Sexual Violence Continuum

Rape as a cultural phenomenon, or stated more simply, rape as a predictable consequence of the power differential between men and women has been a topic of discussion since the creation of the first rape crisis centers. Academics tended to use terms like patriarchy, misogyny and sexism and those words became integral parts of the lexicon used by the women who became the founding mothers of our current sexual assault service delivery system. the basic premise of this concept is that rape does not happen just because one individual chooses to rape another. rape happens because there are attitudes, and norms that allow it to happen.

“What is rape culture? it is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It occurs in a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm. In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.” Buchwald, e. et. al. (1993) transforming a rape culture. minneapolis, mn: milkweed editions. fall | 2006

The continuum was designed as a visual aid to illustrate the concept of rape culture. The objective was to provide a simple way to describe a complex phenomenon. The interesting thing about portraying something as a picture is that even though we draw the picture to represent how we see the issue, how we see the issue is affected by our experience of looking at the picture. In most visual conceptualizations the image not only reflects our belief system but also shapes our belief system. this is one of the things that make them so profound, and the main reason i choose to re-envision the sexual violence continuum.

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