Sexualized violence: an introduction

This month we are dealing with sexualized violence. By this, we generally mean acts that have sexual connotations and take place without the consent of those affected. Sexualized violence hurts the victims physically and/or psychologically. They are exposed to the power of the perpetrators, whereby sexuality is used to exert violence.
This ranges from sexual harassment to rape and death. We do not want to use the term to lump different experiences of violence together, because it is important to differentiate between different experiences of violence and the associated consequences for those affected. We want to use the term much more as an umbrella term to make the connection between different such forms of violence visible. We want to address power structures and the underlying system.
The system in which mainly cis¹ men are perpetrators and hurt, rape and kill other people. The system where passing as female and queer people are scared to death at night, where violations of personal boundaries are trivialized and normalized. The system in which perpetrators are protected, where hardly any convictions happen and victims are left alone.

With the postings the coming month we want to offer an introduction to the topic. Since we cannot cover this topic in a single month, and since it is of central importance in the discussion of masculinity, male violence, perpetration and sexuality, we would like to make it clear at this point that sexualized violence and various aspects of it will continue to be a topic in the coming months.

ℹ️ Explanation of terms:

¹Cisgender/cis-gender: For cisgender people, gender identity corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth based on the social classification of their genitalia.