Research

Intersectionality

Islamophobia and PSH

Previous literature demonstrates how veiled Muslim women are frequently at high risk of harassment, which has previously been considered an ‘invisible’ harm yet severely impacts the women’s access to public spaces and forces them to alter their routines, removing their autonomy. The punishment of veiled Muslim women for not performing gender the way such male perpetrators wish them to must be considered to allow for nuanced and thoroughly developed policies. Policymakers and practitioners should ensure that they involve Muslim women and other minoritised communities at every stage of development. Future research must be done to inform further our understanding of the intersectionality between misogyny and Islamophobia.

Racism and PSH

Academic research studying racialised experiences of PSH in the UK context are far and few between. The location of academic work is, in this case, incredibly important as racialised PSH is informed by racist stereotypes that are highly dependent on historical context. One thing most studies making mention of race agree on is that women of colour experience more PSH than white women and that their fear of escalation and violence is higher. 

Gender Expression, Sexuality and PSH

Little has been written about how queer/trans women and non-binary persons are impacted by PSH. Scholars have shown that queer women are more likely to encounter sexual harassment when perpetrators assume they are straight, and only become targets of homophobic harassment when identified as queer, at this point their experiences often become sexualised. Queer women or non-binary persons experiencing heterosexual harassment often feel invalidated in their gender and sexual identity. Trans women are at a far higher risk than either queer or heterosexual women for PSH acts, and it is unclear if queer women experience the same amount or more sexual harassment than straight women. Queer/trans women’s harassment tends to be spontaneous, while attacks on gay men tend to be premeditated and concentrated around gay spaces. Theoretical accounts explain that PSH is a form of gender policing due to queer/trans women and non-binary individuals violating the heterosexual matrix by existing. Visibly queer/trans women and non-binary persons live with a greater risk of being sexually harassed for transgressing gender roles in more ways than heterosexual women. This includes being fetishised for their sexuality or gender identity and threatened with punitive or corrective rape.