 ‘What does mattress girl have that we didn’t have?’ Narratives of sexual violence and social change on US university campusesTanya Serisier Chapter 19 in Research Handbook on Gender, Violence and Law, 2026, pp 315-328 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: In 2014, activism around sexual violence on US university campuses was receiving extensive and primarily positive media commentary and, consequently, seeing success in changing policy at universities and promoting legislative measures such as California's ‘Yes Means Yes’ law. This was in marked contrast to early student activism on this issue in the 1990s, which was largely dismissed and marginalized. This chapter examines the historical shifts that explain this change, arguing against a simple narrative of gradual and progressive change. Instead, it suggests that the issue became more widely accepted through a reframing, as narratives of sexual freedom and student control shifted to racialized and classed narratives of the vulnerable student, carceral responses and incorporation of activism within neoliberal university logics. The chapter asks what lessons these shifts contain for contemporary activism around sexual violence on university campuses, in the US and elsewhere. Keywords: University; Student Activism; Feminism; Sexual Violence; Affirmative Consent; Neoliberal Feminism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22689_19 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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