Summary of Katharine Jenkins' "Rape Myths and Domestic Abuse Myths as Hermeneutical Injustices"

Written by Kelsey Vicars

Her Project

In her paper, “Rape Myths and Domestic Abuse as Hermeneutical Injustice”, Katharine Jenkins argues that rape myths and domestic abuse myths can constitute hermeneutical injustices. The pervasiveness of these myths leads to the development of faulty operative concepts, which make victims of abuse less likely to apply the terms ‘rape’ and ‘domestic abuse’ to their experiences. 

Jenkins argues that understanding rape and abuse within the framework of hermeneutical injustices can also help shed light on the framework itself. She articulates the ways in which the concept would need to be adapted to accommodate these new cases. 

Lastly, she outlines the practical implications of her argument: she calls for juries in rape and abuse trails to be briefed about myths at the beginning of the trail, and for work to be done to eradicate these myths. She suggests that victims, social workers, doctors, and the general public ought to be educated about these myths, and that discussion of these myths should happen in sexual education in schools. 

Rape and Domestic Abuse Myths

Jenkins describes rape and domestic abuse myths as inaccurate perceptions concerning rape and domestic abuse. For example, some of the myths surrounding rape include:

1. That it always involves physical force, and that victims always resist. 
2. That consent cannot be withdrawn partway through. 
3. That consent is automatically given whenever the act is between people who have had a previous sexual relationship. 
4. That rape cannot occur within a marriage or relationship, and that it is always committed by a stranger. 
5. Victims who act or dress in a way that is “teasing” or “provocative” cannot be raped. 

Despite the fact that these myths all contradict UK laws (and many other rape laws), they are widely accepted as being constitutive of rape. This can lead many victims who experience rape in circumstances that match these myths to fail to understand, and fail to acknowledge that they have been raped. 

Empirical research has found that among victims who did not acknowledge that they had been raped they were both a) more likely to accept rape myths, and b) to have been raped in circumstances that matched the myths they believed. This research strongly suggests that one effect of rape myths is that it causes some victims of rape to not conceptualize their experience as one of rape.

Jenkins notes that these kind of problematic myths are also held about domestic abuse. These kinds of myths include:

1. That domestic abuse is always physical. 
2. That it always happens to a woman, by a man, within an intimate relationship. 
3. That it only happens in poverty or deprivation. 
4. That it usually involves drugs or alcohol. 
5. A “real” victim will leave the relationship: victims who stay have not “really” been abused. 

Although there is no directly analogous empirical research available, it appears that a large number of victims of abuse are also reluctant to apply the term to their experience. So, Jenkins argues that domestic abuse myths function in a similar way to rape myths: these myths lead people to develop faulty definitions of abuse and rape such that their own experiences end up excluded. 

She argues that, given this, these are cases of hermeneutical injustice. In these cases, a subject is unable to make sense of an area of her experience that it is strongly in her interests to make sense of, because she is not able to access the conceptual resources necessary to do so.

But she notes that these kinds of cases may not appear to be straightforward instances of hermeneutical injustice. In order to clarify how these cases get to count, she distinguishes between operative and manifest concepts. 

Manifest and Operative Concepts

Jenkins draws on Sally Haslanger’s distinction between manifest and operative concepts to show how her cases fit the hermeneutical injustice framework. A manifest concept is the “explicit official or form definition”. An operative concept is the “implicit definition that can be extrapolated from actual use in a given community”. 

Jenkins argues that the actual legal definitions of rape and domestic abuse are manifest concepts. Versions of these concepts that also encode myths are operative concepts. That many people operationally use these faulty concepts leads them unable to accommodate their own real experiences of rape or abuse. 

Hermeneutical Injustice

Jenkins argues that Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice applies to cases of rape and domestic abuse myths. This is because these myths function to obscure victim’s understanding of their own experience.

