Research on violence against women tends to focus on topics such as sexual assault and intimate partner violence, arguably to the detriment of investigating men’s violence and intrusion in women’s everyday lives. The reality and possibility of the routine intrusions women experience from men in public space – from unwanted comments, to flashing, following and frottage – are frequently unaddressed in research, as well as in theoretical and policy-based responses to violence against women. Often at their height during women’s adolescence, such practices are commonly dismissed as trivial, relatively harmless expressions of free speech too subjective to be legislated against. Based on original empirical research, this book is the first of its kind to conduct a feminist phenomenological analysis of the experience for women of men’s stranger intrusions in public spaces. It suggests that intrusion from unknown men is a fundamental factor in how women understand and enact their embodied selfhood. This book is essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of violence against women, feminist philosophy, applied sociology, feminist criminology and gender studies.
Author(s): Fiona Vera-Gray
Series: Routledge Research in Gender and Society
Publisher: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 182
Tags: Sexual Harassment Of Women, Public Safety, Public Spaces: Social Aspects, Gender And Society
Cover......Page 1
Title Page......Page 4
Copyright Page......Page 5
Dedication......Page 6
Table of Contents......Page 8
List of illustrations......Page 10
Foreword......Page 11
Preface......Page 14
Acknowledgements......Page 15
1 Introduction......Page 17
Bringing back Beauvoir......Page 18
The problem of naming......Page 21
Counting the continuum......Page 22
Men’s stranger intrusion: a phenomenological framing......Page 25
Chapter overview......Page 27
A note on terminology and translations......Page 28
The continuum of men’s intrusive practices......Page 36
Towards a feminist phenomenology of violence against women and girls......Page 39
Feminist phenomenological methodologies: principles......Page 42
Feminist phenomenological methodologies: practice......Page 44
Researching the ordinary: conversation and notebooks......Page 45
Representing the ordinary: poetic transcription......Page 47
Sample characteristics......Page 49
Situating Beauvoir......Page 61
Situation, sex and gender......Page 67
Our living body......Page 70
Our bodily self......Page 73
The habit body......Page 77
Ordinary interruptions......Page 87
Verbal intrusions......Page 92
‘We can see you’: the gaze......Page 101
Physical intrusions......Page 111
Flashing and masturbation......Page 116
Following......Page 119
‘When is it going to happen to me?’: rape, the fortunate lack......Page 124
‘It works together doesn’t it?’: connecting the continuum......Page 127
Written in the body......Page 137
‘It happens before you even know what it is’: childhood intrusion......Page 141
‘I didn’t feel like I tried at all and I still got it’: adolescent intrusion......Page 143
‘I didn’t walk home that way again’: developing a habit body......Page 148
‘It’s never really made me augment the way I live’: projected impact......Page 156
‘The other forty-nine’: projected frequency......Page 159
The right amount of panic: external awareness......Page 161
‘Don’t be in your body, watch your body’: external perspective......Page 167
‘I’d never really thought of my body as me’: bodily alienation......Page 171
Policy and practice......Page 179
Habits of resistance......Page 182
Habits of restoration......Page 184
Inhabiting ourselves......Page 187
Afterword......Page 191
Index......Page 192
