Violent Resistance to Sexual Violence

Bibliographic Data

ID12147348
AuthorsTamara Fakhoury (0000-0002-2667-6661, University of Minnesota, corresponding author)
Year2025
Pages1-17
Publication date2025-08-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHypatia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0887-5367 • E-ISSN: 1527-2001
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/hyp.2025.10022
OpenAlexW4413806852
LanguageEN
References cited22

Some victims of sexual violence fight back, seriously harming their abusers as a way of taking power or exacting retribution. Although violence always raises moral questions, there is nevertheless something impressive about those whose actions succeed in posing a formidable challenge to their oppression. The aim of this paper is to offer two ways of thinking about the ethical value of such non-ideal acts of resistance. First, violent resistance may allow victims to maintain ground projects that are being undermined by their abusers. Second, violent resistance may display what I call the virtue of audacious integrity— a willingness to take moral risks, that is, to act in ways that may arouse severe moral censure, in order to uphold one’s values. Both explanations illustrate that victims of sexual abuse may choose to engage in violent resistance for a variety of ethical reasons, including but not limited to paradigmatic moral considerations

Criminology · Economic Justice · Ideal (ethics · Oppression · Political science · Power (physics · Resistance (ecology · Retributive justice · Sexual violence · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Virtue · Forgiveness and Related Behaviors · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Torture, Ethics, and Law · War, Ethics, and Justification

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