The Continuum of Sexual Violence: Women’s Accounts of Victimization in Urban Nightlife

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442979 FCX8110.1177/1557085112442979KavanaughFeminist Criminology

1Pennsylvania State University, Middletown, PA

Corresponding Author:Philip R. Kavanaugh, School of Public Affairs, Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, W-153 Olmstead Building, Middletown, PA 17057.Email: [email protected]

The Continuum of Sexual Violence: Women’s Accounts of Victimization in Urban Nightlife

Philip R. Kavanaugh1

Abstract

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-ally and biologically normative is the form of heterosexuality based on traditional gender arrangements and monogamy (Seidman, 2009). Such attitudes are manifested in institutions like the media and government, work and family roles, social and aes-thetic norms, and courtship behaviors. An unfortunate by-product of its manifestation in a courtship context is women’s experience of rape, sexual assault, coercion, and


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harassment. The argument that such victimization outcomes are an outgrowth of rig-idly defined gender arrangements is a point often ignored or trivialized in a popular discourse that promotes narrow images of what constitutes legitimate sexual victim-ization (Burt, 1980, 1991; Christie, 1986; Weiss, 2009). These attitudes are shaped or reinforced by both institutions and micro-level interactions in everyday life that dichotomize sexual identities in terms of masculine or feminine. This cultural hetero-normativity often latently routinizes untoward sexual behaviors as natural or inevita-ble in particular social contexts (Martin & Hummer, 1989). A number of studies have shown that commercial nightlife venues are among the most salient contexts for this kind of gender construction and performance (Anderson, Daly, & Rapp, 2009; Anderson, Kavanaugh, Bachman, & Harrison, 2007a; Graham & Wells, 2001, 2003).

There is a sizable and growing literature indicating that nightlife spaces such as bars and clubs are intensely sexualized social spaces (Anderson et al., 2007a; Grazian, 2007; Kavanaugh & Anderson, 2009) where victimization outcomes such as rape, attempted rape, stalking, harassment, and other instances of unwanted sexual contact occur with regularity (Anderson et al., 2007a; Fox & Sobol, 2000; Graham & Wells, 2001, 2003; Parks, 2000). An important point to emphasize is that although rape and more serious forms of sexual assault do occur in the context of one’s participation in urban nightlife, the majority of victimization incidents that occur in these hypersexual-ized contexts do not meet the established criteria for classification as serious sexual crimes. While not felonious, such incidents reveal a cultural atmosphere surrounding nightlife where instances of unwanted sexual contact such as touching, groping, and other aggressive attempts at coercion, as well as verbal harassment, are normalized. Although the bulk of research on sexual violence has focused on more serious crimes like rape and felonious sexual assault, other “non-classifying”1 incidents of sexual victimization have received far less attention.2 As Weiss (2004, p. 5) notes, “many [women] are reporting victimizations that include a range of behaviors that are not always acknowledged as deviant by our criminal justice system . . .” Such incidents are, however, an important part of the discussion about sexual violence and illustrate the need to conceive of victimization as occurring on a continuum of severity (Basile, 1999; see also Banyard et al., 2007) and to illuminate the varied types of victimization women are experiencing.

Prior research has identified several individual-level factors that help explain a rather wide degree of sexual victimization outcomes, from rape and attempted rape, to less severe forms of unwanted sexual contact such as fondling and groping. Key individual-level causal factors include drug and alcohol use by the victim, offender, or both (Anderson et al., 2007a; Anderson, Hughes, & Bellis, 2007b; Parks, Hsieh, Bradizza, & Romosz, 2008; Parks, Romosz, Bradizza, & Hsieh, 2008), as well as the victim’s history of interpersonal relationships (Mohler-Kuo, Dowdall, & Koss, 2004; Parks et al., 2008; Sherley, 2005). Additionally, some research has suggested that women wearing revealing clothing or behaving provocatively essentially precipitate their own victimization by attracting predatory responses by men looking for an “easy lay” (Fox & Sobol, 2000, p. 444).



22 Feminist Criminology 8(1)

In terms of nightlife venues specifically, researchers have recently identified two broad and interrelated dimensions of commercial nightlife contexts as salient in shaping victim-ization incidents. They were: (a) the vibe of the nightlife event and (b) the social organiza-tion of the event (Anderson et al., 2007a; Kavanaugh & Anderson, 2009). The vibe of a typical commercial nightlife event has been characterized by a preoccupation with elite style, or high fashion; intensely sexualized, heteronormative interaction styles between men and women; and hypermasculinity (misogynist attitudes toward women and sexual conquests or “hooking up” as a form of status attainment for men). The role of a commercial vibe in shaping victimization was further conditioned by the social organization of these contexts. Here social organization was defined in terms of a venue’s physical layout and use of space, attendance level and capacity, staff responsi-bilities and operational style, its use of drink specials or contests such as ladies nights and half priced drink specials, and entertainment props or gimmicks such as provoca-tively dressed female dancers and wait staff. This work has identified three dimensions of a commercial nightlife venue’s social organization that shaped sexual victimization: (a) level of venue crowding, (b) the role and interaction style of venue security staff, and (c) sex and alcohol as orienting themes for the event (Anderson et al., 2007a; Kavanaugh & Anderson, 2009).

