing social psychological experimental research into rape and rape perception fails to analyse the subtlety and political significance of rape supportive reasoning. Accounting for Rape provides a critical interrogation of the dominant theories and methodologies, focusing on: How the gender and sexual orientation of alleged victims and perpetrators is crucial to social participants when making sense of a rape report and in apportioning blame and sympathy How arguments that are critical of alleged victims are built in ways that are 'face saving' for the participants in the conversations, and how victim-blaming arguments are presented as 'common sense'. The potential of applying this approach in both professional and academic contexts to promote attitude change. The book will be of great interest to those studying social and clinical psychology, cultural studies, sociology, women's studies and communication studies.

A selection of insights into the relationship between men and women Have you wondered: Why women are more sympathetic than men toward O. J. Simpson? Why women were no more supportive of the Equal Rights Amendment than men? Why women are no more likely than men to support a female political candidate? Why women are no more likely than men to embrace feminism—a movement by, about, and for women? Why some women stay with men who abuse them? Loving to Survive addresses just these issues and poses a surprising answer. Likening women's situation to that of hostages, Dee L. R. Graham and her co- authors argue that women bond with men and adopt men's perspective in an effort to escape the threat of men's violence against them. Dee Graham's announcement, in 1991, of her research on male-female bonding was immediately followed by a national firestorm of media interest. Her startling and provocative conclusion was covered in dozens of national newspapers and heatedly debated. In Loving to Survive, Graham provides us with a complete account of her remarkable insights into relationships between men and women. In 1973, three women and one man were held hostage in one of the largest banks in Stockholm by two ex-convicts. These two men threatened their lives, but also showed them kindness. Over the course of the long ordeal, the hostages came to identify with their captors, developing an emotional bond with them. They began to perceive the police, their prospective liberators, as their enemies, and their captors as their friends, as a source of security. This seemingly bizarre reaction to captivity, in which the hostages and captors mutually bond to one another, has been documented in other cases as well, and has become widely known as Stockholm Syndrome. The authors of this book take this syndrome as their starting point to develop a new way of looking at male-female relationships. Loving to Survive considers men's violence against women as crucial to understanding women's current psychology. Men's violence creates ever-present, and therefore often unrecognized, terror in women. This terror is often experienced as a fear for any woman of rape by any man or as a fear of making any man angry. They propose that women's current psychology is actually a psychology of women under conditions of captivitythat is, under conditions of terror caused by male violence against women. Therefore, women's responses to men, and to male violence, resemble hostages' responses to captors. Loving to Survive explores women's bonding to men as it relates to men's violence against women. It proposes that, like hostages who work to placate their captors lest they kill them, women work to please men, and from this springs women's femininity. Femininity describes a set of behaviors that please men because they communicate a woman's acceptance of her subordinate status. Thus, feminine behaviors are, in essence, survival strategies. Like hostages who bond to their captors, women bond to men in an effort to survive. This is a book that will forever change the way we look at male-female relationships and women's lives.

As the backlash against feminist research continues unabated, this important volume signals no retreat. Bringing together the foremost international researchers in the area of violence against women, Researching Sexual Violence Against Women offers excellent assessments of the dimensions of date rape-particularly on college campuses. Reasons why this form of violence against women has provoked such intense responses as well as new methodologies are thoroughly explored. Finally, the work examines the impact this research has on those who do it and calls for more work on women′s victimization and the links between it and other forms of discrimination. --Meda Chesney-Lind, Women′s Studies Program, University of Hawaii--Manoa A remarkable introduction to research in the field, Researching Sexual Violence Against Women provides cutting-edge information on the various studies conducted on North American campuses. This compelling book not only provides a strong overview of the entire field but also simultaneously offers an answer to backlash critics who claim that feminists exaggerate their statistics. Several of the best-known researchers describe their own work and that of others to illustrate both large-scale and local studies. The contributors also take a compelling look into the emotions of sexual assault research by discussing their own emotional experiences of working with rape research, including experiences of harassment by subjects or disrespect by colleagues. In addition, several scholars peruse empirical and epistemological questions--and arrive at surprising conclusions-on feminist participatory research into lesbian battering, reflexivity in studying prostitutes, the gendered nature of research interviews, and white women studying battered women of color. Including chapters on very hot topics and celebrating feminist research methodology, Researching Sexual Violence Against Women speaks to a broad audience, including researchers, academics, professionals, and students in the areas of interpersonal violence, social work, sociology, criminology, women′s studies, psychology, family studies, and counseling as well as college administrators and mental health practitioners.