Entitlement

There is a certain anger in it, in my experience with men harassing women. Not an anger towards the woman necessarily, but anger if they don’t get a response. Like the man is entitled to a reply from her. The man can yell at her and get more aggressive if she doesn’t reply, or if the approach is met with rejection, the man can get frustrated or angry. This tells me that there is a social construct of entitlement from men, where some men feel like they have the right to women’s attention or access to them. Because of this behavior staring, comments, or unwanted approaches can become normalized. The objectification of women in everyday situations builds towards acceptance of mistreatment of women, so how does that happen?  The escalation of this male behavior coming from ignored advances like not getting replies, of turning an interaction into anger or aggression would implicate that the interaction was not about connection but rather about control and validation. How we as a society normalize this, influences consequences. If we normalize persistence or simply don’t stop it, it can turn the persistence to harassment.  Like this research states from Entitlement Predicts Sexism, in Both Men And Women, Study Finds, (2014) Feelings of entitlement are linked to hostile attitudes toward women. Entitled men in this context are more likely to have a sexist view on women. The idea of deserving attention is a psychological basis for frustration which can turn to women.

Objectification 

One in three women in the EU have experienced sexual violence (FRA, 2024). With low prosecution rates in sexual violence cases, it feeds the idea that women’s safety is not fully taken seriously. It causes a social imbalance that might happen unwarily for most. The imbalance that men can move generally through public spaces without having the same fear as women have, which causes women to learn to be cautious and constantly aware of risk. The imbalance seems to tilt negatively towards women in every situation. Women are often told not to dress or act provocatively, to carry something like keys or pepper spray to use in self-defence and not to drink too much when they go out. These precautions are often shared to them by men, so why is there a global issue of men not believing women when they do get assaulted? When you were the one that told them to take precautions? The objectification is a concept that is deeply embedded in our society, and most notorious is the sexual objectification of women. Film theorist Laura Mulvey explains the use of the male-gaze (Media-Studies.com, 2025). She states how in film women are often depicted as objects, feeding the heterosexual male viewing pleasure. Sexualizing female characters by focusing on their physicality through camera angles, costumes and narrative arcs. She explains how female characters are often introduced through visual scanning shots, fragmented body imagery or sexualized framing. Objectification can build up to acceptance of sexual harassment and assault. The book “Men’s Intrusion, Women’s Embodiment A critical analysis of street harassment” by Fiona Vera-Gray (2018) shows how everyday intrusions impact women. Whistling, comments, or following women when it’s not legally punishable have impact on how women move through public spaces and build their sense of vulnerability.

Victim blaming 

Victim-blaming, a well-used term in the past years. When women experience harassment or violence, their experiences are frequently minimized or pivoted with victim-blaming. Questions like what a woman was wearing or why she was in a certain place are shifting the blame away from the perpetrator and placing it on the woman. This official document from End violence against women international (EVAWI) called “Effective Victim Interviewing: Helping Victims Retrieve and Disclose Memories of Sexual Assault shows how victims of assault are treated and which effect it has on them. They are asked questions that indicate blame such as “why didn’t you scream…?” or “what were you doing…?”  Knipschild et al. (2024) shows the impact of the psychological consequences. The increased self-blame which can be divided into two forms, behavioural and characterological self-blame, blaming your actions like having gone clubbing or blaming your personality, like ‘what is wrong with me that this happened?’. Other than self-blaming, psychological consequences can be depression, anxiety or PTSD symptoms. The EVAWI text (Lonsway et al., 2021) suggests a module that guides effective trauma-informed interviewing to avoid adding additional trauma or victim-blaming. Their studies and module are based on the clear message that survivors are not responsible for the choices of their perpetrators. They also state that questions on the setting should only be asked if there is a relevance to it for building the context. Questions about the victim’s alcohol/ drugs intake, clothing or actions, should be asked if they play a part in the context, but not for shifting blame or motives. There are other ways as well to induce victim-blaming than how victims are being interviewed. Another way to take blame from the perpetrator is to minimalize the wrongdoing, by creating beliefs such as that a rape needs to be violent or a victim is only a victim if they screamed for help or fought back during the assault. The IACP (Date Rape: A Hidden Crime, 2000) states that apart from homicide, rape is the most serious violation of a person’s body because it deprives the victim of both physical and emotional privacy and autonomy. Stating that a rape must be violent is even more surprising because the vast majority of sexual assaults are not committed with a weapon and do not result in injury. The idea that a rape has to involve physical violence influences believability in rapes that aren’t. Factors like intimidation, blackmail, being taken advantage off or rape-drugs are all without physical struggle. In my own experience with explaining the difference I usually explain that a difference in strength is an intimidation factor in itself. If there is a gap in strength, the one with the upper hand will always be more physically intimidating for if they wanted to cause harm, they could. The term “date rape” has also been frequently mentioned in recent years. It refers to rape committed by someone you are dating or in a relationship with. Rape by a stranger is considered more serious and date-rape still has problems being considered criminal. Rape within marriage was not legally recognized as a crime in the Netherlands until 1991.