The use or abuse of alcohol is one of the most reliable predictors of women’s expe-rience of unwanted sexual contact as well as more serious forms of sexual victimiza-tion (Krebs, Lindquist, Warner, Fisher, & Martin, 2009; Testa & Livingston, 2000; Testa, Vanzile-Tamsen, & Livingston, 2004). The relationship is straightforward: those women who use alcohol often or drink to excess have a significantly higher likelihood of experiencing a variety of types of sexual victimization (Parks, 2000; Parks & Fals-Stewart, 2004), in part because alcohol’s effects may impair a woman’s ability to recognize aggressive sexual risk cues, or to resist coercive attempts (Abbey, Zawacki, Buck, Clinton, & McAuslan, 2004; Parks & Miller, 1997). Studies on gender-specific drinking behaviors have found that intoxicated women patrons experience a higher likelihood of predatory sexual and coercive actions (Herd & Grube, 1993) if they do not have a visible companion or capable guardian such as a significant other or sizable group of friends. Likewise, drink specials and discounts intending to attract women to bars and other such nightlife venues also function to encourage heavy drink-ing and subsequently increase the risks for interpersonal victimization (Anderson et al., 2007a). Research has shown that most instances of sexual victimization in these set-tings tend to occur during “peak hours” (between 12:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m.), when levels of intoxication among all patrons tend to be the highest (Fox & Sobol, 2000).

Although a growing body of scholarship has examined sexual victimization in urban nightlife spaces such as bars, clubs, and lounges, very few of these studies have provided an analysis of the specific victimization events that occurred, and the situa-tional interactions that shaped these experiences. Although some research has offered a ground-level analysis of the contexts in which these outcomes play out (Fox & Sobol, 2000; Kavanaugh & Anderson, 2009), there is a presently a dearth of detailed, descriptive research on the distinct types of sexual victimization occurring in these and



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other public spaces of commercialized entertainment. Certainly not all instances of sexual victimization are qualitatively similar, and prior research, both in nightlife and other social contexts, has often overlooked this fact.3

The present study attempts to fill this gap by providing a detailed, account-based typology4 of “non-classifying” sexual victimization incidents that occur in urban night-life contexts. The concept of types has played a meaningful role in research and theory since the beginning of empirical social science (Weber, 1949/1904) and has experi-enced a renaissance in the field of qualitative social research since the 1980s. In many studies, types are constructed to comprehend, understand, and explain social realities as far as possible. This is my purpose here as well.

Data and MethodThe data for this study were drawn from a larger multimethod ethnographic project exploring the alcohol–drugs–crime connection in two separate but overlapping urban nightlife scenes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the electronic dance music (EDM) and the hip-hop (HH) scenes. The parent study featured (a)in-depth interviews with 51 (26 men, 25 women) participants in the city’s two main nightlife scenes and (b) direct observation of 33 nightlife events in both scenes. I served as the primary research assistant on the parent study, interviewing roughly half of the respondents as well as performing roughly half of the direct observations (see Anderson et al., 2007a). The principal investigator of the initial project completed the other half of the interviews and direct observations. In 2008, I received additional funding to further examine physical assault and sexual victimization using these same data. For the present article, the interviews with 25 women are the data source. Twenty of the 25 women in the larger sample reported one or more incidents of unwanted sexual contact. Of those 20 women, 15 elaborated on their incidents of sexual victimization in detail. The unit of analysis in this study then, is the victimization event; that is, the accounts of these 15 women.

Recruitment and InterviewsParticipant recruitment involved two methodological strategies: (a) ethnographic map-ping and (b) maximum variation sampling (Morse, 1998; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The first step involved mapping or identifying certain areas or locations where numerous potential participants could be located. The second step used a maximum variation sampling strategy, which included a process of purposely selecting a heterogeneous demographic group (race/ethnicity and gender) of respondents and observing their similarities and differences (Morse, 1998). Initial recruitment was performed by two staff members of an independent record store in Philadelphia who were well estab-lished in the nightlife scene and had ready access to a vast network of participants. The store served as something of a hub for nightlife culture in the city, and numerous events were advertised in-store. These staff members had served as informants for a




prior ethnographic project (see Anderson, 2009). To help protect against recruitment bias and to secure more variation in types of participants recruited, we also recruited interview subjects “live” during direct observation of nightlife events.5

Of those women who experienced sexual victimization, eight were Black, eight White, and four Asian. Their mean age was roughly 24 years, with an age range of 20 to 31 years. The mean income was US$26,700 annually, with an annual income range of US$10,000 to US$80,000 for those who were employed full-time (35 or more hours per week). Respondents were situated in the lower- to upper-middle classes. Level of employment spanned from low- to mid-level service positions (e.g., waitress, bar-tender, retail, and file clerk), to white-collar positions (e.g., marketing, event planning, engineer). Most respondents were native to Philadelphia or the surrounding metropoli-tan area, although some relocated to the area to attend college, or for other reasons. All of the respondents were heterosexual and all but one of the women were unmarried. Roughly half had significant others but very few lived with them.

