A Feminist Exploration of Violence: How Language and Identity Shape Perceptions

Using research from across disciplines such as Criminology, Feminist Theory, and Social Psychology, the following paper presents a case for the restructuring of the present understanding of violence, victims, survivors, and perpetrators. The current definitions and understandings of each of these topics are narrow caricatures which results in the exclusion of many instances of violence. I complicate our understandings of victims and of perpetrators, to allow people thought of as unable to perpetrate violence, to be held accountable and those thought as unable to be victimized to be believed.