1. Sexual Violence in universities:
prevention, accompaniment and
transformation
Main lines of the training model
Elaborated by Basque Country University (UPV/EHU)
and Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV)
Team: Barbara Biglia, Marta Luxan, Mila Amurrio, Sara Cagliero,
Ivana Leon, Carla Alsina, Jokin Azpiazu, Ainhoa Narbaiza. Thanks
to Edurne Jimenez as well.
http://usvreact.eu/
#usvreact

2. Sexual Violence in universities: prevention,
accompaniment and transformation
Session one, part one: how do different
forms of sexual violence manifest in
university settings?
http://usvreact.eu/
#usvreact

3. ✔
Fictional cases are used as a starting point to debate on how we perceive and
identify sexual violence: different levels of intensity, different expressions,
different people at which it is aimed, diverse actors involved.
✔
The work of different groups is put together in a common guided debate
where we start to analyse how elements of power act in cases of sexual
violence.

4. Debate about fictional cases, how did we analyse them?
Participants analyse them their own way, with a few guiding questions (what happens here,
who is involved etc). We organised our analysis based in the following:
1. Type(s) of violence
2. Power elements and gender issues in the case (intersectionally)
3. Legal categorisation
4. Agents involved in the case and their stance

5. Some questions we could consider when facing a case
✗Which is the impact of gender stereotypes, gendered roles and attitudes in
this case? Could we say this is gender-related violence? What form of
violence are we facing?
✗Besides gender, what other axis of power are present in the situation?
(sexual preference or orientation, age, racialisation, class, ableism, status...)
✗What are the consequences of each agent's stance in the case? Are they
perpetuating the violence or are they questioning it and in which way? Are
there ambivalences?
How do different forms of sexual violence
manifest in university settings?

6. CASE 1: Sandra
1. Type of violence: sexual harassment with extortion
2. Gender and power issues: gender inequality, sexism, working status
inequality. Common beliefs about flirting etc. make it more difficult to
identify the harassment. We could conclude it is GRV, sexist precisely.
3. Legal categorisation: sexual harassment and extortion (general penal
code). Difficult to make use of 2004 GBV law due to this happening
outside the couple/ex-couple frame.
4. Agents involved: staff members in the same department, the board,
close friends and working mates of both.

7. List of fictional cases
Sandra: sexual harassment in the workplace
Jordi: transphobia and rape threat
The teacher: LGBTphobia in the classroom by teacher
Party: rape
Ferran: stalking
Laia: sexual harassment
Fabia and Pere: sexual violence inside a couple
Guillermo: sexual harassment between men
Party poster: symbolic sexual violence
Natalia and Pantxo: unconsented sharing of sexual images
Rocio: verbal sexual harassment
Ruben and Ana: unconsented sexual practices
Paula: sexual abuse using chemical drugs.
Diversity in:
Form of expression
Level of violence
Level of information we get
first hand
Level of social acceptance of
violence
Agents involved (individual,
institutional…)
Acquaintance level of the
survivor and the perpetrator

8. Case2: Natalia and Pantxo
1. Type of violence: unconsented sexting / sharing images
2. Gender and power issues: consent over images, gendered stigma
associated with sexual activity and promiscuity, gender based violence.
3. Legal categorisation: (CP, art. 197.7) sharing sexual images without
consent. Could make use of the 2004 law for gender based violence since
they were a couple.
4. Who's involved? Pantxo's friend, classmates, teachers, board, Natalia's
friends...

9. Sexual Violence in universities: prevention,
accompaniment and transformation
Session one, part two:
understanding, framing and defining sexual
violence
http://usvreact.eu/
#usvreact

10. ✔
Following the debates in the first part, we go deeper in the analysis of
structural elements involved in SV and the interaction between them.
Concepts such as intersectionality, gender, sexual identity and gender
expression are introduced using an understandable language and based on
the cases and debates in the first part.
✔
Different definitions of SV used in protocols, legal texts or regulatory
documents in universities are discussed in groups to analyse the impact of
how we define SV in what we do to tackle it.

11. }_·_{What do we
mean by sexual
violence?
How do we frame it?
What is our frame, actually?

