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New Zealand has stubbornly high rates of sexual violence, despite feminist movements like #MeToo. Laura Walters looks at the the societal barriers to ending rape.
The advent of online dating and aggressive porn increasingly appear to be a contributing factor to stubbornly high rates of sexual violence, according to new research.
A series of studies out of Victoria University of Wellington show the changing online landscape may be contributing to, and exacerbating, sexual violence, rape and intimate partner violence.
This is taking place in a world where women are increasingly empowered by feminist movements and economic independence but are still overwhelmingly the victims of sexual abuse.
Online dating and blurred lines around consent, coupled with New Zealand’s current consent regulations, make it difficult to hold perpetrators to account.
The continued objectification and self-objectification of women in media, along with the perpetuation of rape myths in news media, exacerbate the issue.
And increasingly aggressive pornography and a lack of education and conversation about porn is a potentially dangerous mix in a country where about 20 percent of adult women are subjected to sexual assault in their lives.
The research was presented at a day-long symposium, which explored 21st century barriers to rape reform.
Criminology professor and lead researcher Jan Jordan spoke of the long legacy of silencing and objectifying women.
Women were taught to be “beautiful and quiet if you want to be safe”, she said.
The feminist movement and the second-wave feminism did a lot to advance women’s rights and moves towards gender equality and pay equity.
However, the objectification and self-objectification of women has not ceased, rather taken on different forms over the past 40 years.
Research comparing sexual violence cases in 1997 and 2015 found there was little change in the amount of cases that met the evidentiary threshold to proceed to prosecution (1997: 30 percent; 2015: 28 percent), and the number of cases where there was a conviction also remained startlingly low (1997: 13 percent; 2015: 15 percent).
Jordan said this lack of progress was an argument for doing away with New Zealand’s adversarial justice system in relation to sexual violence cases, reviewing the evidentiary threshold, and consent laws.
However, policing did not happen in a vacuum, so the other three pieces of research were commissioned in order to give the wider societal context in which sexual violence occurs.
The part porn plays
The porn industry continues to grow, with 33.5 billion visits to PornHub in 2018, and an average of 92 million daily visits.
As porn has moved online it has become increasingly accessible and industry value has continued to climb.
Rental and ad revenue from adult videos in the 1990s grew into the billions. In 2014, the porn industry was worth $US97b ($145b).
Doctoral candidate Samantha Keene found a troubling increase in the rise of aggressive and degrading sex acts found online.
“Mainstream heterosexual porn is still made by men for men, and tells men that women like to receive aggression and tells women that we should like to receive that.”
Keene analysed 40 years of porn, from magazines in the 1970s, through to adult videos, and online porn.
While research on porn was scarce and academics disagreed whether there was a causal link between aggressive porn and sexual violence, there were worrying trends such as choking – something that was prevalent in sexual violence and intimate partner violence cases.
Multiple experts said this type of porn normalised sexual aggression.
Some believed the depiction of male dominance and aggression in pornography was a backlash against feminism, Keene said.
However, aggressive pornography increasingly included women who were willing participants. And more women were searching for, and watching, porn categorised as ‘rough sex’.
Keene said it was not clear whether it was a form of research, or a way to engage in a fantasy in a safe space. Continue reading
- Image: Dutchreporter
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