Fear Of Rape Research Articles

Unmasking Street Harassment in Spain: Prevalence, Psychological Impact, and the Role of Sexism in Women’s Experiences

Street harassment is a widespread problem that affects women from all backgrounds, often leading to negative psychological consequences such as anxiety, depression, and reduced self-worth. Despite the pioneering development of laws protecting women’s rights, Spanish culture often normalizes this type of violence against women, and research on this context remains limited. To address this gap, we conducted a cross-sectional study with 245 women in Spain to investigate the occurrence and impact of street harassment on psychological well-being. We used the Street Harassment Assessment Scale, a self-report measure designed to evaluate the prevalence and frequency of street harassment, and explored its association with anxiety, fear of rape, avoidance behavior, self-esteem, and adherence to sexist beliefs. The results showed that 98% of women experienced street harassment, with 80% reporting monthly occurrences. The frequency of street harassment was correlated with increased anxiety, fear of rape and avoidance behavior, and lower self-esteem. Additionally, the results supported the link between the endorsement of sexist ideology and lower identification of events. Collectively, the results underscore the negative impact of street harassment on women’s well-being and freedom, highlighting its role as a patriarchal tool that perpetuates female objectification and subordination. An integrative feminist perspective involving various fields, including psychology, public policy, and education, among others, is necessary to create safer environments for women.

“What about the Rapists?” The Political Psychology of Women’s Policing Attitudes

ABSTRACT Past research on crime and punishment attitudes has considered the effects of racial identity, racial animus, gender identity, and partisanship – or some combination of these factors. I focus on the role of a particular gendered emotional pathway: women’s fear of rape (FOR). Within the context of a racialized rape culture, I argue that FOR affects how women think about policing. Using Cooperative Election Study and FBI data from 2020, I explore the political determinants of FOR and how it shapes American women’s policing attitudes. Women’s fear of sexual violence is both partisan and racialized, with Republican and White women reporting the most fear. I demonstrate that White Democratic women who are more afraid of rape are more likely to feel safe around police officers, while Republican women feel safe around police regardless of their level of fear. Women who are more afraid of rape are less likely to support police reform efforts that aim to reduce police presence and militarization, or provide accountability for past wrongdoing. This link between FOR and support for masculinist institutions extends to attitudes on the military when its actions are framed as protectionary. The results reveal a disturbing paradox in which women who are most afraid of sexual violence are less willing to challenge state institutions that enact violence, including sexual violence.

Toward a more domain-specific conceptualization of female traits: A commentary on Benenson et al. (2022).

Benenson et al. (2022) amass impressive evidence of robust sex differences as support for expanding "staying alive" theory. We argue for a broader and more domain-specific conceptualization focusing on life history tradeoffs between survival and mating success. Using three examples - women's disgust, fear of rape, and cultivation of bodyguards - we illustrate these tradeoffs and suggest a broader theoretical framework.

True Crime Consumption as Defensive Vigilance: Psychological Mechanisms of a Rape Avoidance System.

The circumvention of female reproductive choice via rape is a costly and evolutionarily persistent threat to women's reproductive fitness. This is argued to have generated selection pressure for a precautionary threat management system for rape avoidance among women. Such a system would regulate women's fear of rape as a functional emotional response to inputs providing information about the current risk and reproductive cost of rape. Fear of rape is expected to subsequently motivate adaptive behavior to avoid threats to one's reproductive choice. The current research tested key tenets of this proposed system and found that women report greater fear of rape as a function of characteristics that alter the likelihood of being victimized, including being younger, living in a neighborhood perceived as dangerous, living in close proximity to family, and having been the victim of a sexual assault in the past. We also discuss mixed and null results with respect to the role of relationship status and mate value. In turn, fear of rape was associated with behavior expected to reduce one's risk of being victimized. Specifically, women who were more fearful of rape reported consuming true crime media with greater frequency and indicated that this consumption was specifically motivated by the desire to learn strategies to prevent or escape an attack. Overall, results were fairly consistent with a threat management system approach and may help to explain why fear of rape is a powerful feature of women's psychology.

