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1In the aftermath of the global #MeToo movement and the fourth wave of feminism, sexual violence has emerged as a major public issue around the world. In the USA, South Korea, across Europe, and in Africa, people are increasingly speaking up over experiences of assault and harassment that had previously been consigned to silence. The WHO defines sexual violence as

  • 1 World Health Organization, World report on violence and health (Geneva: World Health Organization, (...)

any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person's sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.1

2This definition encompasses not only overt physical acts of coercion or force, but also behaviour that may be less apparent, such as unsolicited sexual comments and advances. Sexual violence is therefore a continuum of oppressive behaviour.

  • 2 Liz Kelly, “The Continuum of Sexual Violence”, in Jalna Hanmer et Mary Maynard (ed.), Women, Violen (...)
  • 3 See for example: Jalna Hanmer, « Violence et contrôle social des femmes », Questions féministes, n° (...)

3In 1987, the concept of the “continuum of sexual violence” was introduced by sociologist Liz Kelly with a view to illuminating the complexity of violence experienced by women.2 This argumentation, developed in feminist research of the 1970s and 1980s, highlights the interconnections among various forms of violence  from the most commonplace harassment to rape and incest.3 Kelly emphasizes that these acts of violence are not isolated incidents but rather elements of a broader pattern of male domination over women’s bodies. The continuum illustrates how everyday male behaviour, considered ordinary, is linked to the most extreme forms of sexual violence. There is thus no clear boundary between women who consider themselves victims of violence and other women: all, to varying degrees, confront sexual or gender-based aggression over the course of their lives. This dynamic unfolds within a context of pervasive violence, raising crucial questions about the dysfunctions of a culture in which rape is a widespread phenomenon. The warning sounded in the United States several decades ago remains, unfortunately, as relevant as ever on a global scale.

  • 4 Nancy Felipe Russo, Angela Pirlott, “Gender-based Violence: Concepts, Methods, and Findings”, Annal (...)
  • 5 Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Cri (...)

4Numerous studies have since shown that societal structures perpetuate sexual violence by reinforcing unequal gender roles, valorizing male dominance and tolerating impunity for perpetrators while stigmatizing victims. This socio-cultural context often deters victims from speaking out for fear of not being believed or of being blamed.4 Furthermore, scholarly research has gradually embraced an intersectional and transnational perspective, urging a decentering of the Western gaze to better understand the plurality of experiences.5 Factors such as race, class, sexuality and disability shape how violence is experienced and acknowledged. For example, sexual violence against women of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals or women with disabilities was long rendered invisible in media and dominant discourse, resulting in a lack of support for these marginalized groups. This is why a global and inclusive approach is needed to grasp sexual violence in all its complexity, taking into account specific cultural contexts and the structural inequalities inherent in each society.

Conceptual framework for Understanding Sexual Violence

5Several key concepts can shed light on how these types of violence are shown, told or silenced in our cultures. In the context of this publication, the term “sexual violence” is used rather than “gender-based violence.” The latter term, which refers to gender inequality and the set of social dynamics associated with it, is typically employed in contexts of power relations. Our choice is intended to allow a more precise focus on the specific case studies of representation.

  • 6 Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, Martha Roth (ed.), Transforming a Rape Culture, Minneapolis, M (...)
  • 7 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1975; Martha (...)

6First, the concept of rape culture helps us understand how society tends to normalize or excuse sexual violence. According to Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, Martha Roth, rape culture is characterized as a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and support violence against women.6 As early as the 1970s, feminists such as Susan Brownmiller pointed out that numerous cultural productions (literature, film, popular media) perpetuate complacent myths about rape  depicting it sometimes as a heroic act of war, other times as a mere romantic slip-up.7 These analyses laid the groundwork for critiquing the myths and stereotypes surrounding sexual violence. They show that culture itself serves as a training ground and legitimation for sexual violence, rather than a civilizing counterweight. Today we see a continuation of this critical vigilance in the denunciation of rape culture, a concept that has entered common usage to designate the set of societal attitudes that trivialize harassment and sexual assault.

  • 8 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen, vol. 16, no3, 1975, pp. 6-18.

