2.png)
Ji-Hyun Choo | Researcher, Korean Institute of Criminology
The dominant theories about revictimization or poly-victimization regard gender-based violence as issues of psychological disorder or opportunity of crime. This study seeks to interpret how women who have experienced multiple or repeated sexual/violence in their life construct the meaning of the experience and how gender system isstructured. The focus of the study is on the relationship between revictimization and the way it is contextualized in victims’ life. Based on the analysis of the life history of the victims, it is found that women have come to sense sexual dualism, patriarchy and normalized perception about victims of sexual/violence, etc. in dealing with revictimization. In this process, some women tend to experience more aggravated distress and self-blame. This is apparentbecause revictimized women come to recognize their position as a submissive victim, merely an object for sex. While some others see through the power of the discourse which focuses on the seriousness of revictimization and use it in order to be better recognised as a genuine or authentic victim. But, the fear of men’s violence and the consciousness of sexual dualism are even strong in the process of the negotiation or resist of it. It provides women with astrong motive for resistance and/or expression of anger to the gender system, but, at the same time, it can be read as realizing the contradiction of the gender system, which reinforces their sensibility to injustice.
Keywords: Gender-based violence, sexual violence, revictimization, poly-victimization, life-history study
Journal of Korean Women＇s Studies, 2016, vol.32, no.4, pp. 83-118 (36 pages)
UCI : G704-000349.2016.32.4.004