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Coping and Sexual Harassment: How Victims Cope across Multiple Settings

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Abstract

The ways sexual harassment occurs both online and in face-to-face settings has become more complicated. Sexual harassment that occurs in cyberspace or online sexual harassment adds complexity to the experiences of victims, current research understandings, and the legal dimensions of this phenomenon. Social networking sites (SNS) are a type of social media that offer unique opportunities to users and sometimes the communication that occurs on SNS can cross the line from flirtation into online sexual harassment. Victims of sexual harassment employ communicative strategies such as coping to make sense of their experiences of sexual harassment. The current study qualitatively examined problem-focused, active emotion-focused, and passive emotion-focused coping strategies employed by sexual harassment victims across multiple settings. We conducted 26 in-depth interviews with victims that had experienced sexual harassment across multiple settings (e.g., face-to-face and SNS). The findings present 16 types of coping strategies—five problem-focused, five active emotion-focused, and six passive emotion-focused. The victims used an average of three types of coping strategies during their experiences. Theoretical implications extend research on passive emotion-focused coping strategies by discussing powerlessness and how victims blame other victims. Furthermore, theoretically the findings reveal that coping is a complex, cyclical process and that victims shift among types of coping strategies over the course of their experience. Practical implications are offered for victims and for SNS sites.

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Notes

  1. There are several types of SNS. Some SNS are more isolating while others can be more public. Our participants named Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and, in rare cases, text messaging and instant messaging as the locations where the harassment occurred. We detail where each participant was harassed in Table 1.

  2. Gamergate is a “viral Twitter hashtag used to describe an ongoing controversy in which predominantly male video gamers harass/dox feminist game designers, journalists and bloggers under the guise that the movement preserves the integrity of gaming journalism” (FemTechNet, 2017).

  3. The participant who was 35 had experienced sexual harassment when he was 19. His narrative provided a reflection back on the experience. The rest of the participants were between the ages of 18–26.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge that this research was partially supported by a Research Enhancement Grant from Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication, University of Kentucky, 244 Grehan Building, Lexington, KY, 40506-0042, USA

    Jennifer A. Scarduzio

  2. College of Communication and Information, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Sarah E. Sheff

  3. Department of Social Work, University of Texas-Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA

    Mathew Smith

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  1. Jennifer A. Scarduzio
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Correspondence to Jennifer A. Scarduzio.

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Scarduzio, J.A., Sheff, S.E. & Smith, M. Coping and Sexual Harassment: How Victims Cope across Multiple Settings. Arch Sex Behav 47, 327–340 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1065-7

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