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What is the connection between Media, Sexual Violence, and Systems of Oppression?
How does the media create norms around sex?
Many people learn about the norms of sex and relationships through media. A rising number of children and teenagers’ first understanding of sex is from pornography and media, as opposed to having safe, educational conversations with parents or trusted persons. Research has shown using porn to have an impact on teens. Teenagers who consume porn become sexually active at a younger age, have an increased number of partners, and are more sexually active in general, when compared to teenagers who learned about sex from parents. The same study also reported that girls commonly felt less attractive than women they saw in porn, while boys were found to have more performance anxiety about sexual expectations they saw in porn.
Sex research journalist Maggie Jones states, "These images confound many teenagers about the kinds of sex they want or think they should have. In part, that’s because they aren’t always sure what is fake and what is real in porn. Though some told me that porn was fantasy or exaggerated, others said that porn wasn’t real only insofar as it wasn’t typically two lovers having sex on film. Some of those same teenagers assumed the portrayal of how sex and pleasure worked was largely accurate.
That seems to be in keeping with a 2016 survey of 1,001 11-to-16-year-olds in Britain. Of the roughly half who had seen pornography, 53 percent of boys and 39 percent of girls said it was “realistic.” When these norms are set, viewers might then begin to judge their own sexual experiences or relationships against what they see in media. When issues like sexual assault or consent aren’t respectfully or accurately portrayed, it perpetuates harm in many ways.
How do media representations impact survivors?
Harmful, misleading, or inaccurate l depictions of sex and sexual violence are common in the media. This not only is triggering for survivors to watch but creates norms about what is and is not safe, healthy, respectful relationships. Many times, these depictions romanticize sexual assault, depict rape or sexual violence as less harmful (or even okay), and erase problematic relationships for the convenience of the story. These depictions aren’t just in fictional television or movie dramas- they’re even visible in the news and other outlets which the general public look to as fact-based.
In her study of visual representations of sexual violence in online news outlets, Sandra Schwark found that three specific themes were readily used when reporting on sexual assaults:
Rape myth
How victims are portrayed
Third theme
These portrayals were found to have very real implications on how society viewed sexual assault survivors in terms of what sexual assault looks like. Additionally, these portrayals were found to impact whether victims felt like they were victims in their own experiences of sexual assault Professor Heather L. Littleton says, “Women who have an experience that legally would be rape instead label what happened to them as something that is not a crime, such as a miscommunication.” Research shows that the frequent portrayals of sexual assault by strangers create conflicting internal expectations that true sexual assaults are perpetrated by strangers, despite the fact that 90% of perpetrators knew their victims before the crime.
Stereotyped ideas interfere with a person’s ability to identify sexual violence when it is happening to them. “Rape scripts” – mental scenarios constructed from ideas and stereotypes about how rape is typically supposed to play out – can interfere with acceptance. “The more someone’s experience with rape differs from their script … the less likely they are to label it as such,” says Littleton. “In other words, their experience does not match what they think rape looks like; maybe they trusted the assailant, the assault was not violent, they did not resist strongly or the perpetrator was a woman.”
Male survivors of sexual violence have been left virtually absent from depictions of sexual violence and harassment, and as such, still struggle to report or seek help due to harmful ideas perpetuated by media. When male sexual violence is mentioned or featured, its regularly in the form of a joke or used as a way to shame or demasculate a character, pushing further stigma onto the issue. Even the words we use to describe sexual violence may dissuade male survivors from identifying as victims, as men will identify more with experiencing “unwanted sexual experiences” rather than “rape” or “sexual assault”.
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