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The Making of Gendered Violence

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Submitted By CaitiMurr
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The Making of Gendered Violence
Caitlin Murray
January 29th, 2016

For an act that is considered “taboo” to talk about, violence against women is one of the most prolific violent acts in the world. Because it is so common that a woman will experience violence against them at one point in their lives, the act often goes overlooked by either society or the victim themselves. Media has taught us that violence against women occurs, but because of the way it is portrayed, we often don’t see the real brutality of the act, which can desensitize us. Intersectionality has helped woman strengthen their fight against assaults, but has also ignored the differences between assaults that occur between races. There unfortunately is a difference between the assault of a white woman and the assault of a black woman. This paper will discuss these topics and look at why each of them occurs.
The rape or domestic abuse of women has now become a familiar scene in movies and television. But are we actually seeing the assault? Most often we are not. The assault is almost always implied, by showing the woman or girl crying afterwards, in a broken state telling her friends and family what happened. We can even see the victim immediately after the assault occurred. However it is extremely rare for media to film an assault scene (Easteal, 2015). This is because the assault scene is usually "too graphic” and viewers do not want to have to witness such a gruesome act.
This not only creates a taboo nature for rape or domestic abuse in media, but also creates a taboo nature of rape and domestic abuse in our culture. If we don’t see it happen, then we can never know how violent the act really is. We can hear about it happening and can to at some degree learn the affects on the victim afterwards, but if we don’t see the act happening then we can never truly learn the level of violence being

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