E-Portfolio Post #4- Assigned Reading

For this week’s E-Portfolio post, I will discuss an assigned reading from my women’s studies class.  This particular reading directly aligns with my blog focus on sexual harassment and the extents it can escalate to.  In week 12’s assigned reading, Victoria L. Banyard and the four coauthors thoroughly analyze the various effects of unwanted sexual experiences throughout the article, “Friends of Survivors: The Community Impact of Unwanted Sexual Experiences” (294). This piece was originally published in the “Journal of Interpersonal Violence.”

The coauthors of this piece are either fellows or professors at the University of New Hampshire. Victoria L. Banyard is a psychology major with an affiliation with justice studies. She additionally conducts extensive research on mental health and the resilience of sexual assault survivors. The coauthors’ majors include women’s studies, justice studies, sociology, and social psychology of law. People interested in these subjects and students who major in these fields or fields similar will most likely be assigned this reading at some point in their study. I ran across this insightful and informative reading in my women’s studies class, and I am sure various other people have encountered this reading and readings similar in the same way.

This piece has received quite a response since it was originally published. It has been posted and republished across various other mediums that focus on similar subjects. This media significantly contributes to any individual’s body of knowledge on unwanted sexual experiences and how they affect not only the victim but the entire community. Baynard states, “Several studies have gone further to examine the consequences for survivors of telling others. For example, Ahrens (2006) documented the silencing effect that negative reactions from others can have on survivors who disclose” (Baynard, 295). This study is mind-boggling to me and is rather offensive. Why are victims treated like the criminal when they come forward with their story of being assaulted? How the system treats sexual assault victims is extremely damaged, and this becomes more and more apparent to me every time we are assigned a documentary to watch or an article to read on sexual assault. Baynard additionally states, “They found that although women told on average 2.67 people about their assault, they found the average number of support sources who were helpful to be 1.86. Women also reported a variety of negative social reactions to telling others, including being stigmatized or hearing rape myths from others. Some were even revictimized by those they told” (Baynard, 295). The negative social reactions read about in this piece are consistent with the negative social reactions I have read about in other pieces that focus on the same subject. I find this to be revolting.

Saraswati, L. Ayu, et al. Introduction to Womens, Gender & Sexuality Studies Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches. Oxford University Press, 2018.