7A second central analytical tool is the notion of the male gaze, theorized by film critic Laura Mulvey.8 Mulvey highlighted the way classical cinema  and by extension other visual arts objectifies women’s bodies, particularly in scenes of sexuality or violence. Under the gaze of the male camera, the rape victim is often eroticized, offered as an object of visual pleasure to the spectator rather than portrayed from the perspective of her own experience. This objectifying gaze contributes to fetishizing sexual violence: the rape scene becomes a spectacle, sometimes even a narrative pretext to trigger action (for example, the heroine’s “besmirched honour” serving as justification for a male protagonist’s revenge). Such imagery not only desensitizes the audience to the gravity of rape, but situates it in a familiar frame aligned with patriarchal expectations, where the perpetrator is central and the woman is reduced to a passive role. Questioning the male gaze and its effects remains fundamental for understanding how the media and arts have been able to normalize or eroticize sexual violence instead of condemning it.

  • 9 See for example: Natasha Mulvihill, “Is It Time to Drop the Term ‘Prostitution’ from Policy Discour (...)

8Faced with these observations, it is crucial to ask what alternative representations have emerged to subvert such conventions. Here, we encounter the power of counter-narrative and testimony. More and more artists, writers, and filmmakers  often women or people from marginalized groups have sought to overturn the dominant perspective. By adopting the survivors’ point of view, finding new words to articulate rape and exploring innovative narrative forms, these creators develop other ways of telling the story of sexual violence. Art and literature thus become spaces of negociation, as several researchers have noted.9 A first-person account by a victim, a performance art piece that restores agency to survivors, or a film that refuses to show the rape but makes its trauma felt can serve as powerful counter-discourses. They challenge stereotypes (for example, the image of the “perfect victim” who is meek and silent) and highlight the resilience of those affected. These counter-narratives contribute to a reconfiguration of narrative power: they allow people historically silenced to speak out and to redefine their experience on their own terms. This brings us to the question of power and testimony: who has the power to tell the story of a rape  the perpetrator, the outside observer, or the survivor herself? And how does this power to narrate influence society’s understanding of the phenomenon?

  • 10 Claudia Brunner, “Conceptualizing Epistemic Violence: An Interdisciplinary Assemblage for IR”, Inte (...)
  • 11 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Oxford, Oxford University Pr (...)

9It is precisely in this respect that we should introduce the notion of epistemic violence. Sexual violence is not limited to physical harm; it also manifests through dynamics of power and knowledge. Claudia Brunner defines epistemic violence as a situation in which certain voices expressing relevant experiences or knowledge are denied a legitimacy recognized by society as a whole.10 This violence is manifested through a priori doubts about the credibility of these voices, through a reframing of their experiences, or through the refusal to acknowledge the terms that allow them to name and share those experiences. Postcolonial theorists, particularly Gayatri C. Spivak, have highlighted a recurring dynamic in which subordinate groups  such as racialized women, queer people and colonized or post-colonial populations are often regarded as objects of study but are denied the ability to be producers of knowledge about their own experiences. This violence is evident, for example, when a victim’s testimony is discredited because it does not fit the expected image of the “good victim,” or when, quite simply, the linguistic and cultural resources necessary to describe what happened do not exist in the public sphere; what philosopher Miranda Fricker also terms “testimonial injustice” and “hermeneutical injustice”.11

10In the context of sexual violence, this dynamic results in a selective recognition of forms of assault. Indeed, certain assaults are not recognized as such, not because they did not occur, but rather because of a societal failure to name them, interpret them and listen to them. Analysing the representation of sexual violence therefore also requires reflection on which authorities are empowered to produce meaning about violence, as well as on the forms of silencing or distortion of meaning that persist and carry on the violence itself.

11Another important aspect concerns the reception of narratives of sexual violence. The meaning of a representation is never fixed in the text or image; it is also constructed in interaction with the audience. Readers, viewers or listeners project their own cultural frames of reference and biases onto the story they consume. Thus, the same rape narrative can be interpreted in radically different ways depending on the cultural or ideological context of its audience.

  • 12 See for example, Stuart Hall, Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse, Birmingham, Centre (...)

12For example, what is explicitly described as rape by an author can be minimized or reclassified as a mere misunderstanding by commentators who are not highly sensitized to issues of consent. Work in sociology, cultural reception studies or feminist narratology therefore stresses the importance of analysing who is receiving the narrative and in what context.12 Contemporary debates about the grey area of consent, or about the representation of sexual assault in fiction, reveal just how much reception can become a site of controversy. In short, the representation of sexual violence takes place as much in the text as it does in the minds of those who read or watch it.

  • 13 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex”, pp. 139-167.

