talking research: dissecting sexual violence with asmita sood
When I imagined the future as a little girl, a global movement against sexual violence lay beyond the realms of my thinking. So #MeToo felt like the ground I stood on breaking open. Its impact on me was immense. Listening to the harrowing accounts of women speaking out made me look at my own experiences and realise: hey, this happened to me, and that was not okay. #MeToo has shone a floodlight on the permeation of sexual violence into every strata of every society across the world. In doing that, it has eroded at the blanket of impunity and silence that surrounds sexual violence. What is growing in that place is a space to talk, heal and move forward. This is the tremendous power of open conversation.
A mass movement of women refusing to stay silent about systemic sexual violence gave us #MeToo. It also left us with a lot of questions. How can perpetrators, who mostly happen to be men, get away with it so easily? Has it always been this bad? How do we support victims better? Does every victim get a voice in this movement? Sexual violence is allowed to fester and it is normalised when we silence its victims. The conversation was a first step. Now that we have started talking, if we want to go further and collectively address the problem as a society, our understanding of sexual violence needs to evolve. The discourse around #MeToo has highlighted the need for more sensitive, informed and productive conversations. We don’t have to start from scratch in the pursuit of a measured understanding of tackling sexual violence - there exists a wealth of multi-disciplinary academic research. I completed a Social Science degree and I was exposed to some of this research. But this exposure remains largely limited to those within academia. How many people would read and understand the findings of a peer reviewed article?
This was my cue for launching Talking Research, a podcast where I interview academics and researchers investigating sexual violence. Every episode is an accessible and informative introduction to a researcher, their work, findings and the underlying data. The first 5 episodes focus on the cultural history of rape, sex work and sexual violence, child abuse in Sub-Saharan Africa, university responses to sexual violence on campus and gendered violence in India respectively. I’ve learnt a lot talking to these phenomenal academics. For instance, I wasn’t aware that UNICEF estimated that 1 billion children across the world have been subjected to physical, emotional or sexual abuse. That’s 1 in 2 children worldwide. Or that there is a strong historical link between rape and ‘honour’ and false accusations and ‘hysteria’. Future topics includes rape-myths, sexual abuse of older people, street harassment, domestic violence, and more.
Dr. Franziska Meinck, featured on episode 3, is a global visionary who spearheaded rigorous data-oriented research into child abuse. When asked about the emotional cost of doing this research, she said: “It’s not easy. There are some days where I don’t want to engage with it and there are other days when I think, this is the reason why we do it.” I believe here she summed up the need for us to keep talking about the convoluted issues around sexual violence. They are not easy, often painful, to dissect, which is why we can’t stop trying. Talking Research is a step in that direction. The goal is to foster a better understanding of scientific findings and academic knowledge of sexual violence and extend that to everyday conversations. Give it a listen if you want to hear experts disentangling various themes around sexual violence and explaining how we can move towards a world where it doesn’t exist. Please also get in touch if you have any feedback or if you’d like to get involved in any way. Every little bit counts.
Please get in touch with us through Twitter, or via email at talkingresearchpodcast@gmail.com. You can also listen to our podcast on Apple Podcasts or through Spotify.