In-depth interviews were conducted in a private office at the store where subject recruitment initially took place. All respondents were paid a US$25 honorarium for the interview and signed a consent form. Interviews were tape-recorded and research-ers took notes while the interview was being conducted. Interviews lasted an average of 2 hr each, with a range of an hour and a half to 3 hr. The interview guide included structured questions about the respondent’s background (questions related to family structure and peer networks were the main focus of the background portion), current living situation and employment and/or education, involvement in nightlife and other forms of leisure, and experiences with drugs, criminal activity, and victimization both in nightlife and in other contexts.

In-depth interviewing from structured, but open-ended instruments ensures consis-tent inquiries by researchers across topics and domains, while it avoids the framing of respondent experiences according to limited response categories. Furthermore, it ensures consistent inquiries among respondents without precluding the possibility of discovery of other relevant issues. The open-ended nature of the interview allowed participants to frame their responses according to their own thoughts and beliefs about relevant concepts. The interviewers probed for clarification and elaboration, and occa-sionally followed up with questions not included in the interview guide to address other relevant issues as they emerged.

Analytic ApproachThe outcome of interest in the current study was the respondent’s self-reported, retro-spective accounts of sexual victimization occurring in the context of their nightlife activities over in the last 5 years. The last 5 years was designated as a time frame that respondents could be reasonably expected to recall and elaborate on. To reiterate a previous point: in this study, I use the term sexual victimization to refer to all instances of unwanted sexual contact other than completed rape. All interview tran-scripts and direct observation notes were coded using the qualitative software pro-



Kavanaugh 25

gram ATLAS.ti. The interview transcripts were first coded for sexual victimization incidents (as well as other forms of offending and victimization), and finally, for current alcohol and drug use patterns. Situational accounts of sexual victimization were later compiled.6 For all codes generated during each phase of the analysis, inter-coder reliability was determined using a stepwise replication (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). This involved the two researchers each studying the data independently and meeting to discuss the codes each was generating.

Incidents and AccountsIn this article I distinguish between incidents and accounts. Incidents were simply reports of a sexual victimization having occurred. Accounts were defined as any vic-timization incident that was discussed in enough detail to provide additional contex-tual and behavioral information. Some of the women did not feel comfortable describing certain incidents in more detail, were concerned that too much time had passed, or stated they were too intoxicated at the time of the incident to recount it accurately and opted not to elaborate. Among those who discussed their accounts, most elaborated on incidents that happened more recently—generally in the past year. However, there were occasions where a particular incident that had occurred three or more years ago was regarded as traumatic enough to be recounted in detail and qualify as an account.

Naturally there were more reported incidents than accounts that elaborated on them. As noted, in terms of incidence, 80% of the women (20 of the 25) originally interviewed reported one or more incidents of sexual victimization in the context of their nightlife involvement. Such a high prevalence suggests that certain lesser forms of sexual victimization are a normal occurrence in urban nightlife scenes. While none of the women in this study reported their experiences to the police or other authorities, nonreporting of unwanted sexual contact is not unexpected given the wealth of research noting that victims of more severe forms of sexual violence such as com-pleted rape often do not report the incidents to authorities.7

As noted, 15 of the women recounted one or more of their incidents in detail. Of the 34 sexual victimization incidents reported among these 15 women, there were 20 vic-timization accounts. Based on the content of these narratives, a three-part typology of sexual victimization accounts was generated: (a) competing definitions of the situa-tion, (b) opportunistic predation, and (c) involuntary incapacitation. These types are elaborated on below, following descriptive information on the dispersion of accounts.

Table 1 provides a demographic breakdown of those respondents reporting victim-ization accounts, the type of account(s) they reported, as well as the total number of victimization incidents they reported. The competing definitions of the situation and opportunistic predation types were reported most frequently (9 times each). The invol-untary incapacitation type was reported the least frequently (2 times). Accounts were dispersed across a broad age range (20-31), with women aged 20 to 25 reporting a greater number of incidents and accounts than those aged 26 to 31. Prior research




suggests that sexual victimization tends to be perpetrated by those with whom the victims are well acquainted (Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000; Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998). In this sample, however, most victimization was perpetrated either by strangers or individuals with whom the victim was not well acquainted. In regard to racial and ethnic variation, four of the six Black women described competing definitions of the situation, whereas two reported opportunistic predation; three of the four Asian women reported opportunistic predation, whereas two described competing definitions of the situation; the five White women reported all three types of victimization, although the two instances of involuntary incapacitation were reported by White women whose primary affiliation was with the EDM scene.8

Competing Definitions of the SituationThis type can be regarded as a scorned sexual advance. Here, the victims reported engaging in some form of interaction with the offender, typically in the form of casual conversation, such as having accepted a man’s offer to buy a drink, or to dance. The women reported that there was an apparent misinterpretation of what was perceived as sexualized behavior performed by the victim, directed at the offender (Abbey,

Table 1. Situational Accounts of Sexual Victimization.