Stranger Harassment and PTSD Symptoms: Roles of Self-Blame, Shame, Fear, Feminine Norms, and Feminism

Stranger harassment is a prevalent experience for many women but is often trivialized as a social problem (Kearl 2014; Vera-Gray 2016). As a result, there is a lack of knowledge related to understanding women’s lived experiences of stranger harassment. Our study attends to this gap in the literature by examining the relation between experiences of stranger/street harassment and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity among 367 young adult U.S. women. We also examined novel explanatory (i.e., self-blame, shame, and fear of rape), risk (adherence to traditional feminine norms of sweet and nice and sexual fidelity), and resiliency (feminist identification) factors in predicting PTSD symptom severity via a moderated mediation model. We found that stranger harassment was both directly and indirectly related to PTSD symptom severity via more self-blame, greater shame, and more fear of rape along three dimensions—taking rape precautions, fear of men, and safety concerns. In addition, we found a significant conditional indirect effect, in which the indirect effect of stranger harassment on PTSD symptom severity via shame was stronger among women with higher levels of sexual fidelity. Furthermore, the conditional indirect effect of stranger harassment on PTSD symptom severity via self-blame was contingent on feminist identification such that these relations were stronger among women with lower levels of feminist identification. Our results underscore the potential negative impact of stranger harassment experiences on women’s mental health and the importance of targeting self-blame, shame, fear, gender-related norms, and feminist attitudes in intervention strategies.

Calibrating fear of rape: Threat likelihood and victimization costs

Using an evolutionary perspective, we test the hypothesis that women's fear of rape will vary as a function of individual characteristics that increase vulnerability to rape, or which exacerbate the reproductive consequences thereof (i.e., mate value and conception risk). We also examine the internal structure and construct validity of the Fear of Rape (FOR) Scale (Senn & Dzinas, 1996). In a large sample of women (N = 1267) the FOR scale demonstrated uni-dimensionality, internal reliability, and construct validity. An interaction between conception risk and mate value indicated that mate value is a positive predictor of women's FOR among women at high conception risk, but not low conception risk. These findings are consistent with the idea that women possess a psychological system for protecting reproductive choice that is sensitive to both the threat likelihood and reproductive costs of victimization.

The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature by Suzanne M. Edwards

Reviewed by: The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature by Suzanne M. Edwards Vickie Larsen Suzanne M. Edwards. The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. vii, 193. $95.00. Suzanne Edwards's The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature is not about rape, but about having been raped, about living on within the dominant epistemology of the European Middle Ages as a survivor of sexual assault. Edwards's challenging, deeply troubling—and also supremely timely—introduction challenges her readers to acknowledge [End Page 465] how their own investments in condemning rape and in calling for justice may come at the expense of accompanying survivors in their survival. It opens with a passage from City of God, in which Augustine offers theological consolation to the rape victims of invading Visigoth soldiers during the siege of Rome in 410 ce. For Augustine, Edwards tells us, rape is "an extreme bodily experience of dispossession" that "reorganizes embodiment around the knowledge that one has never been as self-possessed as one might have thought." Augustine defends the "moral, ethical and material" integrity of the rape victim and claims that any shame that a survivor might feel results not from guilt, but from "a consciousness of the self as constitutively dispossessed" (7). Regardless of how others might view the victims of 410, Augustine attributes to them a "painful—but spiritually valuable" knowledge of human limitation (8). I read and I rage at Augustine's homage to the survivor, and at Edwards's investment in it, and perhaps even at her willingness to work through it—carefully and disinterestedly—for her readers. In an age (like every other) when people of all gender identities suffer from sexual violence, some of it inside Christian spaces, Augustine's commitment to seeing victims as they live on after rape—rather than simply averting his eyes—is hardly consoling, and the supreme knowledge of "dispossession" that he accords to rape victims—with its implications of a universal powerlessness against predation—stings like salt in a wound. In Chapter 1, Edwards examines Thomas Aquinas's determination in Summa theologiae that suffering rape in obedience to God counts as martyrdom. Edwards patiently untangles Aquinas's "strained" negotiation of the problem that martyrdom must be chosen willingly while rape is, by definition, a violation of the will (23). She uses Aquinas's understanding of fear in rape narratives—fear of the loss of virginity and fear of surviving the separation of the self from the will—to frame her comparison of Ambrose's and Goscelin of St. Bertin's hagiographic retellings of the life of the Virgin of Antioch. In De virginibus, Ambrose narrates the story of the virgin's double bind: a traditional martyrdom is off the table; the virgin must choose between worshipping idols and being sent to work in a brothel. She chooses the brothel in obedience to her god, and in so doing chooses her own rape. Her first client helps her escape, and they both end up properly martyred, but not until she has consented to rape. According to Edwards, Ambrose's version emphasizes the virgin's understanding of rape as martyrdom, her rescue from it [End Page 466] being convenient for readers, but not essential to her own progress toward martyrdom. Goscelin's telling of the same tale in his Liber confortatorius emphasizes instead the virgin's fear of rape and its shameful aftermath. Goscelin's survivor will not so much be dead to the world, martyred through rape, but will live out whatever remains of her life in penitent humiliation as a whore. Edwards closes this chapter by mapping the links between rape and death in the pseudo-hagiographic Life of Christina of Markyate. Christina is not a martyr, but her pursuit of sanctity requires her to live in fear of rape and repeatedly escape from impending sexual assault. Edwards's partnering of Christina's vita with the hagiographic narratives is not entirely satisfying, insomuch as martyrdom by death or rape do not factor into the narrative (Christina valiantly rescues her virginity for her chosen spouse, Jesus). The hagio-graphic narratives might have been more...

Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape by Kelly Oliver

Reviewed by: Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape by Kelly Oliver Christine N. Stamper (bio) Kelly Oliver. Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape. New York: Columbia UP, 2016. Print. Kelly Oliver's study of how society views sexual assault takes a two-pronged approach by examining both real life scenarios from college campuses and youth media portrayals of violence against girls and young women in books and films such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Twilight. Throughout Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape, Oliver "consider[s] the contradictory ways in which social media is changing our attitudes toward sexual assault and the reporting of rape" (8). Throughout the book she compares the strong, "hunting girls" of fiction to the hunted girls at universities in order to investigate the ways media might be shaping how campuses discuss and handle sexual assault for real women. In addressing fiction, Hunting Girls analyzes several protagonists who are generally considered strong female characters. In doing this, Oliver also looks at the way these books and movies continue to perpetuate rape and assault culture, despite their focus on women who "give as good as they get" (27). For instance, in her discussion of the film adaptation of Veronica Roth's young adult novel Divergent, Oliver points out a scene in which protagonist Tris, in a drug induced hallucination showing her worst fears, is attacked by her boyfriend. Here Tris "is afraid that her boyfriend might rape her. This is not a fear of rape in general, or a fear of men, but rather a fear of 'date rape.' . . . [T]he scene makes manifest a deep-seated fear that hits close to home—namely, that like Tris, girls are at risk of being drugged, incapacitated, and raped by those closest to them" (40). Comparing protagonists to the classic tale of Sleeping Beauty and the Greek goddess Artemis, Oliver also includes Katniss from Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Disney's Maleficent, Bella from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, and Ana from E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey to show how these "strong" women are still sexual prey to the men around them. Wondering what this depiction does for younger viewers, Oliver contests that these young female protagonists are "[n]ot your grandma's princesses: rather than passively waiting, these strong girls fight and kill like men, and sometimes they ask for kinky sex. Perhaps this signals some kind of progress" (25). However, this empowered portrayal becomes complicated when viewing the violence through the context of "fraternity brothers [who] are marching around Yale openly chanting, 'No means yes, yes means anal,' [meaning] it is crucial to ask whether this type of progress actually benefits girls and women" (25). In her examination of current events on university campuses, Oliver not only offers statistics that show how much rape and sexual assault affects young women, particularly those in college, but also demonstrates how technology is changing how rape cases are prosecuted. Relying heavily on Kirby Dick's [End Page 282] 2015 documentary The Hunting Ground, Oliver discusses how universities have cultivated serial rapists, not only because victims are hesitant to report but also because administrations tend to keep cases in-house and do not expel students, particularly athletes, for rape cases. However, where the text truly adds to conversations about rape culture is in its demonstration of how technology is changing the ways sexual assault is documented, and therefore how seriously authorities treat victims' claims. Oliver discusses the prevalence of "creepshots" or voyeuristic photos and videos taken of unaware or unconscious women. Photographing or filming rape and assault has become a new and disturbing norm, and Oliver makes a compelling case for how this trend actually allows for the conviction of more rapists: now that there is hard proof that an assault occurred, cases do not depend on conflicting reports from the people involved. She also discusses consent phone apps, which record videos of partners consenting prior to their sexual encounter. However, these apps seem to protect men from future rape charges more than ensuring consent, as they treat consent as a blanket statement...

