A comparative analysis of White and Indigenous girls’ perspectives on sexual violence, toxic masculinity and rape culture

Abstract

North American feminist scholarship on violence against women (VAW) focuses primarily on gendered-based violence and does not substantively incorporate intersectionality. In this paper, I offer a comparative analysis of Canadian Indigenous and White middle-class adolescent girls’ narratives of toxic masculinity, rape culture and sexual violence. I use VAW research, Indigenous feminist theory and girlhood studies to focus on the following: (1) the ‘boys will be boys’ discourse, (2) the feminist critique of the stranger danger discourse and (3) the surveillance of girls. I analyze focus group data with girls (aged 13–19 years). I am interested in how girls both accept and resist the status quo in their day-to-day negotiations with family, peers, schools and public spaces.

Keywords:

• Sexual violence
• girlhood
• Indigenous girls
• affect theory
• feminist intersectionality

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also want to thank my wonderful research assistants: Ammanie Abdul-Fatah, Anna Bogic, Stephanie Claude, Hayley Crooks, Jennifer Ferrante, Capri LeBlanc, Sabre Lee, Lindsay Ostridge, Dayna Prest and Tricia McGuire-Adams Finally, I wish to express my profound gratitude to all the girls who lent their voices to this project with such honesty, insight and humour.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 After this, ‘I’ will stand in for Interviewer. At some points, I extract comments from different focus groups, but when specifically indicated, I use discussions from within one focus group only.

2 All names have been changed to pseudonyms. The number in brackets is the age of the participant.

3 Nina (focus group 11, 16, Indigenous): If you see that girl getting harassed at a party, even if you don’t know the girl or if you don’t like the girl, you should go in and be like ‘hey, come with me’. Harley (focus group 12, 17, Indigenous): Have you guys heard of the Looking Out for Each Other project?…Missing Indigenous women and I think it has something to do with sexual violence as well…telling their own stories. If this happened to them, come and tell us that it’s okay and that you seek help. You will fight it and, it’s like not always dark.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2014-1763] (Author is the Principal Investigator).

Notes on contributors

Mythili Rajiva

Mythili Rajiva is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies (University of Ottawa). Her research focuses on trauma, racialization, girlhood, diaspora and identity. She is currently the principal investigator on an SSHRC-funded project that examines the different impacts of landscapes of sexual violence against adolescent girls. She is also a co-investigator on another SSHRC grant on the consequences of the mass rape of German women in the last days of World War II and the rapes and forced impregnation of mainly Muslim Bosnian women during the 1990s war in former Yugoslavia.