Violence is social and what that means
is that there are at least two people
involved people who we normally would
call, or we might call, a victim and a
perpetrator. By the way I use the word
victim and perpetrator you will have
noticed, they're as situated action terms
they're not identity terms, you can be
both within 30 seconds, do you know, you
can do both within 30 seconds but we
tend to use the word victim because the
word victim I know a lot of people
prefer survivor and that's cool, I get
that, but the word victim at least
denotes that a crime has been committed
against you, the word survivor does not.
So there's something in the word victim
that is important that we might want to
retain, even though I know it's
become an insult, right, but that's
because of all the baggage attached to
the word victim largely because of
professional culture, so there is some
value to the word that's why we use the
word in this context. If I'm working with
folks I don't insist they use one word
over another, people identify the
way they identify that's cool
but just for this setting we prefer to
use that vocabulary. So violence is
social there are at least two people
involved which means if we want to
understand what's going on we need to
look at the actions of both people, would
you agree? Otherwise it would be like me
giving you a book and saying okay I'd
like you to give me a book report but I
want you to read only the pages on the
left hand side, pretty soon the
pages on the left hand side wouldn't
make sense because you'd lack the
context of the pages on the right-hand
side, so social interaction is like
that you, need to see the interaction how
actions by one person are connected and
related to actions by the other person.
So in order to illustrate this
point I'm gonna show you two different
descriptions of a sexual assault, a
stranger rape, which as we all know is
the least common form of assault but
I show this example because it's I
think it's a good way to make the point.
Here's the first description. He followed
her down the sidewalk, he sped up to
catch her, he grabbed her by the
shoulders and threw her to the ground, he
dragged her toward the bushes, he
overpowered her and dragged her into the
bushes, he held a rock over her head and
threatened to kill her if she screamed,
he called her degrading names, he forced
his mouth onto her face, he tried to undo
her belt, he grabbed at her pant legs to
pull them off, he overpowered her and
vaginally raped her. So if we can back up
from the images just a minute and look
at the language, you can see the grammar
is actually very clear, active it's
called an active grammar, the
perpetrator is the subject of the verbs,
he followed her, the
victim is the object of the verbs, and
she is the and these are transitive
verbs, in that they convey force upon
the object, so subject verb object that's
what we want, that's the simplest
most direct active sentence structure
and you can see each one starts that way,
so we do get a sense of who did what to
whom, do we not? Quite descriptive and
what do we know about the victim? She's
not even there really, we don't know
anything, she could basically be
unconscious, we don't know, it's not
unusual to see these kinds of
descriptions of violence, where you do
get a sense that somebody committed
violence but you don't really know, you
don't really get a sense of the
experience of the victim. So here's the
second description and the print in
black is identical to the previous slide,
all I've done is inserted her responses
at each point in red, so I'll just read
those. She sped up, she moved to the side,
she rolled on the ground to get away, she
grabbed the roots of a tree so he
couldn't drag her into the bushes, she
started to scream,
she stopped screaming, she said you don't
want to do this, you don't want to hurt
me, she averted her face, she stuck out
her stomach so that he could not undo
her belt, she crossed her ankles so that
he could not pull off her pants,
she went to limp to avoid injury and
went elsewhere in her mind. Would you
agree with me that all of those actions
on her part are forms of resistance in
this context, to go limp to avoid injury
is not passivity, we're seeing much more
than fight, flight, freeze. We're seeing
her attempting to work her way through a
completely unmanageable situation, to get
through it, to deal with it, somehow. You
notice the different forms of her
resistance, she's defending herself
physically, she's trying to reason with
him, she's trying to prevent him getting
access to her body, then she's leaving
the scene, so there are many forms of
resistance taking place. Which of these
two descriptions gives you a better
basis for empathy with the victim, this
one or this one? The second one you'd
agree? So this is extremely important
because if we want the general public
and if we want people to identify with
and feel compassion for and relate to
victims of violence we need to show how
victims of violence have responded and
resisted and we're not reframing it
we're not inventing it we're not just
being strengths-based, it's there, so we
need to speak to that more publicly
because then the public, you know we have
a very ugly
form of contempt for people who we think
did nothing when faced with adversity
don't we, you know what we say about them?
You're a victim, you're just such a
victim, do you know I mean, we have a kind
of, so when we see the victims resistance
we have a better basis for empathy,
everybody does
also which of these two descriptions
might be more to the advantage of the
perpetrator in a courtroom? This one or
this one? This one and why is that?
Because it doesn't say anything about
the victim and how does that help the
perpetrator? Yeah her experience is gone
and you don't know what she's done in
defense so the lawyer for the accused
here can say well Mrs. Jones if this was
so awful why did you not fight back?
Because in legal settings failure of the
victim to resist in what is considered
an appropriate way, is treated as
equivalent to consent, the lack of
resistance by the victim will be used to
blame the victim, that's how it works am
I right, we see that all the time. There's
good practical reasons. Which of these
two descriptions is most likely to show
up in an Australian Court the first one,
more like that? Somewhere in between
maybe? No more like the first one, but
somewhere in between the two, maybe. It
does, and it depends on the police
officer who does the interview and how
they're trained and it depends on which
officers on duty which day, it's kind of
a crapshoot and how are people trained
right, so it's interesting, it could be
one or the other or in between as you
say. The other point is in which of these
two descriptions gives you the most
complete sense of the magnitude and the
nature of the violence, this one 
or this one?
Second one, now it's interesting because
the perpetrators actions are identical
in both descriptions why is it that's
seeing the victims resistance actually
helps us better see the violence? You can
see the struggle and why is it important
for us to see the struggle? Highlights
that she did not want that to happen so
we see no consent immediately, there was
not even it wasn't even a gray area or a
mixed message, there is no consent that's
number one, shows how persistent he was
in continuing to violate her, so you see
that a rape is not one action it's a
whole series of actions, micro actions
and responses over time in sequence. At
every point the perpetrator anticipates
her resistance, at every point the victim
resists, at every point the perpetrator
works to overcome and suppress her
resistance. When you see the victims
resistance you can see the efforts made
by the perpetrator to overcome that
resistance, if you do not show the
victims resistance you will not see how
the perpetrator worked to overcome it
and you will lose the most obviously
deliberate aspects of the violence, you
lose sight of that. So what I'm saying is
the victims resistance is an inherent
vital part of the fact pattern, it's not
just a frame it's not just a narrative
it's not just a story, it's a fact.
