ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the Lethality Assessment Protocol (LAP) to explore the relationship between LAP protocol and the cultural and systemic attitudes toward gender and violence. To do so, often shift between rhetorical analysis of texts and feminist investigations of cultural contexts to show the challenges of curtailing domestic violence and sexual assault as well as confirm the necessity of such broad interdisciplinary analyses in professional communication research. Shonna Trinch, among many other feminist scholars, extends the notion that domestic violence and sexual assault are consequences of patriarchy, defined as "a broader system of power and gender inequality that privileges masculinity at an ideological as well as a structural level, thus affording men violent access to women without serious sanctions". Feminist scholars and activists have looked closely at cultural gender roles in relationship to such violence. Cultural gender roles certainly play into how assault victims and offenders are viewed as a group and the extent to which prevention is possible.