La relación entre el miedo a la violación y el sexismo benévolo en una muestra de mujeres de Ciudad Juárez (México)

A study was conducted on the relationship between fear of rape and benevolent sexism in 2 samples of women from Ciudad Juarez (Mexico). Using a correlational design, in Study 1 (N=225 women) it was found that fear of rape was positively related with benevolent sexism, but it was not related with hostile sexism. In Study 2 (N=188 women) fear was experimentally manipulated using 3 experimental conditions: fear of rape, fear of crime, and a control group. Results showed that there was a casual effect of fear of rape on benevolent sexism shown by women. A discussion is presented on how fear of rape, through its effects on benevolent sexism, could contribute to maintain gender inequality between men and women.

Understanding the Relationships Among White and African American Women’s Sexual Objectification Experiences, Physical Safety Anxiety, and Psychological Distress

Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) asserted that sexual objectification experiences are likely related to women’s physical safety anxiety; however, to date, very few studies have examined this relationship. Using a sample of 228 U.S. undergraduate women (n = 133 Black/African American; n = 95 White) from a Southeastern university, this study explored the relationships among sexual objectification experiences, physical safety concerns (i.e., perceived risk of crime, fear of crime, and fear of rape), and overall psychological distress. Findings revealed that Black/African American women reported more sexual objectification experiences and fear of crime than White women. Results of a measured variable path analysis suggested that perceived risk of crime fully mediated the relationships between sexual objectification experiences and fear of crime for both groups of women. Moreover, perceived risk of crime fully mediated the relationship between sexual objectification experiences and psychological distress for Black/African American women, but not White women. For White women only, fear of rape partially mediated the relationship between perceived risk of crime and fear of crime, and perceived risk of crime fully mediated the relationship between sexual objectification experiences and fear of rape. Taken together, the results suggest that a sociocultural context that objectifies women and their bodies is related to their sense of safety and security in the world.

Perceptually Contemporaneous Offenses: Explaining the Sex-Fear Paradox and the Crimes that Drive Male and Female Fear

Scholars have long noted a sex-fear of crime paradox, where women, who generally have lower victimization risk, have much higher fear of crime than men. One explanation for these differences is perceptually contemporaneous offenses (Warr 1984) that link fear of one crime, like sexual assault, to a variety of perceptually related crimes. When fear of rape is included in fear models the sex-gap is generally reduced. Recent work in the area, that involved disaggregating samples by sex, has found that the notion of perceptually contemporaneous offenses may apply to men as well as women. Few studies have combined these related lines of inquiry and tested fear of rape and fear of assault in the same model. This article will use data from a 2010 Internet survey to test whether “fear of rape” or “fear of assault” better explain the sex-gap between male and female fear levels, and which crimes serve as “master offenses” for men and women.

Bastard Immigrants: Asylum Seekers Who Arrive by Boat and the Illegitimate Fear of the Other

Bastard Immigrants: Asylum Seekers Who Arrive by Boat and the Illegitimate Fear of the Other

Reflections on Researching Rape Resistance

This article provides a retrospective account of my experience embarking on research about women's resistance to rape, including reflections on personal and professional experiences related to studying this topic. I discuss factors inspiring my interest, including pioneering feminist rape researchers, my experience as a woman living with the reality and fear of rape, and influential mentors who facilitated my career development as a scholar in graduate school and beyond. I weave this narrative together with my thoughts about how the study of resistance relates to other important issues in the field of sexual assault including alcohol, recovery, and prevention.

Fear of Rape Among College Women: A Social Psychological Analysis

This article examines social psychological underpinnings of fear of rape among college women. We analyze data from a survey of 1,905 female undergraduates to test the influence of 5 subjective perceptions about vulnerability and harm: unique invulnerability, gender risk, defensibility, anticipatory shame, and attribution of injury. We include 3 sources of crime exposure in our models: past sexual victimization, past noncontact violent victimization, and structural risk measured by age, parent's income, and race. Separate measures of fear of stranger and acquaintance rape are modeled, including variables tapping current versus anticipatory fear, fear on campus versus everywhere, and fear anytime versus at night. The data show that fear of rape among college women appears more grounded in constructed perceptions of harm and danger than in past violent experiences.

