Framing the Rape Victim - Book Review (original) (raw)

Conceptually Situating the Harm of Rape: An Analysis of Objectification

South African Journal of Philosophy

In this paper, I aim to show that part of the harm of male on female rape in patriarchal societies is explained by seeing rape as making good on the threat of sexual objectification. I argue that what takes place in an encounter of sexual objectification can be thought of as establishing an implicit threat which permeates the lived experience of being a woman under patriarchy because of the prevalence, meaning and place of sexual objectification in hegemonic patriarchal ideology. The act of rape makes good on this threat.

Routine Discourses of Sexual Violence

This paper examines the social problem of sexual violence on college campuses through the theoretical lens of cultural criminology. It compares the meaning of sexual violence as it is constructed in mainstream media to its construction in scholarly literature. Whereas evidence of Garland’s “scholarly dialectic” is found between routine activities and feminist perspectives in the literature, mainstream media merely represent one side of this dialogue. By picking up on the abstracted logic and recommendations of the routine activities approach without the context of the literature’s call for cultural change, media articles contribute to the embedding of crime control strategies into the daily lives of college women while leaving the perpetrators of sexual violence, i.e., college men, relatively unexamined. Confusion between the reality of sexual violence and its representation thus restricts the freedom of college women and, through contributing to victim-blaming discourses, perpetuates the rape culture upon which sexual violence stands.

A Feminist Redefinition of Rape and Sexual Assault: Historical Foundations and Change

Journal of Social Issues, 1992

The meanings of sexual assault and women's sexuality have changed significantly since the colonial period. At that time, women were valued for their sexual purity and were viewed as the center of the family. Sexual intercourse was acceptable only within marriage for the purpose of procreation. If a woman engaged in sex outside of marriage, even against her will, she was considered a “fallen” woman and was often blamed for her own victimization. With the feminist movement of the 1960s, rape was reconceptualized as a mechanism for maintaining male control and domination, a violent means of inducing fear in women and reinforcing their subordination to men. This reconceptualization has made a clear difference in the way our culture defines and understands sexual assault, but much still needs to change.

Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention

Some recent arguments about the incompatibility of poststructuralist theory and feminist politics designate rape and the raped woman's body as symbols of the real. Mary E. Hawkesworth, in an article entitled "Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth," defines two tendencies of what she calls "postmodern" thought-a conflation of reality and textuality, and an emphasis on the impossibility of ascertaining the meaning of texts. Toward the end of her essay she states:

Violated subjects: A feminist phenomenology and critical theory of rape

2002

Underlying theories of rape in legal philosophy are assumptions about the relationships between rights and property, self and others, mind and body, public and private domains, subject and object. Philosophers who study sexual assault by focusing almost exclusively on the law of rape often fail to interrogate their implicit ways of conceptualizing subjects and the harm done to them. In particular, these analyses often overlook the impact of rape on the development of personal identity and understanding of self. This project provides an analysis of the wrongness of rape that considers rape not as a moment of nonconsent, but as a stage in an experiential process that includes, but is not limited to, the violation of rights. By integrating the philosophical methods of phenomenology and critical theory with current writings on the philosophy o f rape law, rape trauma, and critical race theory, this study develops a descriptively lull theory of rape that takes the experience of the survivor as the point of departure. A philosophically rich understanding o f the harm o f rape emerges when approaching the issue through the lived realities of women who have been subjected to sexual violence along with a critical social theory of how the social, historical, and material conditions inform that experience. R ep ro d u ced with p erm ission o f the copyright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout perm ission.

The claim to violence: gender, sexuality and the construction of the victim. Cadernos Pagu, 2017.

This article seeks to discuss how gender and sexuality relations operate in the weaving of narratives about violence and how the narrative claim to violence contributes to making gender and sexuality relations. I analyze the narratives employed in the " Emília case " – a case of rape and murder – by some of the women who were part of the committee dedicated to uncovering her disappearance. I address three main themes: a) that the " struggle for justice " requires the dispute for the victim's legitimacy as a victim; b) that, within these disputes, the publicization of intimate pain and suffering usually operates along the outlines of the legitimation of accusations, accusers and victims, mobilizing, for instance, notions of gender related to motherhood; and, lastly, c) that the claims to violence tend to actualize moral conventions surrounding sexuality, such as those involving notions of " prostitution " and " human trafficking " .