Author: Mehmet Hozat

My Reaction to “Normalizing Sexual Violence”

After I read Heather Hlavka’s paper Normalizing Sexual violence: Young Women Account for Harassment and Abuse, it was somewhat unsurprising to me that the affected adolescents whose interviews were mentioned in the paper were treating the harassment (touching, abusive language, etc.) as routine and unremarkable–in fact, while I was in high school and middle school, I witnessed many instances of such behavior from boys and such reactions from girls. What did surprise me, however, was that minimal progress was made between my time in middle school and 2014 (the year of the paper’s publication and presumably the research behind it) to reverse this mentality in schools. Hlavka even acknowledges this herself when she mentions in her conclusion that better sexual abuse education methods are largely absent and that there is a distinct want of what she terms “supportive spaces” for girls in schools (Hlavka 354). Of course, there are many other factors that would work against this education such as family and social culture, media consumption, and even the legal system to some extent. While I do agree with all the points Hlavka makes in connection to the reasons why adolescent women and girls do not report instances of abuse and harassment as frequently as should, I have one major problem with the research method itself–particularly with the sample set. The sample size of 100 interviews when considered within the context of the incidence of childhood and adolescent abuse and harassment (as presented by Hlavka herself towards the beginning of the paper), in my personal opinion, not nearly large enough to justify the generalities made in the conclusion (and somewhat in the “findings” section). I say this, however, with the consideration that it may have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Hlavka to obtain a much larger pool of interviews given that she would have had to cut through multiple layers of bureaucracy and security checks (she was, after all, viewing what is considered evidence in the possession of police) to obtain each interview. These types of interviews may also be rare due to a poor reporting rate among victims and because some cases may not progress to an interview–whatever the case may be, Hlavka ultimately decided that 100 interviews defined a sample size large enough for her conclusions. I was satisfied with the overall paper, but somewhat underwhelmed by the research itself.

ARTICLE: Hlavka, Heather R. “NORMALIZING SEXUAL VIOLENCE: Young Women Account for Harassment and Abuse.” Gender and Society, Vol. 28, No. 3 (June 2014), pgs. 337-358. PDF https://www.jstor.org/stable/43669888

My Reaction to “The Men America Left Behind”

Kirsten Weir, in her article The Men America Left Behind, describes an alarming set of statistics related to drug addictions and unemployment rates among American men 25-54 years old from a psychological perspective–with a specific focus on the pressures of the culture of traditional masculinity and how they compound the problems. I agree with her statements on the diminished sense of masculinity and the resultant cycle of stagnation among the unemployed men mentioned above. I also agree with her points about the hesitance of the affected men to seek support (i.e. the stagnation) due to a long tradition of masculine self-reliance that acts as a hindrance, with the caveat that the above applies more to the unemployment problem than the addiction issue. In fact, this is one of the problems with the article–opioid addiction is rightly mentioned as a present danger that men face, but it is never directly addressed in terms of possible solutions and I am left to make the inference at the very end of the article that grapevine-like outreach would encourage them to take initiative in order to find help. My personal opinion is that a trickle-down approach to outreach is far too slow for opioid addicts, whose health can drastically worsen much faster than outreach can touch them. I would like to see a solution with more immediate yield, but I acknowledge that it is an extraordinarily difficult matter to pursue without a more comprehensive perspective, which is not Weir’s intention with this article. Another point of contention I have with this article is its disproportionate focus on the fact that these men are poorly educated, which left me with the impression (although I will grant Weir that a college degree provides more employment options for unemployed men, that is only half of the issue) that one requires a college degree or at least a good education to be capable of the profound introspection that results in a personal rejection of the pursuit of this stereotypical masculinity and likewise the stagnation mentioned above. In fact, the outreach measures listed in the final section of the article ultimately seem to be educational initiatives. I don’t fully disagree with this direction of the article, but it seems odd to me. Nevertheless, this was an interesting and enlightening read.

 

ARTICLE: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/02/men-left-behind