Entitlement and Sexualized Violence

As activism moves forward trying to raise awareness about sexualized violence you may have heard people talking about sexualized violence not being about sex or desire, but being about power & control as well as a sense of entitlement held by an offender.  There have been a few metaphors or analogies that people have turned to in an attempt to make the concept more accessible to those who have not challenged themselves to think differently about sexualized violence.  A popular one is making it's rounds on twitter and tumblr where the author suggests that if you hit someone with a spade you wouldn't say that the person was gardening.  A similar analogy would be to make the point that if one person hits another with a baseball bat, you wouldn't say that they were playing baseball.  In both analogies, you would say that the person who did the hitting committed an act of assault.

Sexualized violence can, and should, be viewed through the same lens in that what occurs when someone chooses to commit and act of sexualized violence they are committing violent assault, not having sex.  The distinction is important because it reflects what is actually going on and it puts the focus on to the violence of the act.  When acts of sexualized violence are framed in terms of sex and/or desire it minimizes the impact on those who experience it, sets up a situation where the survivor/victim can start to blame themselves, and creates a situation where the offender is less likely to be held accountable for their actions.

When someone chooses to commit an act of sexualized violence they are exerting their will (power & control) over another human being because they feel that it is their right or that the act is something that's owed to them by the person they've targeted (entitlement).  This is not a decision that gets made randomly nor is it something that is as accidental as, say, stubbing your own toe.  Part of the reason feminists and allies call out sexist media, which the uninformed public usually fails to see the importance of, is that they're trying to call attention to the fact that sexist media is one of the factors that influences the development of our attitudes and beliefs.  When a rape joke goes unchallenged on a regular basis, or many different pieces of media make rape jokes, it becomes normalized and soon becomes something the majority of people mistakenly accept as something that is "just part of life."

Moreover, negative attitudes and beliefs about women have been long established in society, which means that by the time someone is exposed to a rape joke they may have already developed some negative views about women in the first place; usually these pre-established beliefs are instilled in the home by parents and other family members.  So because people are growing up in a society that has accepted violence against women as normal and that when they engage with the world they see media that seems to reinforce this concept any negative attitudes and beliefs are further solidified.

Once something like this has been accepted as "fact" then it becomes part of their worldview and or own worldview is a major tool we use to move through our lives and helps us interact with the world.  If a person has negative views about women, for instance (this process shows up in other areas as well: racism, homophobia, etc), and they've incorporated this into their world view then it gets much easier to engage in more overt negative behavior towards women.  And, unfortunately, the easier it gets the easier it will be for the person in question to engage in the behavior more often and, the more often they engage in said behavior the easier it becomes.  This is the point where entitlement starts to creep in.

Now, how this entitlement comes into play is a very complex and there is a great deal to unpack, but for the purposes of this article I want to focus on three specific factors:

1.  No one has challenged the person's behavior

2.  The person has had their attitudes & beliefs validated on a regular basis

3.  For cis-males, their male privilege has further contributed to the entitlement as they've been raised under the "boys will be boys" framework of excusing violent behavior and not holding them responsible for it.

For those that don't know the framework of "boys will be boys" manifests as girls being told that "he pulled your hair or teased you because he likes you" or if boys fight it is written off as a right of passage and not addressed.  While it doesn't directly manifest in sexual violence down the road, it does send the message to cis-males that their behavior towards women can be violent and that violent behavior, in general, is acceptable for them.

With negative attitudes and beliefs about women established and strong sense of entitlement in place, a person can more easily justify acts of sexualized violence, which may first start out as sexual harassment or it could include incidents of sexual assault, like groping.  Once someone is at the point where they are engaging in acts of sexualized violence they have stopped seeing what they're doing as wrong, so when people challenge them on it or, in the case of Paul Nungesser, they choose to report his actions to an authority they are likely to see that only as an act of violence against them.  In their eyes, or in the eyes of Paul, their actions were justified not only by their own attitudes and beliefs, but also by the greater society they`ve grown up in.  Paul`s sense of entitlement contributed to his choice to commit acts of sexualized violence and Paul`s sense of entitlement contributed to his inability to reconcile how the community responded to him and his behavior.

For Paul Nungesser, he is the only victim in this entire situation.  He was entitled to do what he did and he was entitled to not be held responsible for it.

Source