Recovery Hub
What is sexual violence?
[Content warning: Descriptions of sexual violence]
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> What is sexual violence?
> What is consent?
> Examples of sexual violence
WHAT IS SEXUAL VIOLENCE?
Sexual violence is being forced, pressured or tricked into doing sexual things when you don’t want to. It includes any behaviour of a sexual nature that makes you feel uncomfortable, frightened, intimidated, or threatened. In other words, it is any sexual activity that happens without the consent of everyone involved.
It is often a crime and can take many forms, including rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, image-based sexual abuse and child sexual abuse.
Sexual violence is a widespread problem that can happen to anyone. It is never the fault of the victim survivor.
WHAT IS CONSENT?
Generally, consent means getting someone’s permission for something to happen, like asking to borrow a friend’s clothes or film a video of them. In a sexual context, it means making sure that everyone is comfortable about what is happening and that they are freely and voluntarily agreeing to have sex or take part in a sexual activity.
It’s important to know how to obtain and give consent, and to understand circumstances where there is not consent.
EXAMPLES OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE
When we think of sexual violence, we often think of physical acts like rape or unwanted touching, but it doesn’t have to be physical to ‘count’ as sexual violence.
Rape: when someone has sex with you without your consent. This can be vaginal sex, anal sex, or oral sex. It can also be putting an object, finger or other body part into the vagina or anus.
Unwanted sexual touching: when someone touches or kisses you over or under clothes in a sexual way (e.g. on the breasts or bum) without your consent. This is sometimes called ‘indecent assault’.
Sexual harassment: when someone makes unwanted sexual comments or gestures that could make people feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. This can happen in person, online, over the phone or even in notes or letters.
Sexual exposure or ‘flashing’: when someone shows or ‘flashes’ their genitals in a place where the public can see.
Alcohol and other drug-facilitated sexual violence, or ‘drink spiking’: when someone gives you alcohol or drugs without your knowledge to make it easier for them to sexually assault you. A common way perpetrators do this is by adding alcohol or drugs to your drink, hence the popular term ‘drink spiking’. It can also include pressuring you to drink something or take something to make it easier for them sexually assault you.
Image-based sexual abuse: when someone takes, shares, or threatens to share an intimate image or video of you without your consent. The image or video could be real or made with AI. (You might have heard people call image-based abuse ‘revenge porn’. We don’t use this term because it implies the victim survivor did something to deserve ‘revenge’).
Voyeurism: when someone watches you do intimate things without your consent, such as having sex, having a shower or getting changed.
Being forced to watch sex acts or pornography: if someone makes you watch pornography, makes you watch them masturbate, or makes you watch others having sex or doing sexual things, it’s sexual violence, even if they don’t touch you.
Not paying for sex work: if you’re a sex worker and a client doesn’t pay after receiving your services, it’s sexual violence.
Stealthing: when you agree to have sex with someone using a condom, but they don’t use a condom or they remove the condom during sex. Stealthing also includes when someone deliberately tampers with a condom, such as poking holes in it or damaging it.
Stalking: when someone repeatedly follows you or watches you.
Sexual exploitation: when someone with more power than you uses bribes or threats to get you to have sex or do sexual things with them. Perpetrators are often people you depend on for necessities like housing, food, employment, or visa status. It’s often perpetrated by adults against children and young people, but can also be perpetrated by an employer against a migrant worker, a drug dealer against someone addicted to drugs, and other relationships where there is an imbalance of power.
Painful, risky, or ‘kinky’ behaviours during sex that you haven’t agreed to: this could include hitting, strangling (commonly called ‘choking’), using restraints like ropes or handcuffs, or using sex toys without your consent.
