Silencing Without Uptake

Catharine MacKinnon has claimed that some pornography “silences” women. Some work in feminist analytical philosophy suggests it does so by depriving them of the capacity to perform certain speech acts, such as (and most prominently) the speech act of sexual refusal. This has been termed the silencing of “illocutionary disablement.” Critics object that this silencing claim involves a contentious thesis about the success conditions of speech acts such as sexual refusal: that the auditor’s comprehension, or “uptake,” of the speaker’s intent is required for the speech act to come off. I try to show that the illocutionary disablement claim can do without the uptake condition as it has heretofore been formulated. Even if audience uptake is not a success condition for each individual act of sexual refusal, reciprocity of a certain kind is still a condition of women’s continuing ability to engage the refusal illocution. When pornography disrupts the conditions for that reciprocity it will effectuate illocutionary disablement. I also consider whether the illocutionary disablement under consideration here is properly thought of as “silencing.”

Building a Model to Predict Sexual Assault Victimization Frequency Among Undergraduate Women

Previous research has identified several factors, including sexual risk behaviors, alcohol consumption, sexual refusal assertiveness, impulse control difficulties, drinking to cope, and sex to cope, as being associated with sexual assault victimization. Data were collected from 465 adult, undergraduate women, and analyzed using structural equation modeling to determine how these variables related to one another. Results showed that together, these factors predicted 17.1% of the variance in victimization frequency. These findings may help future researchers better understand the etiology of sexual assault victimization on college campuses and prove crucial to the development of future intervention programs which reduce victimization.

Sexual Re-Assault among College Women Differs Based on Sexual Refusal Assertiveness and Assertive Resistance Strategy Intentions

Sexual assault and sexual re-assault are common problems on college campuses for women, and experiencing an initial assault dramatically increases risk for experiencing sexual re-assault. Low use of sexual refusal assertiveness and assertive resistance strategy intentions has been found to predict initial victimization, yet few studies to date look collectively at the associations of sexual refusal assertiveness and assertive resistance strategy intentions to sexual re-assault. The current study examined both sexual refusal assertiveness and assertive resistance strategy intentions as potential moderators of sexual re-assault among college women. It was hypothesized that the association between sexual assault severity before college and sexual assault severity since college would be stronger among those with low sexual refusal assertiveness compared to those with high sexual refusal assertiveness (Hypothesis 1). it was also hypothesized that the association between sexual assault severity before college and sexual assault severity since college would be stronger among those who endorsed assertive resistance strategy intentions (Hypothesis 2). Participants (N = 623) included college women at a large, public university within the northwestern region of the United States, who completed a web-based survey. Results revealed that the association between sexual assault severity before college and sexual assault severity since college was significant among those with lower levels of sexual refusal assertiveness (t = 91.42, p < 0 .001). Results also revealed that the association between sexual assault severity before college and sexual assault severity since college was stronger among those who endorsed non-assertive resistance strategy intentions to a potential sexual assault scenario (t = 25.09, p < 0.001). These findings provide insight into risk for sexual re-assault, wherein risk reduction programmatic efforts may be targeted towards women entering college with a sexual assault history to increase their use of sexual refusal assertiveness and assertive resistance strategy intentions.

Sexual Refusal by Indonesian Female University Students

This research aims to find out the most frequent strategies used by Indonesian female university students in expressing their refusal to sexual intercourse and the refusal strategies that they used to refuse the sexual intercourse. This research was carried out in 14 cities in Indonesia with 638 respondents (307 female respondents and 331 male respondents). The data were collected by using Discourse Completion Task (DCT) and interview to identify the sexual refusal strategies by female university students. The data were analyzed by using reconstructed conversation and Speech Act theory by Searle (1976) and Politeness of Brown & Levinson (1989) as a supporting theory. This research finds seven frequent strategies used by Indonesian female university students to refuse the sexual intercourse. The first is pregnancy risk reason (37,07%), next is legality reason (21,59%), postponement (15,48%) is at the third place, direct refusal non-performative (14,05 %) as the forth and is followed by religiouos reason (7,94%) at the fifth, direct refusal performative (2,24%) is the sixth and the last strategy is topic switch (1,63%). The data also show that most of Indonesian female university students refuse the sexual intercourse by giving pregnancy risk reason such as fear of being pregnant. From the reconstructed conversation, the data analysis show that most of them use Indirect Speech Act to maintain the relationship, the politeness and the positive face want of their boyfriend.