Ladies on the Loose: Contemporary Female Travel as a "Promiscuous" Excursion

This paper maps gendered trouble spots in contemporary works of female travel. Since travel itself is a metaphor for the slippage or displacement of cultural knowledge, there is need for closer and more complex readings of the female practice. This paper locates the contemporary female traveller on ground and on page, and flags some of the cultural myths and misconceptions that affect how she moves through the world. When women travel, they inscribe themselves across landscapes that have been previously overlooked, openly discarded and largely unexamined. In doing so, they travel intricate courses due to historical connections between wandering and promiscuity and continuing confusions between issues of mobility and morality in the modern world. Taking gender then as its interpretative parameter, this paper explores the troublesome nature of women’s travel, citing various texts as examples.

The role of victim–offender relationships in predicting fear of rape among college women

Women’s fear of rape and sexual assault, particularly of college women, has firmly been established in the literature. What is not clear, however, is what causes this fear. The current study sought to further explore what causes college women’s fear of rape using a sample of 224 college women. The data analyzed was collected through an Internet survey that included items asking women about their levels of fear, victimization experiences, perceived risk, and perceptions of crime and disorder. The current research also sought to examine if the correlates of fear varied across temporal situation and victim–offender relationship. The results indicated that only perceived risk of rape and crime and disorder consistently predicted women’s fear of rape across temporal situations and victim–offender relationships. Other findings suggest that some constrained behaviors and victimization experiences have a relationship with fear, but these relationships are qualified by temporal situation and victim–offender relationship.

The Experience of Stress and Trauma: Black Lesbians in South Africa

The qualitative study explored the socio-cultural experiences of Black lesbians in South Africa. Participants were ten Black lesbians living around Johannesburg, Gauteng Region. Their ages ranged between 20 and 37 years. We used a phenomenological approach. The interview technique adopted by the researchers is the one described by Cohen and Manion (1989). For the analysis of the interviews the researchers followed the guidelines of Potter and Hepburn (2005), and for the transcription of the interviews we used the Jefferson Transcription system (Jefferson, 2004). The women reported experiencing stresses and traumas from fear of rape and violence. They perceived lack of support from the community and their family. Furthermore, they felt disempowered from their socio-cultural invisibility within their culture.

Fear of Crime among College Students: A Test of the Shadow of Sexual Assault Hypothesis

Women’s fear of rape and sexual assault has been both theoretically and empirically linked to their fear of other types of crimes, a phenomenon referred to as the shadow of sexual assault hypothesis in past research. This thesis has been supported across specific populations (i.e., the general population of women in the United States and college women in the United States), but the research examining the shadow of sexual assault hypothesis has suffered from methodological limitations. The current research corrected these limitations and performed a test of the shadow of sexual assault hypothesis among college and university students across temporal situations and victim-offender relationships. The findings indicate that women’s fear of rape and sexual assault does impact their fear of nonsexual crimes across temporal situations and victim-offender relationships.

Antecedents to Women's Fear of Rape

AbstractThis study assessed the relative merits of sociodemographic variables and psychological variables in understanding women's fear of rape. A comprehensive understanding of the factors involved in women's fear of rape may allow for more effective interventions with women. Four hundred and eleven women, aged 18 years or older participated in the study, which surveyed their fear of rape and experience of rape. In agreement with previous findings, sociodemographic variables contributed significantly but relatively little (13%) to the variance in women's fear of rape. In contrast, psychological factors (perceived likelihood of being raped and perceived severity of consequences) predicted an additional 29% of the variance to this fear. Greater perceived likelihood of being raped functioned as a partial mediating variable between sociodemographic factors of age and relationship status and women's fear of rape. These results are encouraging as psychological models provide more avenues for restructuring such fear and modifying concordant, dysfunctional behaviours. Consequently, these results provide direction to intervention and education programs aimed at reducing women's fear of rape.

‘We live in fear, we feel very unsafe’: imagining and fearing rape in South Africa

abstract This article explores the meanings of rape for 15 women at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, who claim to have not experienced rape. It is based upon qualitative interviews with these women and offers a discursive analysis of their talk. The article shows that the women tend to distance the actual occurrence and threat of rape. At the same time, they assume a natural vulnerability to rape with the result that they imagine and fear it as always possible in the course of their daily lives. The article reconstructs the ways in which the women's imagination and fear of rape adversely impacts upon their sense of safety, agency and belonging in South Africa today. Illustrating the power of discourses to shape both subjective and social realities, it concludes that feminist research and activism must pay attention to the discursive dimensions of the rape crisis in South Africa.