2015 Association for Women in Psychology Conference

As evidenced by recent attention from the press, questions around institutional policy, and public outcry, politics regarding sexual violence have become particularly pertinent within Western culture. These articulations play out across an array of discourses, including media landscapes. Drawing from popular culture and contemporary literature, television, and film, the papers in this symposium will utilize feminist frameworks to delineate how our society understands and reacts to sexual violence. This symposium serves to ask: Where and how do we learn about sexual violence? Why do media outlets so often romanticize and glorify abusive relationships? What are the implications of consuming these problematic media images? Both presenters will extrapolate from their continued research on rape culture to analyze the real-world impact of these media depictions. The specific and insidious abusive links within several popular television series and novels, among them Scandal, Game of Thrones, Twilight, and 50 Shades of Grey, are analyzed. The presenters assert that the marketing and development of these media series suggest that abuse is acceptable and favorable, and that rape serves to function primarily as a plot device. Norms of masculinity, femininity, and heterosexuality all play a role in constructing images of victims and abusers, “good girls” and “bad girls”, and notions of true love. Furthermore, these portrayals contribute to the existence and proliferation of rape culture. The presenters find that these media examples actively harm individual consumers and inspire the creation of similarly problematic media-- an effect which is exacerbated when that content is disseminated across the globe. Additionally, the presenters bring an activist dimension to their work by including victims’ words and experiences, and by confronting the culture of silence that surrounds sexualized harm. This symposium strives to cultivate new directions for feminist social justice efforts, particularly in approaches to rape, resistance, prevention, violence, and victimhood.

Interpersonal violence, which includes child abuse, sexual violence, and intimate partner violence, is major problem in U.S. society and leads to deleterious consequences for both victims and society. Recently, research has begun to examine among women the intersection of lifespan victimization, substance abuse, and criminal offending and incarceration. Little research, however, has examined these intersections within the context of a residential recovery community using a mixed methodological perspective. The purpose of the current study was to examine this gap in the literature, and the papers presented as part will report on the various findings from this multi-method study. Participants were 28 women affiliated with a transitional housing program, Support, Education, Empowerment & Directions (SEEDs), in Phoenix, Arizona. Women completed a survey, a detailed life history calendar, and interview grounded in Hermeneutic phenomenological practices. Participants ranged in age from 27 to 58 with a mean age of 43.5 and were predominately white (58%), heterosexual (58%) and divorced (58%) or never married (31%). All of the women in the sample were low income and the majority reported some education beyond high school (65%) and previous incarceration (73%). The papers presented in this symposium focus on the results from this study. The author of the first paper will discuss findings regarding the onset and maintenance of victimized female substance users. Another paper to be presented examined breaking free from victimization and the role of self-efficacy in promoting quality of life. A third paper examines how abused women’s perspectives of their relationships change over time. Implications of findings for practice and policy will be discussed. Professor Katie Edwards will be the discussant for the symposium, who has published over 40 peer-reviewed papers on topics related to intimate partner and sexual violence. The symposium will end with a discussion among presenters and audience members.