“Nobody Really Got Hurt”—The Legitimization of the Grey Area of Sexual Violence and the Reflection of Gender Roles

Aixa Louro de Almeida (), Sofia Knittel, Bárbara Pereira, Emma de Thouars da Silva and Andreia de Castro Rodrigues
Additional contact information
Aixa Louro de Almeida: School of Psychology, ISPA—Instituto Universitário, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal
Sofia Knittel: School of Psychology, ISPA—Instituto Universitário, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal
Bárbara Pereira: School of Psychology, ISPA—Instituto Universitário, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal
Emma de Thouars da Silva: School of Psychology, ISPA—Instituto Universitário, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal
Andreia de Castro Rodrigues: School of Psychology, ISPA—Instituto Universitário, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal

Laws, 2025, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-22

Abstract: There is little research exploring the grey area of sexual violence (SV), considered in the literature as being a more subtle manifestation of SV, and therefore tending to be trivialized, legitimized, and normalized by society. This study aimed to compare students’ perceptions of the grey area of SV based on the gender of those involved, in a cis-hetero context, as well as potential sex differences in these perceptions. A vignette methodology was employed to gain valuable insights into the topic. The sample consisted of 164 university students living in Portugal, 71.3% ( n = 117) female, with an average age of 23 (SD = 5.84). The thematic analysis revealed a central theme, Severity, reflecting participants’ perceptions of the seriousness of sexual violence within the “grey area”. This theme is expressed through four sub-themes: Attribution of severity, referring to how seriousness is assigned depending on context and beliefs; Identifying sexual violence, highlighting difficulties in recognizing certain behaviors as abusive; Frequency, capturing perceptions of how often such situations occur; and Report, addressing the barriers and facilitators to formal reporting. Our results indicated that while some participants minimized the scenario, the majority of the sample considered the situation as somewhat or very serious. Only few participants trivialized subtle forms of SV, perceiving incidents without overt physical force as less severe. Notably, sex differences emerged, despite being in the minority of the sample, female participants were more inclined to recognize these behaviors as abusive and to view the allegations as credible, whereas male participants tended to downplay the severity.

Keywords: sexual violence; grey area of sexual violence; sexual scripts; rape myth acceptance; gender roles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 E61 E62 F13 F42 F68 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/14/5/73/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/14/5/73/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:14:y:2025:i:5:p:73-:d:1765735

Access Statistics for this article

Laws is currently edited by Ms. Heather Liang

More articles in Laws from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().