“It’s More Than Assault”: The Continuum of Sexual Violence on The College Campus

• In Event: Victimization in College Contexts

Abstract

Progressing toward the end of this decade, there is now large social scientific literature on physical and sexual assaults against women in institutions of higher learning. Still, there is much that researchers do not know about some other highly injurious patriarchal practices that exist on what British radical feminist Liz Kelly refers to as the “continuum of sexual violence,” ranging from non-physical acts such as obscene phone calls to physical acts like rape or beating someone up. Using recent data from the Campus Quality of Life Survey conducted at a large residential school in the South Atlantic part of the U.S., the main objective of this paper is to apply Kelly’s 30-year-old concept to research on campus sexual violence. The results show many women in the sample experienced a broad range of sexually violent behaviors at some point during their enrollment at this school and that. Further, negative peer support predicts all the behaviors that exist on the continuum.

Authors

• Walter DeKeseredy, West Virginia University

• James Nolan, West Virginia University

• Martin Schwartz, George Washington University

• Amanda K. Hall-Sanchez, Fairmont State University