Sexual Violence Against Women, Social Sin, and the Virtue of Resistance

Sexual Violence Against Women, Social Sin, and the Virtue of Resistance1 Suzanne Mulligan (bio) This article explores the connection between virtue, social sin, and sexual violence against women. In the Catholic theological tradition, considerable time has been given to questions of sexual morality but often with disproportionate focus on the sexual act. Ethicists today are helping advance sexual discourse by examining how socio-economic and cultural contexts affect sexual agency, by analyzing more fully the quality of the relationships and by acknowledging how sexual choice occurs within the larger framework of the person's life journey. For this reason, virtue ethics acts as a valuable interlocutor with sexual ethics. The article is divided into five sections. The first section outlines some of the factors contributing to gender-based violence globally; section two considers how social narrative and virtue are connected and how negative social narrative can contribute to violence against women. Section three examines the idea of social sin, while in section four I argue that the virtue of resistance plays a pivotal role in changing unjust sexual practices. Finally, I outline some of the implications for Catholic sexual ethics today. 1. Violence against women On 12 January 2022, Ashling Murphy went for a run along the Grand Canal near Tullamore, Co. Offaly. She was twenty-three years of age and was beginning her career as a primary school teacher. She went jogging in the afternoon, in an area normally populated by walkers, runners, and dog-lovers. At 4pm Ashling was murdered. Her violent killing sparked outrage across Ireland. Tens of thousands of people held vigils in the days following. Her death gained international media coverage, and as disbelief turned to anger, people marched in the streets of both Ireland and England to protest against rising levels of gender-based violence. Vigils and protests are valuable ways of expressing solidarity and can act as a mechanism for personal and/or national catharsis. But long after [End Page 71] protests have ceased and the vigil candles burn out, violence towards women remains a systemic problem in Ireland. A report by Women's Aid in 2020 stated that one in five young women in Ireland have been subjected to intimate relationship abuse, and that 51% of young women affected had experienced this abuse before the age of eighteen years.2 Most of these women also experienced emotional abuse. Statistics on global rates of femicide reveal an even more disturbing fact: approximately 137 women are murdered every day by someone in their family. This equates to over 50,000 women dying at the hands of a family member each year. And in Ireland since 1996, 265 women have died in violent circumstances. Of these, 63% were killed in their own homes, 55% were killed by a partner or ex-partner, and almost nine in ten women knew their killer.3 The violence visited upon Ashling Murphy is not peculiar to Ireland, of course. Women across the world face danger, discrimination, and death every day. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence against women as: 'any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.'4 In addition, 'intimate partner violence' is defined as violence by an intimate partner or ex-partner that results in psychological, sexual and/or physical harm. This includes all forms of physical aggression, sexual coercion, and various types of controlling behaviour.5 'Sexual violence' refers to 'any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or other act directed against a person's sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting. It includes rape … attempted rape, unwanted sexual touching and other non-contact forms.'6 WHO data indicates that between 2000 and 2018, and across 161 countries, almost one in three (30%) women were subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate or non-intimate partner, or both. More than a quarter of women and girls aged between fifteen and forty-nine have endured physical...