Epistemic harms of sexual violence

Epistemic harms associated with sexual violence, such as rape and sexual assault, are often linked to the distrust of the victim's testimonies or their inability to comprehend their own experiences. This chapter aims to demonstrate that the existing literature has largely overlooked other potential epistemic harms directly stemming from sexual violence. By analyzing the cognitive changes related to the fear and anxiety experienced by many victims of sexual violence, the chapter introduces two distinct types of epistemic harms: targeted epistemic harms, which result in the formation of false beliefs about the dangerousness of certain people and contexts, thereby reducing opportunities for gaining specific knowledge from the feared and avoided individuals and contexts; and structural epistemic harms, which bring about profound shifts in core assumptions regarding one’s safety in the world and the trustworthiness of others.