Gender Violence: Resistance, Resilience, and Autonomy

Sylvia Jane Burrow

doi:10.5771/9781498578868

Summary

A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title

In often mundane but sometimes quite obvious ways, persons belonging to groups routinely threatened with harm on the basis of gender and sexuality suffer restrictions to choice and action, impairing autonomy. Gender Violence: Resistance, Resilience, and Autonomy shows that resistance to, and cultivating resiliency within, a culture of gender violence is key to fostering autonomy.

Building on decades of research philosophically interrogating autonomy and its limits, and with a martial arts background spanning over twenty-five years, Professor Burrow develops a novel approach to autonomy development under everyday threats of violence. Appealing to empirical research to ground its philosophical analysis, the theory presented in this book establishes that cultivating self-confidence through self-defense training is a significant strategy contributing to resistance and resilience under threats of violence and hence, autonomy development.