“The Damage is Permanent”: Law, Women’s “Honor,” and the Psychiatrization of Sexual Violence in Post-reform Turkey

Abstract

Abstract Existing literature is deeply divided on the effectiveness of rape law reforms. Intervening in this literature, this article examines the workings and consequences of ostensibly gender-neutral and victim-friendly reforms in Turkey. Through court observations, document analysis, and interviews with legal actors, I show how complex—and gendered—notions of victimization, harm, and trauma are embedded in sexual assault laws. I argue that the law defines sexual violence as inherently and invariably traumatizing, causing symptoms that can be identified and evidenced through the examination of the mental states of survivors, thus psychiatrizing it. This psychiatrization rests on the idea that rape primarily, and unequivocally, damages women’s “honor.” Consequently, the category of “legitimate victimhood” does not disappear; rather, it is reinvented by medico-legal logics that invoke gendered norms of honor and morality, which infuse and shape deliberations of justice in cases of sexual violence.