Our Bodies Were Never an Entitlement: The Global Crisis of Violence Against Women

There is something disturbing about the way societies have historically constructed women's bodies as objects of desire, regulation, consumption and control, while simultaneously placing the responsibility for preventing male violence upon women themselves.

For generations, women have been socialized to be desirable but not provocative, accommodating but not vulnerable, sexually appealing but not sexually autonomous. We are taught to manage men's expectations, anticipate their reactions and calculate our own safety. Meanwhile, girls are often taught how to avoid sexual violence long before boys are meaningfully educated about consent, bodily autonomy and ,accountibility. Watch your drink. Never walk home alone. Share your location. Text someone when you arrive. Be careful around strangers, but remember that someone you trust can also hurt you.

These warnings are so deeply embedded in women's everyday lives that we rarely question what their existence reveals about society.

Why have we normalized teaching women to anticipate violence rather than demanding that the institutions and cultures enabling that violence change?

This is not a philosophical question. It is a documented public-health crisis and a profound human-rights concern. According to Statistics Canada's 2018 survey data, approximately one in three Canadian women (33%) reported experiencing sexual assault since the age of 15, compared with 9% of men. Sexual violence is also dramatically underreported. Among women who had experienced sexual assault in the preceding year, police were informed about the most serious incident in only approximately 5% of cases.

Consider what that means. Millions of women are navigating experiences of sexual violation, while the overwhelming majority of incidents never reach the criminal justice system.

And even these figures cannot fully communicate the psychological consequences: trauma, disrupted relationships, compromised trust, anxiety, changes in employment or education, and the exhausting work of rebuilding a sense of safety.

Sexual violence is not merely an isolated act between individuals. It exists within social environments that shape whose boundaries are respected, whose credibility is questioned and whose suffering is considered consequential.

Indigenous Women and the Violence of Colonialism

Any meaningful discussion of violence against women in Canada must confront the disproportionate violence experienced by First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and girls.

Federal data indicate that 43% of Indigenous women reported experiencing sexual assault since age 15, compared with 30% of non-Indigenous women in the survey cited by Canada's national action plan on gender-based violence.

Statistics Canada also found that, between 2009 and 2021, the homicide rate among Indigenous women and girls was six times higher than among non-Indigenous women and girls.

These are not simply statistics about individual perpetrators. They must be understood alongside the historical and continuing consequences of settler colonialism, forced displacement, residential schools, racism, economic marginalization and unequal access to safety and justice.

The crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is not an unfortunate footnote in Canadian history. It is a national human-rights emergency.

When Indigenous women are disproportionately subjected to sexual violence and homicide, feminism cannot afford to examine gender in isolation from race, colonialism and socioeconomic inequality.

A feminism that fails to recognize Indigenous women's experiences is an incomplete feminism.

Femicide Is a Global Crisis

The consequences of gender inequality become even more devastating when we examine femicide: the gender-related killing of women and girls.

According to a 2025 report by UN Women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, approximately 50,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024.That represents approximately 137 women and girls every single day.

Africa recorded the highest estimated regional number, with approximately 22,600 women and girls killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024.

These figures carry uncertainty because of limitations in data collection, and they do not capture every form of gender-related killing.

Nevertheless, they expose a devastating reality: for countless women, the greatest threat is not a stranger in a dark alley. It is someone within their own home or intimate circle.

Femicide is not confined to one continent, religion, culture or socioeconomic class. It is a global phenomenon that manifests differently according to political institutions, social inequalities, legal protections and cultural norms.

We cannot claim that women have achieved equality while so many continue to be killed by the very people who are supposed to love and protect them.

Sexual Entitlement and the Normalization of Violence

At the centre of this conversation is a deeply entrenched belief that women's bodies can be earned, purchased, pressured, manipulated or taken.

This entitlement is particularly explicit within some incel and misogynistic online communities, where women's sexual autonomy is reframed as an injustice against men.

But sexual entitlement does not begin or end with extremist subcultures.

It exists when persistence after rejection is romanticized. When a woman is accused of leading someone on because she changes her mind. When intoxication is treated as an opportunity rather than a reason to stop. When a man's sexual frustration is presented as more important than another person's right to refuse.

It exists when we ask what a woman was wearing, how much she drank or why she trusted someone before asking why another person believed they had permission to violate her.

These are not harmless cultural attitudes. They are part of what feminist scholars describe as rape culture: social norms and institutional practices that trivialize, excuse or normalize sexual aggression.

And their consequences become particularly visible when allegations involve powerful men or prestigious institutions.

Cornell, Epstein and Institutional Accountability

The recent allegations involving seven fraternity members at Cornell University have reignited difficult conversations about sexual violence, institutional responsibility and consent.

A former student, publicly identified as Jane Doe, alleges that she was sexually assaulted by seven men in 2024 while intoxicated. A civil lawsuit filed in 2026 brought renewed attention to the allegations and the university's response. The accused have denied wrongdoing, and the allegations have not resulted in criminal convictions.

