By: Mahirotus Shofa
Today, I don’t know how many times I have read news about sexual violence. From one newspaper, I can find three or four news about sexual violence in various forms, ranging from sexual harassment to rape.
That is what is in the news, not yet reported, not told, and sinks in a daily way. Maybe in just one day there are actually dozens or even hundreds of cases of sexual violence. I don’t know how much exactly. But, certainly, the number of sexual violence cases makes people more often hearing it. People are becoming increasingly familiar with this term.
Even so, it is not a guarantee that sexual violence is understood correctly. It can be said, the rise of the news of sexual violence is not directly proportional to our society’s understanding of sexual violence.
As far as I know, sexual violence term is still limited to the tip of the iceberg, such as rape. One time I once asked my friend. “Have we ever experienced sexual violence?”
With confidence she immediately answered that she never experienced it. Then, I asked again what she understood about sexual violence. With a little doubt she answered that sexual violence is rape, and sexual harassment such as groping, cat-calling, and so on.
Then I asked again, from all the sexual violence types she mentioned, if she had experienced it or not. It turned out that the answers that came out were different from the previous one. She said that she had experienced that. Finally, one by one, her experiences about sexual violence flowing from her mouth.
From this little chat, maybe we can see some people are still vague to understand what sexual violence is even though they have read, memorizing, or knowing the definition of sexual violence. Understanding can be confirmed if someone can explain clearly and consciously about what sexual violence is.
There are people who know the theory but often feel doubtful when they suddenly experiencing sexual violence. Or someone feels scared and ashamed to tell it, fear of being ridiculed, dicking, and so on. I know it all well because I have experienced the same thing.
When I experienced sexual violence, I told about it. But what I got was not their recognition of the feeling that I experienced. It was not an affirmation that “Yes, what you feel is true”. But more like their judgment related to my sexuality, about how wrong I dress, my walk that might be waddling, my chubby body, and many more.
The false assumptions also increasingly make sexual violence difficult to understand. People can actually recognize events of sexual violence in their surrounding but they then consider it a small thing. They said, “it is just a catcalling, how could it be sexual violence?”, or “holding hands? why is it sexual violence?.” As if it was just a ‘casual’ harassment and not part of sexual violence.
Apart from the acts, impacts, intensity, and duration, sexual violence includes such behaviors. Sexual violence that is considered small is precisely the one that crocketing the culture of rape (Rape Culture) is increasingly established. A culture where violence is considered normal and normalized. A culture that laves sexual violence.
Normalization of sexual violence is also the face of how our society does not take seriously about the adverse effects borne by people who experience sexual violence. Where the impact can not be seen completely from the size of the form of sexual violence. As we cannot measure the presence or absence of trauma through the kind of events that occur.
Traumatic events are very subjective. One particular event that does not have an impact on trauma in someone does not mean that other people will also experience the same thing. Of course we can understand why accidents and disasters have different impacts on people who experience it. Some individuals experience trauma and some don’t. Even if the trauma occurs to everyone, the gradations are also different.
So, there is no such things related to sexual violence that is greater or smaller than others because all sexual violence has the same destructive impact for individuals and society.
One way to be able to put the problem of sexual violence in place is to first unravel our sexuality. During this time we still feel taboo to understand sexuality. Because what we know to discuss sexuality is the same as discussing the affairs of sex or sexual relationships.
Although indeed the origin of sexuality is sex, which, of course, the discussion will also go to the realm. But if it is examined deeper, a couple who will have sex, channel their desires, of course they have all stages: From the start of dating, getting to know each other, establishing the relationship, getting married, then have sex. This is all part of sexuality.
And if we do not understand sexuality, when we talk about events related to sexuality, such as sexual violence we cannot understand it well. A bad understanding of sexuality leads to our inability to understand sexual violence, causes, and roots of the problem. So a lot of people assume that the sexual violence they do does not have any bad impact on others.
Though, misunderstanding on sexual violence can have negative impacts on people who experienced it or the community. People who experienced sexual violence can feel ashamed, guilty, or afraid to speak. The community can also blame the victim or justify the actions of the perpetrators. This can cause sexual violence to be more widespread and difficult to prevent. Therefore, it is important to increase awareness and knowledge about sexual violence in society.***
This article was translated by Napol Riel.