A hermeneutical injustice is a particular kind of epistemic injustice. An epistemic injustice, in general, is a wrong done to a subject in their capacity as a knower. A hermeneutical injustice is defined as “the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to hermeneutical marginalization” (Fricker, p. 108). For example, a woman who suffers sexual harassment at the workplace before the concept ‘sexual harassment’ is available to her suffers an injustice in that she is unable to understand and make sense of her experience, owing to the gap in collective hermeneutical resources. 

Jenkins notes that there are three important components to Fricker’s conception of hermeneutical injustice. 

1. The experience is significant.
   
2. The experience is obscured from collective understanding.
   
3. The subject is hermeneutically marginalized. 

Rape and abuse are very significant experiences, and so (1) is satisfied. (2) is satisfied because myths lead to faulty concepts that obscure victims experiences. (3) is satisfied because victims of rape and abuse are generally marginalized by stigma, and by the how the discourse around these topics has developed (so as to exclude men, etc.)

Jenkins concludes that all three conditions have been satisfied. She notes that a broader condition for a hermeneutical injustice should also include a serious wrong having occurred: this wrong has indeed occurred in these cases, and we can conclude that myths lead to hermeneutical injustice. 

A New Kind of Hermeneutical Injustice?

Fricker identifies three kinds of internal diversity within hermeneutical injustice. 

1. The degree of misunderstanding. How severe is the deficit? How hard will it be for the victim to grasp understanding? It may be entirely unintelligible, or it may be somewhat possible.
   
2. The extent of the intelligibility of the experience. Who is the case intelligible to? It might be to everyone, including the victim, or the victim and a few others, but not the person or people the victim wants to communicate to.
   
3. The manner in which the intelligibility deficit manifests. How much of the deficit is due to the experience that is being obscured, and how much is due to the way it is being communicated not being understood?

Jenkins takes her case to shed light on a) and b). 

In regards to a): the possibility of the deficit being as a result of a gap between operative and manifest concepts raises new questions. Is there any kind of concept (manifest or operative) that would make this experience intelligible? How big is the gap between these concepts?

In regards to b): that some experiences are intelligible to some but not others gives force to the idea that epistemic resources are not shared uniformly across social locations; they are differently available to different knowers. In many typical cases of hermeneutical injustice, the socially powerful have access to resources that marginalized communities do not. In cases of rape and abuse, a concept is available to the victim, but not a suitable one. 

Cases of rape and abuse are another kind of hermeneutical injustice. The relevant conceptual resources are available at some social locations, but are inaccessible to the victim. For example, a rape victim may lack them whereas an experienced social worker may not.

Jenkins suggests that there are four ways that subjects can be situated in relation to the relevant resources:

1. Both A and B have all the relevant resources. The experience is intelligible to both and they can each communicate it. There is no hermeneutical injustice.
   
2. A and B both lack one or more resources. The experience is unintelligible to A, who therefore cannot communicate it to B. Even if B has all the facts, the experience would be unintelligible to them too. This is a hermeneutical injustice.
   Example: sexual harassment.
   
3. A has all the relevant resources, B lacks one or more. A does not understand the experience and she cannot communicate it to B. This is a hermeneutical injustice.
   Example: privileged ignorance.
   
4. A lacks one or more resource, and B has all of them. A does not understand the experience and she cannot communicate it to B. If B had all the facts, it would also be unintelligible to B. This is a hermeneutical injustice. Cases of abuse and rape fall into this category.

Practical Implications

Jenkins work contributes to the idea that rape and abuse myths problematically obscure understanding for victims as well as for jurors, doctors, lawyers, and the general public. Jurors that have a faulty operative concept of rape and abuse have an inaccurate understanding of what it is they are meant to be deciding on. They are asking the wrong questions as they hear the evidence. Not only will the narrative be shaped by myths, but it will also be about the wrong thing. It won’t even be about rape as it actually is. 

So, Jenkins suggests, we should include warnings about rape myths at the beginning of legal trials. Victims, social workers, doctors, and the general public should be educated about these myths. This can often be achieved effectively through advertising. We may also want to include discussion of these myths in early sex education.