The association of vulnerability with femininity, the female body, and women’s sexuality is pernicious for two reasons: first, because it comprises a differential distribution of a common condition (vulnerability) and, second, because of how predominant hierarchies of social meaning render vulnerability a weakness and thus a burden. 

A more comprehensive, nuanced, and nonreductive concept of vulnerability, however, enables a reconceptualization of victimization in ways that ameliorate these damaging consequences

Vulnerability and Victimization: Rethinking Key Concepts in Feminist Discourses on Sexual Violence