In her 2006 book Analyzing Oppression, Boston University philosopher Ann Cudd takes an even broader social lens on these arguments. Cudd is interested in the way violence in general sustains oppressive social structures, like patriarchy and white supremacy. Violence, she argues, is one of several ways in which dominant groups to keep subordinate groups down. “Systematic violence,” meaning violence directed against members of a marginalized group by a dominant one, works to traumatize and terrify. [...]
“Violence against women is covert, neither recognized as a systematic war against women by the victims nor by those who would be sympathetic,” she writes. “[Yet] all women act under the shadow of a social threat situation which is, statistically, credible yet tacit. It changes our behavior; it makes acquiesce to limitations on our liberty that men do not have, it alters our sense of what is possible.”[...]
Sexual violence, these women argued, is not a purely intimate act between a victim and an assailant. It is a social phenomenon with much broader effects: It shapes how all women think and act. The greater the sense of fear, the more likely women are to avoid taking risks. By contrast, if powerful institutions can assuage women’s fear — if they believe they are safe, or that, at the very least, their assaulters will be punished — then the psychological effects of sexual violence can be minimized.[...]
For this reason, Cudd points to the way the legal system handles assault as playing an important role in the systemic effects of sexual violence. Rape, as feminists often point out, is not handled like robbery. Robbery victims don’t immediately encounter reflexive doubt that they were robbed, but rape victims often face a presumption that a crime may not have actually happened. Many women are reluctant to report their assaults for that reason — one factor in why they often go unpunished.
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