Sexual terrorism: definitions, impacts, and countermeasures

¶ … Sexual Terrorism," Carole J. Sheffield (1997) describes sexual terrorism as being a system or a way in which men fright women and, in frightening them, they are able to control and, ultimately, dominate them. The major components that breed sexual terrorism are "ideology, propaganda, indiscriminate and amoral violence, voluntary compliance, and society's perception of the terrorist and the terrorized" (1997, p. 112). Sheffield describes ideology as an inherent set of beliefs a person holds about the world that explains how things are and offers a view of how things should be. She notes that patriarchy is the ideological basis of sexism in our society (p. 112) because it basically says that men are the ones in power over the females. Propaganda can be found everywhere in pop culture -- from movies and music to video games and television commercials. Indiscriminate and amoral violence is another component and it basically is rampant in our culture and for those who are the perpetrators, they often believe that what they are doing is not wrong. A good example in the news right now is Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky who still denies the damage he has caused. Sheffield notes many law enforcement officials often share these same beliefs and thus these people are not punished to the extent of the law that they should be (case in point: Sandusky is still not behind bars!). Sheffield's fourth component -- voluntary compliance -- is along the same line as ideology. It basically puts women and men in social roles of being the ultimate feminine and the ultimate masculine and reinforcing these roles in society. Women are praised when they are feminine and men are praised for being masculine; rarely are each praised for possessing characteristics that may seem more like opposite sex characteristics. Lastly, perception of the terrorist and the terrorized means that we oftentimes blame the victim (e.g. "She asked for it wearing that short skirt.") and excuse the offender (e.g. "He's just a man.").

It was just yesterday that I witnessed my friend talking about something that happened to her recently. She was involved with a guy whom she had been dating for about two weeks when things started progressing sexually-speaking. She had met him for drinks a few times and they had kissed, but the last time they met for drinks they went back to his place. They were making out a bit and he tried to take off her clothes. She said that she wasn't ready to sleep with him, but he kept persisting. Eventually, after fighting him off for a while, he said that he was tired of her acting like such a tease and that it was really making him angry. She told me that she thought he was going to yell at her, like he seemed on the brink of exploding. She said his eyes were threatening and he didn't seem like the guy she had been talking to while they were having drinks. She ended up sleeping with him that night even though she clearly did not want to. She said that at a certain point she just felt really awful, like she thought she was a tease, and she was worried that if she refused him one more time that he would really get angry at her. She didn't know what he would do. He didn't call her after the fact and when she texted him to see what was going on, he said he wasn't ready for anything committed because his work was too demanding.

This, in my opinion, is something that is so common and I feel like I have heard a lot of my friends tell similar stories and, likewise, I feel like I have experienced this as well. As women, we begin to feel guilty for making guys have to wait for sex. I feel like there is a lot of pressure coming from them and they act like they might die or have some major medical complication if they don't have sex after being worked up (for lack of better words). As far as I know, no guy has ever died from this. It is not just the guilt that we are meant to feel, but it is also the pressure from them that sounds angry -- like we are bad women or not normal for not complying with their wishes. They make us feel like it is our womanly wiles that are too blame, so we end up feeling like it is our fault that they are so upset, so we must fix it immediately, even when we don't want to.

I know perfectly well how Sheffield felt while she was doing laundry that night and she was all alone in the Laundromat. I think a lot about what could happen when I am walking down a street at night alone by myself. The other day I was in a parking garage at night alone and I looked around me several times to see if anyone was there. When I saw another women walking toward the elevator I felt relieved, but had that been a man, I probably would have felt scared and I probably would've taken the stairs and not the elevator because I wouldn't have wanted to be trapped in there alone with him. It really wouldn't have mattered what he looked like or what his age was because you just never know.