Alias Race Age No. of incidents No. of accounts Account type

Shelly Asian 25 3 1 Pred.Donna Asian 28 1 1 Def. of sit.Sarah Asian 20 2 2 Pred., Def. of sit.Lucy Asian 22 1 1 Pred.Jocelyn Black 23 1 1 Def. of sit.Catherine Black 24 3 1 Def. of sit.Betty Black 20 2 2 Def. of sit. (× 2)Maddie Black 20 1 1 Pred.Nadine Black 25 5 1 Pred.Evelyn Black 21 3 1 Def. of sit.Audrey White 21 3 2 Pred., Invol.Laura White 31 1 1 Pred.Norma White 31 2 1 Def. of sit.Ronette White 25 4 2 Def. of sit., Pred.Eileen White 21 2 2 Pred., Invol.Totals/means 24 34 20 Def. of sit.: 9 Pred.: 9 Invol.: 2

Note: Total (N = 15). Abbreviations of account types: Pred: Opportunistic predation; Def. of sit.: Com-peting definitions of the situation; Invol.: Involuntary incapacitation.



Kavanaugh 27

1987),9 and that the offender would then forcefully pursue some form of unwanted sexual behavior. While similar situations have often been regarded as embarrassing, friendly misunderstandings (see Abbey, 1987), in the accounts described here, the victims noted that the coercive behavior would be pursed even after they communi-cated their disinterest.10 Norma described how such an incident would sometimes play out:

I remember one time when—this was somebody I met when I was in college but this was maybe 6, 7 years after—and I ran into him in a club and I was like “oh hey,” and we just had small talk. But then, he tried to kiss me in the club. We were both dancing, but like not really together. And I like moved away and he tried to grab me and pull me closer. And I’m like, ok, I did not give him any signs other than, you know, oh it’s nice to see you, I can’t believe I bumped into you. And so for him to go and do that, like I was so upset that I left. (Norma, WF 31)

Other narratives in this type rationalized offender behavior by drawing on the cul-tural idea that it is the responsibility of the victims themselves to avoid placing them-selves in situations where sexual victimization may occur (Weiss, 2009). These justifications often made reference to their inappropriate use of alcohol, implicating themselves as partially responsible for having acted recklessly. After discussing com-peting definitions of the situation types of victimization she had witnessed in various nightlife venues, Ronette explained what led to her experiencing one such incident:

I’ve been in situations like that a few times. I can’t think of any cases where I felt like they were intentionally touching me in a way that they knew made me uncomfortable. Well maybe one or two times; well, I mean, I’m not saying I was justified in feeling that way. And, ya know, alcohol definitely plays a part. But this one time in particular it was very, very bad; ya know, just drunken deci-sions. I’ve definitely made decisions that weren’t good ones. You talk, you dance, there’s some touching, then things get out of hand, you want it to stop, but it doesn’t always. But I take full ownership for that. I can’t blame anyone but myself. (Ronette, WF 25)

While Ronette placed responsibility for her victimization on her behavior with regard to alcohol consumption, other women articulated a belief that risk was inevi-table in certain nightlife environs, and that such risk should be managed by the modification of one’s routine activities. This sometimes centered on modification of one’s drinking behavior (such as having a two drink limit while clubbing). Other women described engaging in a variety of protective behaviors as a result of experi-encing unwanted advances by sexually aggressive men. Evelyn described how she had modified her behavior after describing a competing definitions of the situation account:




I would say now I don’t really want to walk around by myself too much. And I try not to let guys spend money on me; because some guys, like once they buy you a drink they’re just on you all night. So I try not to do it too much because I feel like I owe them something and I really don’t. So I just avoid getting drinks from guys I don’t know who just want to get with me. They’re just trying to get some and everybody is just trying to talk to you coz it’s like 2:30 in the morning. (Evelyn, BF 21)

While some of the women in the sample reported adopting protective tactics after experiencing unwanted sexual contact, several justified instances of victimization by focusing on inappropriate behavior of the victim. Ronette elaborated:

In general girls like to get dressed up to go out, get dressed up like sluts and use it as an excuse to act crazy; like you always see it when you go out to a club on Halloween. But it happens all the time. And I’m definitely guilty of dressing up a little, and showing more skin when I go out. So it’s kind of a chance you take. (Ronette, WF 25)

Catherine’s narrative is further illustrative:

