Violence: Women’s Accounts

Despite the fact that a substantial amount of research has been conducted on sexual victimization among youth and young adults with active night lives, few of these studies have provided an analysis of the varied types of victimization that have occurred. I attempt to fill this gap with a qualitative analysis of women’s accounts of sexual victimization. Based on the substantive content of these women’s accounts, a three-part typology was generated, comprised of: (a) competing definitions of the situation, (b) opportunistic predation, and (c) involuntary incapacitation. Implications of the findings are discussed. Keywords sexual victimization, sexual assault, unwanted sexual contact, accounts Throughout most of human history, the natural order of social life and acceptable rela-tionships between men and women have been constructed as hierarchical and hetero-normative (Rich, 1980; Rubin, 1997; Warner, 1993). The nature of manhood is power, the nature of womanhood is subordination to power, and what is constructed as cultur