Culture and Courtrooms: How Art Shapes Our Understanding of Agency in Sexual Violence Advocacy

Vlaho Bukovac’s 1882 piece La Grande Iza features a nude woman on display. Photo provided by The Pavle Beljanski Memorial Collection.

‘You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.’ ––John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Double standards and gender biases prevalent in other dimensions of our culture manifests themselves in the ratio of subject to artist. While 76% of the nude paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art depict female subjects, only 4% of the credited artists are women. Women are often depicted as objects of pleasure, but rarely revered as masters deserving of a voice. This is a form of objectification, as it is a denial of agency. 

Modern analysis of the artistic depiction of nude women mirrors the modern debate over whether pornography furthers the sexual objectification of women and contributes to rape culture. At their core, both movements analyze the influence of the media we consume on our cultural attitudes about consent, promiscuity, and sexuality––whether it is hanging upon a gallery wall or found on an explicit website, depictions of women perpetuate misogynistic objectification, that which reduces women to means to the end of male pleasure.

A study conducted at Oklahoma State University found that college men who view pornography were more likely to believe sexual assault myths than their peers because the media they consumed reinforced themes of women being objects to which the viewer was entitled. 

Historically, nude paintings served a similar function to some modern pornography: a token of the owner’s power and status. In his 1972 book, Ways of Seeing, John Berger reimagines the analysis of nude paintings in Western art. Berger argues that the nude functions as an expression of the owner’s control. The men wealthy enough to own them hung them upon their walls to display their possession of such fine, beautiful, and romanticized depictions of the nude female form. Thus the subject’s nudity was not borne from a heartfelt moment of vulnerability, but rather a political expression of her submission, of her assuming the role of an object. Her sexuality becomes a spectacle.

As in art galleries, the spectacle of sexuality prevails in sexual violence court cases. The private is published and politicized. At their core, sexual violence court cases hinge on whether or not victims provided consent, for the distinction between consensual acts and sexual assault lies within the power of the involved. In essence, consent is the crux upon which sexual violence cases rest. The agency of the victim is the central question. 

As a study conducted at the University of Minnesota found, the popular “no means no” movement, while true, oversimplifies the nuances in many sexual violence cases, especially those that take place on college campuses. This movement reduces consent to a binary “yes” or “no.” It ignores the gray areas––areas in which underlying power differences or involvement of alcohol prevent the victim from giving proper consent in fear of the consequences they will face as a result of their decision. 

Moreover, many cases involving alcohol or power imbalances invite potential for coercion. Laws defining sexual assault have evolved throughout the last forty years to prosecute cases of assault that were not marked by physical force, but rather a lack of meaningful consent. On campuses, schools have implemented policies in accordance with Title IX in an effort to protect survivors from harassment throughout their legal procedures. 

These reforms have done little to improve survivors’ experiences in courtrooms themselves. Time after time, survivors are torn apart in courtrooms as defense attorneys shroud their clients in possibilities of innocence––what if the defendant thought the victim consented? What if they thought the victim was asking for it? All the while, the victim’s suffering becomes a spectacle for the public’s morbid curiosity, especially in highly publicized cases such as the 2015 Stanford Case. Researchers at the University of Nebraska found that character evaluation of the victim has not improved as rape law has been reformed. Women are still ridiculed for the smallest mark in character as if that serves as proof of her attacker’s innocence.  

Our understanding of the way we perceive survivors can be strengthened if we look to the way woman subjects are viewed as immoral for behaviors or poses their male audience and artists use for pleasure or proof of power. This double standard persists through both art galleries and courts of law, and can create stereotypes that are expressed in other dimensions of culture. 

Media and courtroom narratives about the aggressors create stereotypes that attempt to prove a lack of agency in their behaviors rather than those of the victim––boys will be boys, he drank alcohol, he fell victim to a larger campus culture, etc. Conversely, the victim bears the responsibility for an action she does not choose to do as she is cross-examined for any minor, irrelevant mark in character that can be used to justify her being assaulted––she was dressed provocatively, she sleeps around, she was asking for it, etc. We morally condemn victims for the same behaviors with which we excuse their assaulters. 

With our ever-expanding access to unregulated media, reforming culture in this way may seem impossible. But as activists work to reform the media we consume, our laws must shift to hold assaulters accountable, rather than providing loopholes through which they can deny their competence, understanding, and agency by blaming the women they assaulted for choosing to do the wrong things, like drinking or partying. 

In cases of sexual harassment, media narratives accuse women of seeking personal, political, or professional gain at the expense of their alleged attacker. Rather than focusing on the situation at hand, as courtrooms ought, these cases focus on the victim’s reputation––she is on trial for her very existence, she is not believed while every description of her or excuse from her attacker is believed more readily. She is not given the opportunity to represent herself; she is reduced to subject in a case revolving around her body and her agency. Just as she was denied power in the attack itself, she is denied agency in her trial. 

Before reforms manifest in courtrooms, a larger cultural movement focusing on agency, narrative, and authorship must take hold. We must advocate that individuals take responsibility for understanding how deep the roots of a misogynistic, objectifying narrative run throughout the media they consume in hopes that they are able to unlearn the prejudices and behaviors found therein. 

Centering our advocacy around promoting freely given enthusiastic and consistent consent and our laws around including coercion in the definition of assault is the only way to ensure the comforts of victims in courtrooms and the just trial of the accused. Agency––the capacity for one to make choices freely––at the time of the alleged assault must be our central concern in cases of sexual violence for both the victim and the attacker.

Reece Brown is a first year student studying history and human rights. You can probably find her wandering through Romantic art galleries or embarking upon a nearby hiking trail.