Sexual violence is considered one of the worst, most injurious crimes. In all of its forms and manifestations it is about violating someone’s mental and physical integrity and assaulting or denying them their freedom.
A sexual assault occurs one someone abuses their power and crosses another person’s personal boundaries in a sexual way with that person’s permission. This is not just about physical contact or sexual intercourse, but also psychological forms of pressure or, for example, innuendo or ogling that is “merely” suggestive - in short, anything that crosses someone’s individual boundaries in a specific situation.
Sexual violence is any unwanted behavior with a sexual subtext that the victim finds unpleasant and unwelcome. On the one side there is the person performing the behavior, and on the other side is a person who disagrees with the behavior and expresses disagreement with it.
There are two aspects to this definition. The first is that the expressing of agreement or consent has a much more complicated meaning than is immediately apparent - this is not restricted just to saying “yes” or “no”. If alleged “consent” to behavior is expressed as a response to a serious threat of harm, or because the person is ignorant, immature, or has learned to behave submissively, then it is difficult to consider it genuine consent to allowing the performance of violent behavior. The second aspect is that personal boundaries mean the physical space beyond one’s body within which a person feels good and safe. Each person has different physical boundaries, which is why one should never be afraid to define one’s boundaries to others, as other people do not necessarily know what your boundaries are. However, if someone consciously violates your boundaries despite having been warned what they are, then that meets the definition of this second aspect of sexual violence.
Statistics and surveys
A public opinion survey by the Focus polling agency was commissioned by the Amnesty International organization on the topic of How the issue of violence against women is seen by the Czech population (Problematika násilí na ženách optikou České populace) in 2015.
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