12. Ideas presented and debated:
How do we percieve social life, our part in it, our responsibilities and
possibilities?
Are we aware of structural framing and conditioning?
What do we think about structures, their durability and changeability?
What do we know about intersectionality? How do we locate ourselves and
the rest of the people in complex power maps?
Avoid:
Complex, academic language
Confrontation with participants
due to disagreements
Try to:
Set understandable examples, close
to our everyday experience
Understand resistance to a feminist
frame

13. Definition issues:
The ways in which we define a situation (in this case, a SV situation) affect
what we want to do and can do about it.
It affects our alliances and the resources to mobilise.
Wide definitions can be difficult to use in everyday life but very specific
definitions tend to leave people aside them.

14. Definition issues:
Frame is and must be dynamic as well as solid. Definition is always
political and must remain effective and at the same time open to
discussion.
Example: how have we defined violence
Violencia doméstica
(domestic violence)
Violencia de género
(Gender Based Violence)
Violencia machista (Gender-
related violence )
Violencia sexista
(violence against women)
● Private problem
● Happens in domestic
setting
● Framed in the straight
couple/familiy
● Non-political, generaly
uncritical
● Openly used in general
conversation nowadays
● Put on table in a great deal
after the 2004 law
● Underlines gender issues
behind violence
● Has been critisised for
leaving aside certain
subjects and forms of
violence, needs to be
expanded
● Critical definition,
elaborated by feminist
movements mainly
● Underlines gender and
other forms of unbalance
(trans-systemic)
● Tries to be more inclussive
of forms of violence and
subjects
● In some places has been
adopted by institutions and
laws, not always with the
best results
● It refers to forms of
violence directed towards
women by the very fact of
“being” women. It includes
forms of violence that
happen in a wide variety of
settings, not only the
domestic or couple settings

15. Our stance:
We have been using “Violencia machista” (UPV/EHU), “Violencias de
género” (URV). With different hints they could refer to “Gender
Related Violence”.
Violencia(s) de género / violencia machista
(gender-related violence)
Violencia Sexista
(Violence against women)
Violencia
Sexual

16. We share, read and analyse how sexual violence is framed in our
universities and other institutions, by comparing protocols, regulations
and pathways that contain those definitions.
Are the definitions
inclusive?
Do they include
LGBTQIphobia as well as
VAW?
Do they define
intersectionally?
Who is included and who is
not?
How deep do they go?
Do they define preventive
measures in detail or just
mention them?

17. Protocolo contra la violencia de género
➔
2011 by Equality Office (2006)
➔
Active since, about to be replaced
➔
GBV framework
➔
Limited scope
➔
For all university population
➔
Pathways don't include international
recommendations and findings by literature
on disclosure
Agreement on harrassment
➔
2004 by Unions (6) and UPV/EHU
➔
Replaced in 2014
➔
General frame on harrassment
➔
Gender neutral
➔
Only for those with a contract (T., R., A.)
➔
2014 version appears to widen the scoope
but remains neutral and unespecific about
the sources and causes
We provide comparative information from the university in which the
training is being delivered at the moment. For example:

18. Sexual Violence in universities:
prevention, accompaniment and transformation
Session two, part one:
how do we react?
Perceiving, listening, caring,
accompanying and evaluating.
http://usvreact.eu/
#usvreact

19. ✔
Theatre-forum techniques are used to understand the ways in which we
react to SV disclosures in university settings. This helps understand the
specificities of university and its structures and the way they conform our
reactions.
✔
Exercises of active listening are used to collectively reflect on the ways we
listen and interact with survivors and to understand how power relations
are involved as well in the process of disclosure and aid.
✔
Through a presentation, we underline the main elements analysed in both
exercises and complete them with feminist experts’ advice in how to listen
to survivors, develop care and accompany them from a non-paternalist
stand and encouraging processes of empowerment and
social/environmental change.

20. ✔
Who started the movement?
Little game to break the ice, as well as reflect on what we can and can not
see depending on our standpoint
✔
The way I see it...
Theatre-forum activity: three people represent a situation in which a
possible case of SV may be involved, but not revealed or disclosed. Throw it
we think about: campus life, disclosure, workplace culture and present
conditions, silence, collective responsibility...

