The “Double Bind” of Gender-Based Violence: Secondary Victimization in Courtroom Cross-Examinations

Abstract

This paper examines how secondary victimization is interactionally produced during courtroom cross-examinations of women who have experienced sexual violence. Drawing on Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorization Analysis, the study investigates how defense attorneys invoke rape myths and gendered stereotypes to challenge victims' credibility and moral character. Using the extracts of two cross-examinations from the celebrity trial CA v. Winslow II (2019), the results highlight how interactional features of questioning reproduce cultural assumptions that legitimate secondary victimization, constructing victims as unreliable or complicit. The findings highlight the “double bind” faced by women in sexual assault trials: they must appear both emotionally credible and rationally composed to be believed, yet any deviation from this ideal invites disbelief. Methodologically, the paper underscores the underutilized potential of EMCA in legal-linguistic research to reveal how institutional talk reproduces gendered injustice through ordinary conversational practices.