I’ve seen guys grab girls’ butts and stuff touching them all on their chest, but a lot times the girls ask for it. Not ask for it literally, but their behavior—shaking their butt all crazy in the club. Droppin it like it’s hot with a little skirt on and their pant-ies showin, tryin to be nasty. I don’t like the way the people act, the way the guys treat the women. But then I don’t like the way the women treat themselves. They just, they don’t know how to act. The guys they just don’t have respect but then the girls don’t have respect for themselves either. Coz you don’t need to have your titties and your coochie hangin out to look good at the club. (Catherine, BF 24)

Although Catherine also reported the competing definitions of the situation account and two additional incidents, she regarded her own victimization experiences as aber-rant, and expressed this sentiment based on other incidents she had witnessed. Here Catherine distinguishes between true victims, such as herself, and those women who are regarded as deserving of their victimization based on their behavior or demeanor. As this narrative illustrates, even those who have experienced unwanted sexual con-tact sometimes interpret victimization incidents through a cultural lens of gendered behavior that sustains adherence to narrowly defined scripts of femininity.

Opportunistic PredationThis account can be defined as the unwanted sexual groping of the female victim by a male stranger with whom she had no prior interaction. The victims typically reported being preoccupied in some manner, and unaware of the presence or threat of



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the offender. The women reported that the offender would then seize an opportunity to engage in brief, fleeting act of unwanted sexual contact, or several brief but successive acts. The target, for example, would typically report having been moderately intoxi-cated, walking quickly to the bathroom or some other location in the venue, text mes-saging, or engaging in a conversation with a friend. While this account shares some definitional commonalities with sexual harassment (Hill & Silva, 2006) or even sex-ual bullying (Shute, Owens, & Slee, 2008), the accounts of opportunistic predation provided by the women in this study were much more uniform in the way that the victimization event took shape (i.e., fleeting touch of the breasts or buttocks by a stranger; no accompanying verbal harassment). The specificity and uniformity of this victimization type had much to do with the sociocultural context in which it occurred. The following narrative describes this context:

At mainstream hip-hop events it happens all the time, but the thing is that it’s normal, I guess, to be grinded on really like intensely or grabbed and groped where you’re surrounded by males. If I go to a really good hip-hop night there’s so many people on the dance floor and you’re sweating so hard and everything is so sexualized, like you can’t escape it. Like you’re jammed between three dudes who are sweating all over you. You don’t even have to be dancing with them, but you’re right there so of course, they put their hands on your ass and, ya know, you don’t want them to but you can’t get away. (Eileen, WF 21)

Prior research examining NCVS nonclassifying incidents of sexual victimization found that roughly 45% of incidents fall into the subcategory of inappropriate touch-ing or fondling (Weiss, 2004), suggesting that instances of opportunistic predation may not be uncommon regardless of the context in which it occurs.11 Much of the prior theoretical and empirical work on sexual harassment in the workplace and in academia points to both power and masculinity as contributing to these kinds of behaviors (Uggen & Blackstone, 2004), and it appears that these factors contributed to opportu-nistic predation in nightlife contexts as well. In contexts such as nightlife, where rigid adherence to traditional gender scripts predominates (Anderson et al., 2009; Grazian, 2007; Parks & Scheidt, 2000), there is a blurring of definitional boundaries regarding what constitutes sexual victimization versus normal heterosexual behavior. Several theorists (Connell, 1995; Martin & Hummer, 1989; Scully, 1990) posit that social constructions of gender in such contexts equate male sexuality with competition and conquest, and female sexuality with passivity and restraint; such norms cast women who have failed to conform to the traditionally feminine script (by attending a bar alone, drinking alcohol, or dancing with others) as essentially deserving of their own victimization, having behaved inappropriately (Eigenberg, 2003).

Instances of opportunistic predation were also shaped in part by routine activity variables such as the absence of capable guardians like friends or security staff, as well as the lack of immediate awareness displayed the target. These opportunities mani-fested due in large part to extensive crowding in poorly lighted venues, making the




nightlife experience more disorienting for attendees. The following account from Nadine is illustrative:

I get touched or grabbed probably about once a week. People try to grab you and then run away. Usually some guy will grab my butt when I’m walking by. But you don’t always know who it is, ya know, you are walking through a crowd of people, it’s dark, whatever. But it tends to happen whenever I go to CLUB J; which tends to be about once a week. I’m not really at too many other crowded places like that. I mean, that place is packed, so it’s easy for guys to get away with and not get caught. Some girls laugh, it doesn’t seem to bother them. Some girls will get upset, like I usually do. . . . And if I can, I will grab the guy’s hand that did it and say, “ok, what you need to do is watch who the fuck you are touching like that because I’m not your standard whore,” and then keep moving. They always look so embarrassed, because, ya know, they aren’t supposed to get caught. (Nadine, BF 25)

Sometimes, however, incidents of opportunistic predation were described as pro-longed and threatening. Maddie provided one such account:

