Readings to Remember

Though it was several months ago that we read Liz Kelly's (1987) piece "The Continuum of Sexual Violence" and Kelly's/Radford's (1990) piece "Nothing Really Happened," I still find myself relating each of these readings back to my personal life and the lives of other women. As Kelly (1987) argues, the issue of sexualized violence is best understood not as a matter of "yes" or "no" (yes it was indeed sexualized violence or not it was not) but rather as a matter of degree. As she states, "Sexual violence exists in most women's lives, whilst the form it takes, how women define events, and its impact on them at the time and over time varies" (Kelly, 1987, p. 2). As we discussed, this however is not to suggest that those forms of sexualized violence that are less common or less violent are necessarily less important. This challenges the assumption (foolishly made by various political figures who I cannot remember off the top of my head) that sexualized violence, in its "real" form, only occurs when a nameless, psychotic man jumps out from the bushes and rapes a virginal, "innocent" woman. 

For me personally, this concept has many (discomforting) implications - among them realizing that I myself may have had experiences on what is generally considered the less severe side of the continuum. At the time, since I was not aware of the concept of a continuum, I, like many women, kept telling myself "Well, nothing really happened."

Of course, this forms the basis of Kelly and Radford's piece (1990) which examines the ways in which women are encouraged to invalidate, deligitmize, or otherwise gloss over their experiences of sexualized violence. In my reading, both Kelly's concept of the continuum and the response(s) of "Nothing really happened" formed the basis of Lynn Phillips film, Flirting with Danger: Power & Choice in Heterosexual Relationships (2006). I remember leaving the film showing feeling incredibly uncomfortable and even a bit anxious, because I saw myself and my own experiences through the characters in the film, who, like me, were encouraged to invalidate their experiences.

Kelly, Liz (1987) “The Continuum of Sexual Violence” In: Jarna Holmes and Mary Maynard (eds) Women, Violence and Social Control. Macmillan: pp. 46-60.

Kelly, Liz and Jill Radford (1990) “’Nothing Really Happened’: The invalidation of women’s experiences of sexual violence” Critical Social Policy 10 (30): pp. 39-53.