21. ✔
Active and situated listening
In groups of three, we represent a disclosure, in which someone discloses,
someone listens and someone is the external observer. Later on we discuss
in the big group about the difficulties of active, respectful and situated
listening.
✔
#REACTing in spiral, a table with five legs

22. Perceiving
Listening
Caring
Accompaning
...and evaluating
Elements for a (first) response

23. Appropriate space for talking/listening
Trust and security
Listen actively without forcing them to say more than they want to
Help them think and arrange their ideas
Let the survivor propose what they wants to do
Look for people who may be sensitive for organising a support network
Handle information about resources, networks and specific services and how to access
them
Do not pressure them to set a formal/legal denounce, but inform about it and remind
them about the need to keep things that may be used to prove the incident
Always keep a self-reflective attitude to avoid justifying, playing down, normalising or
tolerating sexual violence
Recommendations

24. Forcing anyone to explain details, justify themselves or public or legally denounce the
incident.
Be critical to their conduct or show how “things should have been done” to avoid the attack
Be judgamental about their way fo dressing, feeling, behaving or stablishing relationshiops to
others
Play down their needs, feelings or opinions
Paternalism
Create risky situations or force the survivor to be involved in them
Make use of expressions that may cause cupabilty, weakness or shame on the survivors.
Create an illusion that the situation can be easily fixed and offer magical solutions
Pass on your own distress to the survivor
Act as a rescuer hero and take on your own back the responsibility of tackling the situation
without help from others (beware of intimacy here)
Try to avoid...

25. Atención, pregunta:
¿La violencia ocurre siempre entre personas?
¿Cómo nos arreglamos con las cuestiones grupales?
¿Qué pasa cuando hay violencia institucional?
Algunas consideraciones respecto al caracter individual de
las violencias de género

26. Sexual Violence in universities:
prevention, accompaniment and transformation
Session two, part two:
tools, services and strategies for a
fair first response in university
http://usvreact.eu/
#usvreact

27. ✔
Real cases are used as a starting point to analyse the potentialities,
fragilities and needs of our university in SV cases: how would our university
react if this would have happened here? What do we need to improve this
response.
✔
Specific contributions are gathered for strategies that range from
individual implication to institutional measures.
✔
Finally, we present a series of resources to which we can refer to, both
inside the university and in the associative and local-institutional arena.

28. Real cases analysed
✗Had the university a responsibility
towards this case? Should they have
to done something? In case
something ahs been done, do you
think the measures have been
appropriate?
✗From what we know about our
university pathways, how could this
case be solved if it had happened
here?
✗What is in your opinion the
adecuate resolution to this case?

29. Had this happened here...
✗How would it be if this case or
anyone similar had happened here?
✗Which tools would we count on?
✗What limitations would we find?
✗What is lacking?
Limitations
and
difficulties
Points of strength
and oportunities
Needs
Creative
Imaginative
Not limited to official
solutions

30. Present university resources and local resources map
✗Dirección de Igualdad de la
UPV/EHU
✗Comisiones de Igualdad en
facultades (no todas)
✗Servicio de Psicología
Aplicada
✗Protocolo de acoso

31. En breve...
Estamos preparando algunos materiales para haceros llegar.
De momento podéis consultar:
http://sortzen.org/producto/agresiones-sexuales-castellan
o/
http://www.gapwork.cat/images/Cascada.pdf

32. ¿Qué aprendizajes y/o reflexiones me llevo de esta formación?
¿Qué más hubiese necesitado?
ACTIVIDAD DE CIERRE
Herramientas, servicios y estrategias para dar una primera respuesta
Recordatorioa
→→ Os haremos llegar un cuestionario anónimo para evaluar el curso
→→ En cuanto podamos os haremos llegar una pequeña guía con
algunos recursos, entre ellos el mapa que se irá completando

33. Last thoughts, reminders and colective evaluation of training
✗What am I bringing home from this
the training?
✗What else would I have needed?
Reminders on questionnaires, materials to be sent out, hand-outs...

34. Thanks!!
http://usvreact.eu/
#usvreact

35. The USVreact Project (JUST/2014/RDAP/AG/VICT/7401) is co-funded by the European Commission,
its publications and communications reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be
held responsible for any use made of the information contained therein.