13Finally, the intersectional approach as defined by Kimberlé Crenshaw provides an indispensable theoretical framework for ensuring an inclusive representation of sexual violence.13 Intersectionality reminds us that the lived experience of a Black lesbian woman will not be identical to that of a white heterosexual woman in the face of violence, and that these overlapping oppressions must be taken into account. Such a perspective highlights, for instance, the historical invisibility of the violence suffered by certain communities. It also invites reflection on the characters and voices we choose to foreground in narratives: for a long time, the figure of “the victim” in media corresponded to a narrow profile: young, white, heterosexual, and thus perceived as respectable. Embracing intersectionality entails diversifying the faces and experiences depicted, in order to better reflect the plural reality of sexual violence and to ensure that some survivors are no longer left at the margins of the collective narrative.

14By mobilizing these different conceptual tools  continuum of violence, male gaze, rape culture, the power of testimony, reception and counter-narrative and intersectionality  we can better grasp the deep issues tied to the representation of sexual violence. These theoretical frameworks help us critically analyse both cultural works and the media or political discourses surrounding rape, harassment and abuse. They inform the questions posed by this special issue and guide the perspective we bring to the case studies drawn from varied contexts.

Challenges of Representation: Making Violence Visible and Naming It

15Cross-cutting challenges emerge when considering the links between sexual violence and representation. These can be formulated as a set of critical questions that guide the contributions in this issue.

16Which acts of sexual violence are told, and which remain in the shadows? Traditionally, media have favored sensational cases  such as a violent rape committed by a stranger  at the expense of more common forms of violence like everyday harassment or abuse within a couple. This biased selection contributes to making an entire segment of the continuum of violence invisible. It is therefore crucial to bring to light those “ordinary” forms of violence that are often normalized or played down. Moreover, media visibility varies depending on the victims: some have long been silenced. Women from ethnic or sexual minorities, sex workers and migrant women have rarely had access to the public space to testify about what they endure. How, then, can we ensure that these marginalized voices are finally heard?

17How do the media narrate sexual violence, and to what effect? The way sexual violence is recounted in the media can either contribute to trivializing it or, on the contrary, call it into question. A sensationalist treatment in the press or on television  dwelling on lurid details, exaggerating certain news stories  may shock the public in the moment, but it fails to challenge underlying norms. For example, the tendency to scrutinize the victim’s behaviour (What was she wearing? Had she been out drinking?) is still widespread in media coverage, which shifts blame onto the victim and dilutes the perpetrator’s responsibility. Conversely, a structural and empathetic treatment makes it possible to place the violence in the context of power relations and to point to root causes rather than isolating a “monster” in isolation.

  • 14 See for example: Florence Montreynaud, « La prétendue séduction “à la française” n’est que de la vi (...)

18How do cultural mindsets influence the recognition of sexual violence in a given story? The same narrative of sexual violence can resonate very differently from one country to another, depending on cultural sensibilities and prevailing legal or moral frameworks. This raises the question: how do our thought patterns affect our ability to recognize sexual violence in a story? For instance, in France, debates about the grey area of consent or the notion of séduction à la française (“French-style seduction”) have at times led to minimizing behaviour that was clearly non-consensual.14

  • 15 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, Routledge, 1990.

19Do the words we use to describe sexual violence matter? The words we choose are not neutral. Calling an act “rape” rather than “forced intercourse,” or speaking of “feminicide” rather than a “crime of passion,” involves a symbolic power struggle. In past decades, many activists had to fight to establish terminology that does justice to the reality of these kinds of violence. Clearly naming a phenomenon is a precondition for making it visible and collectively unacceptable. This linguistic challenge is linked to the notion of the performativity of language: words do not just describe reality, they shape it. In other words, to say is to do.15 To declare an act to be rape is already to perform an act of social recognition and condemnation; it creates a new reality – in this case, it brings the victim into existence qua victim in the eyes of the law and public opinion. Thus, controlling language is, in part, controlling how the phenomenon is perceived.

20What role do art and literature play in shaping memory and resilience around sexual violence? A fundamental issue lies in the role of artistic and literary creation in building a record of sexual violence and imagining paths to resilience. The experience of trauma is often ineffable, unspeakable, difficult to communicate through the usual conventions of linear narrative. This is why many victims or authors choose innovative forms of expression – textual collage, poetry, autofiction, visual or bodily performance  to bear witness in new ways to the violence they have suffered.

