Guest Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

The firestorm of accusations of sexual violence (SV) that swept across the United States in the latter half of 2017 represented a seismic shift in the national social landscape, bringing down a number of prominent men from the worlds of journalism, politics, and entertainment, among others. A social media campaign linked to the hashtag #MeToo, used millions of times by SV victims and their supporters in at least 85 countries, ultimately brought movement founders into the national spotlight and earned these "Silence Breakers" the Time Magazine "Persons of the Year" Award (Felsonthal, 2017). The sexually aggressive behaviors so prominently featured in news accounts of the accusations against powerful men appeared to have been facilitated by some significant power disparities between the alleged perpetrators and their victims. Although the ultimate impact of this apparent cultural shift toward finally coming to grips with SV remains to be determined, at the time these headlines had the effect of eclipsing-if, perhaps, only partly-a similar national debate concerning sexual assault (SA) on college campuses, which has featured protracted examination of the role of student alcohol use as a facilitator of the assaultive behaviors. Indeed, particularly on college campuses, it has become clear that few topics are as emotionally fraught as this one. It is with an eye on this discussion that this special issue of Violence Against Women presents the following six papers representing cutting edge research into understanding and preventing alcohol-related SV among college-aged and young adults. First, a few words about definitions are in order. As viewed broadly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), SV is defined as "a sexual act that is committed or attempted by another person without freely given consent of the victim or against someone who is unable to consent or refuse" and includes forced or alcohol/drug-facilitated penetration of a victim, forced or alcohol/drug-facilitated incidents in which the victim was made to penetrate a perpetrator or someone else, nonphysically pressured unwanted penetration, intentional sexual touching, or noncontact acts of a sexual nature (Basile, Smith, Breiding, Black, & Mahendra, 2014). This definition is somewhat broader than that usually used in delineating SA. Thus, the recent Campus Climate

Incapacitated sexual assault among youths: beyond the perpetrator tactics framework

“…As Freeman (2018) has rightly commented, scholars in this field of study have paid little attention to the social dynamics of ISA. One exception is Armstrong and colleagues' (2006) ethnographic study from a "party dorm" at a university campus in the United States.…”