At one point the song on “Get Low” came on and this dude just came out of nowhere and threw me up against the wall and just started dancing on me. So I was like “no” and I pushed him and I moved away. Then, he grabbed me and now he’s behind me, up against the wall. I moved away. Then, he pushes me up against the wall. I pushed him as hard as I could. We were about to fight. This dude was like over six feet tall but I was so fed up. I was just standing here, and I’m trying to tell you no in a nice way and you are just going to grab me. Then, this dude that I danced with earlier just came and stood by and he walked away. (Maddie, BF 20)

The opportunistic predation type can be distinguished from competing definitions of the situation due to the lack of any prior interaction between the victim and offender. All of the women who were victims of this type of unwanted sexual contact noted that none of the offenders sought a more sustained or intimate sexual encounter nor did the victims perceive that their behavior or demeanor was misconstrued as communicating the desire for a sexualized encounter. Frequently they could not even identity the offender due to the crowded and disorienting nature of large-scale commercial night-life events. This speaks to the importance of the physical and social organization of nightlife spaces in shaping this type of victimization.

Involuntary IncapacitationThe key characteristic of this account was the victims’ involuntary use of either drugs or alcohol to the point of severe inebriation, followed by attempted or completed



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victimization experience. This account shares some similarities with both the compet-ing definitions of the situation and opportunistic predation accounts described earlier, but in these cases the offender would attempt to encourage intoxication to ensure the victim’s compliance. In these two accounts, the would-be victim reported being drugged by a would-be assailant, in what could commonly be referred to as a spiked drink episode (Anderson et al., 2007a). In such instances, the women reported engag-ing in minimal alcohol use (reported as one or two drinks) at a nightlife venue, fol-lowed by feelings of severe intoxication and disorientation, occasionally accompanied by nausea. In each of these cases the women recalled seeing an unknown or unfamil-iar other nearby, shadowing them throughout the evening, or attempting to encourage them to leave the venue with them in a vehicle. As with the opportunistic predation account, the chance for victimization here is also fleeting, further enabled by the pres-ence of environmental factors such as alcohol availability, and lack of deterrents such as capable guardianship. This aspect of the account shares some key similarities with prior research on forced or coerced alcohol and drug use among women, initiated by men (Schwartz & Pitts, 1995; Tyler, Hoyt, & Whitebeck, 1998). Audrey’s account is illustrative:

I met a guy at PARTY C earlier this year who was there randomly and he was a really nice guy, a lawyer. He was just there when I came in and I agreed to go out with him. So I went and I had a dinner with him elsewhere at some other place and he called me. I was parking the car and he said “tell me what you want to drink and I’ll have it ready for you when you get here” so I told him “I’ll have a vodka and cranberry.” So I went in and there is the drink. And by the end of the first one I couldn’t understand how drunk I was. I was just smashed. He said “do you want another drink or do you want to go do something else?” And I said “well we’re here, so let’s have another drink.” So I got halfway through the second one, went to the bathroom and just started throwing up. I threw up six times in two hours. I was really, really scared and I totally should not have been driving, but at that point I was like “I need to get away from you.” I felt like I was threatened.

So this dude tried to get me come up to his apartment and he was like “I brought something back for you from Mexico and I want to give it to you.” That didn’t make sense coz I had just met him. He started rubbing on my legs and stuff and I was like “get away from me, just get the fuck out of my car and get away from me.” I’m positive that he spiked my drink. That was this year, maybe like three or four months ago. I was scared to death, but it was completely random, that was not related to the club scene at all. Let me clarify that. This guy just hap-pened to be at PARTY C that night and we got along, he was hanging out with all of us. (Audrey, WF 21)

This narrative can be viewed in broader terms, as being an unfortunate develop-ment that is in part the result of the social organization of contemporary urban night-life. In addition to the commercialization of nightlife and electronic dance culture




more generally (Thornton, 1996) prior scholarship has revealed that contemporary nightlife scenes tend to draw disparate groups that have varied motivations for atten-dance (Anderson, 2009).

With particular regard to the EDM nightlife scene, based largely on the fact that such events are now held in licensed premises serving alcohol (versus the clandestine locations where EDM events were located decades prior), this scene has become “available” to disparate groups with highly varied levels of interest (Kavanaugh & Anderson, 2008). This earlier work has noted a disconnect or clash between those attendees who were there primarily for music appreciation and controlled substance use versus those who were there to abuse drugs and alcohol and pursue sexual encoun-ters. In short, the intimacy and solidarity that had traditionally characterized this cul-tural group has largely been erased or compromised as increasingly, scene events or parties became housed in mainstream nightlife venues. While controlled drug use and muted forms of sexuality and gender have historically characterized the EDM scene in the United States and abroad, the increasingly commercialized nature of the scene has infused EDM events with many of the sexualized, heteronormative aspects of mainstream commercial nightlife. This organizational shift has led to new conse-quences for EDM scene loyalists partaking in drug, and increasingly, extensive alcohol use in the context of their nightlife involvement.

