Creating Legitimate Victims through Public Stories

• In Event: Constructing Crime: Identity, Legitimacy, and Authenticity

Abstract

Feminist activism and scholarship over the last few decades has spawned public knowledge about domestic violence/sexual assault, resulting in attempts at describing, defining, and naming these experiences. One way “legitimate” victims are created is through public stories that serve to provide a frame of reference with which to learn about the constructed “realities” of woman abuse. Particular public stories revolve around themes of physical violence perpetrated by strong men who control weak women, which inhibits understandings of experiences outside the boundaries of this binary. These stories also construct victims along particular feminine ideals as weak, passive, and without agency, impacting women’s recognition of the many faces of abuse. Secondary data analyses of qualitative interviews with 43 rural Ohio women and supplementary findings of back-talk interviews with 12 women from similar rural Ohio towns highlight how women made and continue to make meaning of their relationships, actions, and decisions, thereby constructing themselves and others along the way. The women’s stories revealed the limitations in their language to describe their abusive experiences in the face of what they “knew” or thought they “should know” due to public stories that create “legitimate” victims.

Author

• Amanda Hall-Sanchez, West Virginia University