21This formal inventiveness aims both to circumvent social censorship and to reclaim power over one’s own narrative. It also allows for exploration of the contradictions and ambivalences associated with trauma. For example, how can one reconcile a desire for healing and happiness with the persistence of a buried pain? Art, in this sense, becomes a laboratory in which to imagine ways out of trauma  a space where subjective testimony joins a broader political reflection on the culture of violence and how to confront it.

22Making the invisible visible, denouncing without sensationalism, changing cultural perceptions, naming with precision, creating meaningful counter-narratives  these challenges overlap and intertwine. They form the common backdrop to the studies presented in this special issue. Each contribution, in its own way, addresses an aspect of the representation of sexual violence in different national and media contexts, yet all share the desire to question the status quo in order to transform it.

23The contributions in this issue yield several findings. On the one hand, whether we consider media coverage, literary fiction, language, representation plays a crucial role in how society perceives and addresses sexual violence. Representation is never trivial: it can contribute to normalizing abuse (through silence, cliché or voyeurism), or conversely, it can denounce abuse and support survivors. On the other hand, an appropriate and sensitive portrayal of such violence can have concrete effects in terms of prevention and intervention. By deconstructing myths (for example, the idea that a woman shares responsibility for her assault, or that rape is an act of irrepressible desire rather than a power dynamic), by educating the public on the notion of consent, by amplifying victims’ voices and exposing structural causes, we create propitious ground for zero tolerance of sexual violence. Representations can thus accompany – or even precede  the evolution of social norms and public policies. We saw it with #MeToo: a single testimonial narrative, repeated millions of times on social media, was enough to invert world opinion and lead to legislative or institutional changes in several countries. Culture, as a realm of symbols and storytelling, is an essential lever in the fight against this violence.

24This special issue is aimed precisely at exploring and amplifying these counter-narratives and emerging theoretical reflections. By bringing together perspectives from academics, artists and field practitioners from various countries, we hope to offer a new outlook in the field of cultural studies on gender and sexuality. It seeks, on the one hand, to contribute to a better understanding of the complex dynamics of sexual violence and its modes of representation, and on the other, to foreground voices and experiences often relegated to the margins. Each article, in its own way, provides an example of creative resistance to dominant discourses: whether it is a South Korean media outlet proposing an alternative journalism, a Japanese artist exposing the underside of a gendered entertainment industry, researchers devising new methods to collect testimonies, or critics rethinking the interpretation of artworks, all of these contributions embody attempts to change the collective narrative around sexual violence.

25However, despite the intersectional approach of this publication, it is important to acknowledge its limitations. Indeed, the contributions focus on violence against women, leaving aside the issue of violence perpetrated against people of other gender identities or sexual orientations. Future works  whether as an extension of this dossier or other research will need to devote greater attention to sexual violence experienced by LGBTQIA+ people, non-binary individuals, as well as men and children, in order to better account for the plurality of experiences and representational regimes. We hope that this issue can serve as a springboard for initiatives to come.

26Lastly, we express the hope that this exploration will enrich not only academic but also public debate on these urgent questions. By articulating theoretical analyses and concrete case studies, and by navigating between the global and the local, between the political and the intimate, this collection shows that it is possible to think about sexual violence differently and to represent it more justly. If we are to move towards safer and more egalitarian societies, it is essential to multiply these fresh perspectives, alternative stories and inclusive analytical frameworks. May we thus contribute  modestly but resolutely  to advancing mindsets, cultural practices, and policies towards effectively addressing all forms of sexual violence, and ultimately, to their eradication.

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Notes

1 World Health Organization, World report on violence and health (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2002), Chapter 6, p. 149.

2 Liz Kelly, “The Continuum of Sexual Violence”, in Jalna Hanmer et Mary Maynard (ed.), Women, Violence and Social Control, Londres, Palgrave Macmillan, 1987, pp. 46-60.

3 See for example: Jalna Hanmer, « Violence et contrôle social des femmes », Questions féministes, n°1, 1977, pp. 68-88 ; Colette Guillaumin, « Pratique du pouvoir et idée de Nature (1) : l’appropriation des femmes », Questions féministes, n° 2, 1978, pp. 5-30. ; Nicole-Claude Mathieu (dir.), L’arraisonnement des femmes. Essais en anthropologie des sexes, Paris, Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, coll. « Cahiers de l’homme », 1985. 

4 Nancy Felipe Russo, Angela Pirlott, “Gender-based Violence: Concepts, Methods, and Findings”, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 1087, 2006, pp. 178-205.

5 Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics”, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989, pp. 139-167.