Discussion and ConclusionWith regard to the three types of sexual victimization discussed in this study, routine activity factors related to lack of self-protection and engaging in risk management behaviors were articulated by these women as important factors shaping the events. While not expressly excusing the offender or shouldering the entirety of the blame, they frequently made reference to the social environment, their own behavior, as well as the behavior of other women. In doing so these women latently endorsed the belief that certain kinds of unwanted sexual behaviors, particularly in nightlife contexts, are commonplace and inevitable; merely hazards of the club scene. The most common theme in these women’s accounts centered on their own use of alcohol or other drugs in the context of their nightlife activities, or referring to interactions with offenders. Such acknowledgements have the unintended effect of rationalizing or minimizing vic-tim’s experiences and reifying gendered social arrangements and conventions in certain contexts like nightlife. It should be noted that these themes were articulated most often in the competing definitions of the situation and involuntary incapacitation types. Conversely, instances of opportunistic predation were generally regarded as instances of ideal victimization (Christie, 1986), based on the lack of precipitous behavior on the part of the victim. These three types, however, have one thing in common. Each is related to the aggressive pursuit of a sexual encounter in an environment where such pursuits are both expected and encouraged (Kavanaugh & Anderson, 2009).

In addressing the varied types of coercive and unwanted sexual experiences of women in nightlife contexts, this research has the potential to move the literature on sexual victimization beyond a rigidly defined legal criterion of felonious sexual assault to



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a view that includes a wider spectrum of behaviors and situations that victims themselves find troubling or traumatic. An unfortunate by-product of focusing comparatively more analytic attention on felonious sexual assault is that researchers have, in part, overlooked an important social phenomenon: that sexual victimization occurs on a continuum of severity (Basile, 1999), and that definitions of what constitutes normal versus deviant behavior are often unclear, obscured by the social context in which these situations takes shape. By better understanding comparably minor forms of sexual vic-timization such as those described in this article, researchers and practitioners may be able to better understand why more objectively serious forms of sexual violence such as rape often go unrecognized or unreported.

This is not to trivialize the victimization experiences discussed by the women in this study. The implications are in fact rather troubling. When certain types of unwanted sexual behaviors are normalized in certain social situations or contexts, such behaviors become, at least in part, expected. If various types of unwanted sexual contact become expected in public places such as bars, clubs, and lounges, the implicit cultural mes-sage is that lesser forms of sexually aggressive or coercive behavior are a normal, if inconvenient, part of the gendered interactions therein. While the bulk of recent schol-arship addressing women’s experiences with various forms of sexual victimization has examined this phenomenon on college campuses (e.g., Banyard et al., 2007; Benson, Gohm, & Gross, 2007; Fisher, Daigle, Cullen, & Turner, 2003; Hines, 2007; Krebs et al., 2009; Menard, Hall, Phung, Ghebrial, & Martin, 2003), this study suggests that varied types of sexual victimization occur in other contexts as well, perhaps with even greater frequency.

There are, however, two major limitations of this research that have implications for future studies. The first pertains to the reliability and validity of information obtained from the interview data. In both qualitative and quantitative designs, respon-dents are susceptible to recall error when recounting past experiences, and this prob-lem is exacerbated when respondents are recounting incidents where they may have been (or clearly were) intoxicated. Misrepresentation of the truth due to social desirabil-ity effects is a cause for concern as well. While some research suggests that people are usually truthful when interviewed about illicit activities if provided with confidentiality (e.g., Stephens, 1991), reporting interpersonal victimization experiences can be more problematic. The researchers attempted to establish shared identity with respondents, and, when appropriate, engaged in personal disclosure in an effort to ensure that respon-dents were comfortable sharing sensitive information. When possible, interviewers and respondents were also matched on demographic characteristics (age and sex) to further increase the likelihood of full disclosure of sensitive information. Prior studies on research methodology have found that this kind of demographic matching is useful in terms of assuring interviewee comfort and in establishing rapport (Daily & Claus, 2001; Wilson, Brown, Mejia, & Lavori, 2002). However, researcher–interviewee demographic matching was not possible in all instances.

The second limitation is unique to this research design and pertains to the potential difficulty in generalizing the findings. As with all qualitative research, generalizing findings to other populations or geographic areas should be done with caution. Like




most ethnographic work, this study utilized a fairly small and nonrandom sample from a localized area. Although some of the respondents were recruited live at direct obser-vation of nightlife events, some were drawn from the friendship networks of key infor-mants. In this sense, participant recruitment mirrored, to some degree, a snowball sampling technique. Consequently these findings are limited in generalizability to the city of Philadelphia.

