Sexual Violence: Framing the concepts of victim and vulnerability

Despite the continuing global epidemic of sexual violence in the lives of women and girls, and in the lives of many boys and men as well, sexual violence is much less a part of a contemporary feminist theoretical agenda than it was forty years ago. Here I focus on two key concepts that operate in this field of debate: the concept of the victim and the concept of vulnerability. In the debates surrounding these terms, one can detect a movement of negation, in which discourses developed to address harm and injury fall short of the goals of protecting those who have suffered from such harms, and in some cases undermine the very grounds for respect and recognition.