6 Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, Martha Roth (ed.), Transforming a Rape Culture, Minneapolis, Milkweed Editions, 1993.

7 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1975; Martha R. Burt, “Cultural Myths and Supports for Rape”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 38, no2, 1980, pp. 217-230.

8 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen, vol. 16, no3, 1975, pp. 6-18.

9 See for example: Natasha Mulvihill, “Is It Time to Drop the Term ‘Prostitution’ from Policy Discourse?”, Journal of Gender-Based Violence, vol. 3, no3, 2019, pp. 385-393; Mary Paniccia Carden, “‘The Unkillable Mother’: Sovereignty and Survivance in Louise Erdrich’s The Round House”, Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 30, no1, 2018, pp. 94-116; Rosemary Lucy Hill, Bianca Fileborn, Catherine Strong, Unsilenced: Women Musicians, Gender-Based Violence, and the Popular Music Industry, Londres & New York, Bloomsbury Academic, 2025; Marie Buscatto, Sari Karttunen, Marianne Provansal (ed.), Gender-Based Violence in Arts and Culture: Perspectives on Education and Work, Cambridge, Open Book Publishers, 2025.

10 Claudia Brunner, “Conceptualizing Epistemic Violence: An Interdisciplinary Assemblage for IR”, International Politics Review, vol. 9, 2021, pp. 193-212.

11 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.

12 See for example, Stuart Hall, Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse, Birmingham, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1973 ; Henry Jenkins, “Reception Theory and Audience Research : The Mystery of the Vampire’s Kiss”, in Christine Gledhill et Linda Williams (dir.), Reinventing Film Studies, Londres, Arnold, 2000, pp. 165-182; Lykke Guanio-Uluru, “Female Focalizers and Masculine Ideals: Gender as Performance in Twilight and The Hunger Games”, Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 47, 2016, pp. 209-224 ; Kelli S. Boling, “‘It’s That “There but for the Grace of God Go I” Piece of It’: Domestic Violence Survivors in True Crime Podcast Audiences”, Mass Communication and Society, 26 (6), 2022, pp. 991-1013 https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2022.2061359 (accessed 24 November 2025).

13 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex”, pp. 139-167.

14 See for example: Florence Montreynaud, « La prétendue séduction “à la française” n’est que de la violence sexuelle », Le Monde, Idées, 24 août 2011 ; Blandine Grosjean, « De la résignation au consentement, le problème de la “zone grise” entourant les rapports sexuels », Le Monde, 26 janvier 2018. 

15 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, Routledge, 1990.

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Chiharu Chujo, « Introduction (English version) »Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 [En ligne], 19 | 2024, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2024, consulté le 14 mars 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/2801 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15bal

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Chiharu Chujo

Après avoir effectué ses années post-doctorales à l’Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco) et à l'Université de Tokyo des Études Étrangères au Japon, Chiharu Chujo occupe actuellement le poste de maîtresse de conférences à l’Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3. Sa thèse, soutenue en 2018, se concentre sur les musiciennes japonaises engagées des années 1970 à aujourd’hui. Actuellement, ses travaux de recherche se concentrent sur les enjeux de genre dans le contexte de l’industrie musicale japonaise, avec un focus particulier sur les genres du hip-hop et de la musique électronique. Traductrice d’une multitude d’ouvrages spécialisés, dont Femmes du jazz de Marie Buscatto et Be Creative d’Angela McRobbie, elle est également l’autrice de plusieurs articles scientifiques notables, tels que « Chanter l’écologisme dans le Japon de l’après-Fukushima : l’ambivalence de la musique écoféministe chez UA » (Itinéraires, 2021), et « Représentations de l’amour chez les rappeuses : transgression, braconnage et dialogue » (en japonais, Eureka, 2023).

After finishing her postdoctoral studies at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco) and the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan, Chiharu Chujo now works as a lecturer at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University. Her thesis, which she defended in 2018, focuses on Japanese female musicians active from the 1970s to the present day who are committed to social issues. She is currently researching gender issues in the Japanese music industry, with a particular focus on hip-hop and electronic music. She has translated several books, including Femmes du jazz by Marie Buscatto and Be Creative by Angela McRobbie. She has also written several academic articles, such as “Singing environmentalism in post-Fukushima Japan: the ambivalence of ecofeminist music in UA” (Itinéraires, 2021), and “Representations of love among female rappers: transgression, poaching and dialogue” (in Japanese, Eureka, 2023).

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