As the literature on unwanted sexual contact and lesser forms of sexual victimiza-tion moves forward it will remain important to qualitatively illuminate the varied types of victimization that women are experiencing. Perhaps more importantly, researchers should continue to examine these outcomes in more varied social environs with more diverse samples. Future research should further explore race, ethnic, and social class differences in women’s experiences with sexual victimization beyond those attending colleges and universities. As feminist scholars have long noted, gender does not exist in a vacuum, but intersects with social class and race/ethnicity in complex ways to shape the chances of victimization for various women (Britton, 2011). These data sug-gest that the type of sexual victimization women experience may vary by race, as well as by scene, or cultural context. The scene dimension relates to individual taste prefer-ences, which may indirectly reflect both race/ethnicity and social class. In specific regard to race, in this sample, White women affiliated with the EDM scene were the only demographic reporting the involuntary incapacitation type. While the sample used here is obviously too small to make a definitive claim on the issue of victimiza-tion type by race/ethnicity, future research examining this issue in greater depth is certainly warranted.

In terms of practice, broadening our understanding of less severe forms of sexual victimization to account for the experiences of more diverse populations and contexts also has important implications for the design and implementation of prevention pro-grams. Focusing increased attention on the hazards of a varied range of social contexts, and identifying the types of victimization incidents that occur in such contexts (and, by exten-sion, how these incidents take shape), should be incorporated into preventive education programs addressing unwanted sexual contact. Such programs should be inclusive, aimed at both men and women, and qualitatively illuminate their lived experiences. Drawing on narrative data would be particularly useful in this regard.

Author’s Note

Points of view in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Tammy Anderson and the four anonymous reviewers for their incisive and thoughtful comments and suggestions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.



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Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by Grant No. 2008-IJ-CX-0004 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

Notes

1. Nonclassifying is a term used in the NCVS to categorize certain out of scope sexual inci-dent reports that are deemed by researchers as nonserious and excluded from final reported estimates of crime.

2. This issue is certainly not specific to nightlife contexts only. Weiss (2004) found that approximately 24% of all sexual victimization incidents reported to the NCVS between 1997-2000 were ultimately disqualified from final NCVS estimates of rape/sexual assault (6% were not even keyed into the data set) because they did not meet the NCVS criteria for classification as a serious sexual crime.

3. Although some studies have distinguished between physically forced and drug-facilitated sexual assault (see Krebs et al., 2009), Weiss (2004, 2009) is one of the only researchers to focus specific attention on nonclassifying incidents (or to include them in her analysis).

4. In this study, I use the term accounts in a way that is generally consistent with prior work. According to Scott and Lyman (1968), “accounts” are statements that explain untoward behavior and are employed whenever conduct is questioned or actions fall outside of conventional expectations. Successful accounts may excuse such actions by blaming the untoward behavior on mitigating circumstances, or redefining actions as normal or under-standable given the social context in which it occurred. Here, the “accounts” of victims were descriptions of victimization events, where women often made reference to their own behavior, the behavior of other women, the social environment, perceived motivations of the offender, as well as their thoughts and feelings regarding the victimization event.

5. While the initial ethnographic project conducted in 2005-2006 relied on both subject inter-views and direct observation of nightlife events, for the current article I draw on interview data only. The direct observation data do not inform the analysis presented here and is referenced only for the purpose of discussing subject recruitment.

6. Additional sorting of the sexual victimization data into types was performed by hand. That is, the typology generated in this article was mapped or sketched out using paper and pencil, using the earlier ATLAS.ti codes as a guide.

7. Prior scholarship has found that women tend to be reluctant to report such incidents due to (a) the embarrassment and stigma associated with having been a victim of such an act (Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998); (b) perceptions by victims that they will not be believed or that the justice system will be ineffective in punishing the offender (Fisher et al., 2003); (c) per-ceptions that some incidents are not serious enough to warrant reporting (Fisher et al., 2003); and (d) ambiguity about what constitutes illicit sexual conduct (Gavey, 1999).

8. This may be due to the fact that the EDM scene tends to feature higher rates of exotic drug use (GHB, Rohypnol) than the HH scene, as well as being more racially homogeneous (i.e.,




“whiter”) than the commercial HH scene. So while victimization type may be conditioned by race, scene affiliation, or cultural context, may be an equally important consideration.

9. Abbey (1987) suggests that men are socialized to pay closer attention than women to pos-sible sexual cues and are therefore likely to interpret a variety of innocuous behaviors (such as making eye contact, drinking alcohol, dancing, being out late at night, smiling, and engaging in conversation) as infused with sexual meaning.

10. Ariely and Loewenstein (2006) found that men’s willingness to engage in morally question-able behavior to obtain sexual gratification is heightened when they are sexually aroused.

11. Figures are particularly pronounced for young women attending college; prior research on sexual harassment based on a nationally representative survey of undergraduate college students (Hill & Silva, 2006) indicated that 62% of women reported sexual harassment at their university.

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Bio

Philip R. Kavanaugh received his MA and PhD degrees from the University of Delaware and is currently an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg. He is a former graduate research fellow at the National Institute of Justice where his dissertation examined storylines of offending and victimization in urban nightlife. He main-tains interests in crime and deviance, drug and alcohol abuse, qualitative methods, and theory. His recent publications have appeared in Adicciones, Deviant Behavior, and The Sociological Quarterly.



The Continuum of Sexual Violence: Women’s Accounts of Victimization in Urban Nightlife

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