ABSTRACT
In mid-2017, New Zealand’s Ministry of Social Development announced a small change in policy vocabulary relabelling sexual violence as “sexual harm.” This chapter interrogates this very specific local move in New Zealand policy vocabulary to unpack the interpretative framework that this terminological shift provides for responding to sexual violence. Many women in New Zealand have been subjected to sexual and domestic violence by male partners. The chapter discusses the term drawing attention away from the people and acts that cause harm, as well as the wider sociocultural and historical conditions that make those acts possible. The chapter also focuses on that term has disingenuous potential implications for people who have been victimized, harmed, or otherwise affected by sexual violence and abuse against them; in fact, it can be turned against those it aims to support and protect. In New Zealand, the problem of entrenched gender neutrality is not new, nor is it restricted to the policy framing around harm.
