Trending topics: Sexual assault and the church

Speaking of Rape: The Limits of Language in Sexual violations

By Danielle Tumminio Hansen
Fortress

Danielle Tumminio Hansen draws on feminist theory, psychology, practical theology, and her own personal experience to explore how the words we use for sexual violations, privately and legally, influence our perceptions of victims, survivors, and perpetrators. She problematizes so many of those words that I am tempted to append multiple parenthetical caveats here. For example, “When we reduce an individual to a perpetrator,” she writes, “we become cognitively tempted to conflate character and action . . . when these two things are not the same.” The language of “victim” and “perpetrator,” Hansen argues, encourages us to believe only perfect victims and to suspect only people who fit prevailing stereotypes of abusers. She prefers the terms “assailant” and “offender” or even “person who inflicted harm,” which create distance between the person and the problem.