Book Review: Gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual assault: Challenging the myths

• Author: Shanna Felix
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734016819884099
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

common method of creating meaning and keeping faith despite their negative experiences. Dr. Miller

details the importance of social networks and how certain ones either helped or hindered women in

their journeys. Personal support networks such as family, friends, and churches often played integral

roles. Other social networks such as coworkers and bosses, the justice/legal system, victim advocates,

and support/advocacy groups were also mentioned as being a large part of the leaving process.

Journeys offers an expansive and insightful narrative into the process of leaving and staying out

of an intimate partner abuse situation.

Dr. Miller uses a survivor-focused approach in her methodology. She performed f‌ieldwork attend-

ing WIND meetings to understand the women’s approach to overcoming IPV/A. She also conducted

interviews with a sample of 31 participants who had ended their abusive relationships and had been

living abuse-free for 5 years, obtained with purposive, convenience, and snowball sampling methods.

She uses a feminist research design, as IPV/A disproportionately affects women. Throughout the

book, she explores gendered patterns in behavior of women and abusers. Dr. Miller uses a qualitative

methodology to capture survivors’experiences through their own narratives. Although survivors’

stories often share common themes and patterns, every case of IPV/A is individualistic, and survivors

create meaning and develop resilience in their own ways. Dr. Miller’s sample primarily consists of

women from WIND, and a small weakness may arise in that some survivors prefer “support”-style

groups as opposed to “advocacy and education”focused groups like WIND, and a subset of women

with different experiences may be missed. Future research might explore similarities and differences

between victim and survivor identities, and differences between women who prefer support-focused

to advocacy-focused groups, or vice versa. This book, because of its survivor focus, does not address

why abusive partners do what they do and is unsuitable for someone looking into causes of IPV/A.

Dr. Miller cites relevant sources throughout the book to support the themes and patterns she dis-

cusses that emerge in situations of IPV/A. Her work contributes to the literature on IPV/A by pro-

viding an organized account, through survivors’narrative, of the process of being involved in, to

leaving and staying out of an abusive relationship and the challenges that accompany each stage.

Her work focuses on survivors’methods of f‌inding support, meaning, and resilience, as well as

the factors that help and hinder them along the way. Journeys is an in-depth look into IPV/A and

is educational and informative for scholars interested in IPV/A, survivors of IPV/A, friends and

family of survivors, and anyone who is interested in learning more about IPV/A. This book

would work well in classes focused on domestic violence, victimology, women’s issues, or

gender and crime. It provides both an expansive and detailed understanding of the leaving and

healing process, and the many challenges that encompass, for survivors of IPV/A. Dr. Miller pays

respect to survivors, their stories, challenges, and victories through her book and contributes to

the literature on domestic violence and intimate partner abuse through detailed accounts of the after-

math of abusive relationships.

Schulze, C., Koon-Magnin, S., & Bryan, V. (2019). Gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual assault: Challenging

the myths. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. 235 pp. $79.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-62637-778-3.

Reviewed by: Shanna Felix ,Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016819884099

In Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and Sexual Assault: Challenging the Myths, authors Corina

Schulze, Sarah Koon-Magnin, and Valerie Bryan discuss the results of their mixed methods study

about the lives of members of the queer community (i.e., gender and sexual minorities). The

524 Criminal Justice Review 47(4)