Violated: Sexual Consent and Assault in the Twenty-First Century

by Julie L. Fennell, J. Remy Green

Statistically speaking, you or someone you know has experienced a sexual violation. There’s also a high chance that you or someone you know caused one. Perhaps these incidents had a clear perpetrator and victim. Or maybe you’ve encountered one of the more complicated situations where it’s not quite so obvious that one person intentionally hurt another. Violated focuses on that messy place of unintentional, thoughtless, or perhaps even reckless consent violations. It challenges us to rethink the way gender and dating norms, intentionality, and intoxication have come to frame our social understanding of sexual consent and discusses what you, your organizations, and your government can do to help reduce the scope of sexual violation. But more than anything, this book argues that we need to develop more realistic models of “good consent” for the world we actually live in.

210 pages, Hardcover

Published July 16, 2024

About the author

Julie Fennell has a PhD in Sociology and has written numerous books and articles about gender and sexuality. She also has two published fiction stories. To contact, please email juliefennellphd at gmail dot com.

Reviews

[betsy · Rating 1 out of 5]

i was really excited to get an advanced copy of this book but was quickly let down by it. the authors start off with a hypothetical that is wordy and convoluted, then quickly transition into all the ways the reader is biased and looking at sexual violence through the “wrong” lens. while this might work for some, the authors approach of coming in hot at the beginning felt condescending and, at times, like they were cheapening the experience of victims of sexual violence. there was also an almost weaponized use of statistics that just did not hit for me and i felt like their discussion of the legal landscape across the US was less than helpful at best.

maybe this book will be enlightening for some, but as an attorney that has spent a lot of time working in and thinking about the sexual violence space and the legal ramifications for victims and perpetrators, this book wasn’t for me at all.

thanks to #netgalley, the publisher, and the authors for an #ARC.

[Karen Miles · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish book. Stopped at 15%.
I was excited to read this book when I read the summary on NetGalley. However, this book felt “off” for me. First, I could not figure out who the audience was supposed to be for this book. Second, I felt this was one long rant by the author and the tone came off as condescending for the majority of the book. Third, I felt the writing was erratic going off on too many tangents that did not work for the serious theme of the book. Honestly, I think this book deserves a major rewrite to draw in the intended audience and for the author to be more clear and concise on the positions they want to express. Overall, I agreed with many of the points that the author was trying to make but feel the writing was inadequate and will not draw many positive reviews.

[Myrlyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the book enlightening and it provided more nuanced view of consent and assault laws than I'd encountered before.

[Jojo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it's an overall solid book on consent, with a lot of emphasis on the grey zone. It doesn't bring a lot of new ideas to the table and the tone can be off at times, like other reviewers have noted. It was honestly a bit of a let-down after Fennell's incredible book on BDSM, which is definitely a must-read.