The case nevertheless raises urgent questions about how universities investigate sexual misconduct, protect complainants, ensure fair procedures and respond when institutional reputation appears to conflict with student safety.

These questions are not unique to Cornell.

The crimes of Jeffrey Epstein demonstrated how wealth, social connections and institutional failures can facilitate the exploitation of vulnerable girls and young women.

We should be deeply concerned by any environment in which influence, status or financial power can discourage scrutiny or undermine accountability.

The principle must remain consistent: allegations deserve serious, impartial investigation; survivors deserve protection and dignity; and accused individuals deserve due process.

Justice is not achieved by abandoning fairness. It is achieved by refusing to let power determine whose rights matter.

Political Leadership and the Language of Entitlement

We must also examine the messages communicated by political leaders.

In a recording from 2005, later made public, Donald Trump described kissing and grabbing women without first obtaining their consent.

In 2023, a civil jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. That judgment was subsequently upheld on appeal. Trump has denied wrongdoing.

The significance extends beyond any individual political figure.

When powerful men speak about women's bodies as though fame or status grants sexual access, those statements communicate something about the relationship between masculinity, entitlement and authority.

Political leadership does not exist outside culture. It helps shape the behaviours societies condemn, excuse or normalize.

Regardless of political affiliation, the same standards of bodily autonomy and accountability should apply to everyone.

What Are We Teaching Our Sons?

If we want to understand why feminism remains necessary, we should examine the contradiction in how we raise children.

Imagine your teenage daughter walking home alone late at night.

Imagine her entering a room with several unfamiliar men.

Imagine her being invited alone to an older male authority figure's home.

Many parents would instinctively feel concern.

Why?

Because despite decades of progress in women's legal rights, we recognize that social equality has not eliminated the risk of sexual violence.

Yet the responsibility for managing that risk is still disproportionately placed on girls and women.

We teach daughters to identify danger, monitor their surroundings, regulate their behaviour and avoid situations in which they might be harmed.

But are we investing the same energy in teaching boys emotional intelligence, empathy, accountability, respect for boundaries and the fundamental principle that desire never creates entitlement?

Consent should never be reduced to searching for the technical absence of the word no.

It requires freely given, informed and ongoing agreement. It requires recognizing when another person is uncomfortable, pressured, incapacitated or unable to consent.

And it requires understanding that previous intimacy, romantic commitment, marriage, flirting or financial generosity never creates an obligation to provide sexual access.

Feminism Is Not About Hating Men

Feminism is not a declaration that all men are violent, nor does it deny that men and boys can experience sexual abuse.

It is an examination of unequal power and the institutions, beliefs and social practices that sustain it.

Patriarchal expectations can also harm men by equating masculinity with dominance, emotional suppression, sexual conquest and control.

Challenging those expectations is not an attack on men. It is an opportunity to create healthier relationships and safer communities for everyone.

We need men who are willing to challenge misogyny among their peers rather than participate in it.

Men who understand that another person's vulnerability is not an invitation for exploitation.

Men who recognize that strength is demonstrated through restraint, compassion and accountability rather than domination.

And institutions willing to hold people accountable regardless of wealth, status, profession or political influence.

Women's Bodies Are Not Public Property

There is a profound contradiction in societies that celebrate women's capacity to create and nurture life while simultaneously attempting to regulate their sexuality, reproductive choices, appearance and autonomy.

Women's bodies have been romanticized, commercialized, legislated, objectified and violated.

For centuries, women have been encouraged to believe that desirability is a form of social value and that acceptance requires accommodation.

We must continue unlearning those expectations.

A woman's worth is not determined by how attractive she is, how sexually available she appears, whether she becomes a mother, or how effectively she meets another person's expectations.

Being desired is not the same as being respected. Being pursued is not the same as being valued. And being loved should never require surrendering autonomy.

You do not owe anyone access to your body because they bought you dinner, because you flirted, because you are in a relationship or because you consented previously.

You are allowed to change your mind, you are allowed to establish boundaries without apologizing for them, you are allowed to exist without making yourself smaller, quieter or more accommodating to protect someone else's ego. And if someone violates these boundaries, the responsibility belongs to the person who violated them. Women deserve to walk, travel, work, study, dance, date, love and live without continually calculating the possibility of violence.

But achieving that world requires more than telling women to be careful.

It requires comprehensive consent education, accessible survivor services, institutional accountability, stronger responses to gender-based violence and a willingness to challenge the cultural norms that sustain entitlement.

It requires recognizing that sexual violence is not exclusively a women's issue. It is a societal issue.

And perhaps one of the most important feminist questions we can ask is this:

Why do we continue measuring women's success by how effectively they avoid male violence, rather than measuring society's progress by how effectively it prevents that violence?

Until bodily autonomy is universally respected, until Indigenous women can live without disproportionate violence, until girls can seek education without fear of exploitation, and until women across the world can exist without violence being treated as an inevitable condition of womanhood, our work is not finished.

Our bodies were never a reward, a possession, a commodity or an entitlement.