Rape, Violence, and Women's Autonomy (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
Multiple Perspectives on Rape: A Theoretical Paper
The phenomenon of rape has been studied from a myriad of different scientific standpoints, in turn yielding numerous theoretical perspectives, interpretations, and findings. Evolutionary psychologists (e.g., Buss, 1989; Thornhill & Thornhill, 1990a) understand rape as a male adaptive sexual strategy, and view sexual desire as a central motivation, while feminist theorists (e.g., Brownmiller, 1975) conceptualize rape as a means to exert power and control by men over women in the broader sociocultural context of male supremacy and female oppression. Script theorists (e.g., Ryan, 1988; Simon & Gagnon, 1986), on the other hand, view rape as a social by-product resulting from the adherence to sexual, dating and rape scripts, all of which are culture specific. The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss rape-oriented research from the three different theoretical perspectives briefly outlines above.
Definitions of rape: Scientific and political implications
Journal of Social …, 1992
Definitions set the parameters of research and influence the results and conclusions. It is thus crucial that researchers critically examine definitions and terms, particularly infields that use popular terms likely to be influenced by the unacknowledged biases and political concerns of the dominant group. The study of sexual assault is such a field, and therefore this article examines researchers' definitions of sexual assault, rape, and related terms. Definitions vary along several dimensions, including (a) the sexual behaviors specified, (6) the criteria for establishing nonconsent, (c) the individuals specified, and (d) the perspective specified-that is, who decides whether sexual assault has occurred. For each dimension, the article discusses implications for researchers' results and conclusions, underlying assumptions, and political ramifications. Language is an important resource. Once a term is accepted, it constrains our communication of ideas to others; in fact, it constrains the very generation of ideas. "Meaning making and control over language are important resources held by those in power" (Hare-Mustin & Maracek, 1990, p. 25). Language is used by dominant groups to define, label, and rank (Hare-Mustin & Maracek, 1990; Tiefer, 1990; Unger, 1990). In patriarchal social systems, men have controlled oral and written production of language. This "man-made language" (Spender, 1980) reflects and reifies the experiences of men. To the extent that this language does describe the experiences of women, it does so from the perspective of men.
Sexual specificity, rape law reform and the feminist quest for justice 1
Recent rape law reform is most saliently characterised by a turn to gender neutrality in its definition of the crime of rape. The few possible advantages of a gender neutral approach to rape are offset by a series of disadvantages regarding gender justice when viewed from a feminist perspective. Formal gender neutrality does not safeguard against the effective influence of pervasive and enduring symbolic constructions pertaining to male and female sex-uality and of a normalised hierarchical binary constructed between the two sexes, in particular where sexual relations are concerned. Such efficacy may impede justice for both male and female victims of rape. The question about the place of sexual difference or rather sexual specificity within feminist theories of justice should be considered anew in light of this critical analysis of gender neutrality in rape law. You don't understand, you weren't there, says Bev Shaw. Well, she is mistaken. Lucy's intuition is right after all: he does understand; he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be there, be the men, inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself. The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman? David Lurie in Disgrace (Coetzee 1999: 160) 2 1 The research contained in this article was made possible partly by NRF funding. Also I wish to express my sincere thanks to Minka Woermann and Azille Coetzee for their careful reading of my draft article. 2 The character of David Lurie in JM Coetzee's Disgrace at first assumes that he understands exactly what happened when his daughter Lucy was gang raped. In this excerpt he starts to doubt his capacity as a man to place himself in the position of a woman rape victim, and thus he starts to grapple with the possible limits to a person's capacity to transcend their embodied sexual specificity. This article raises a similar concern or problematic without necessarily resolving it.
Realities and mythologies of rape
Society, 1992
A ccording to the alarming accounts of sexual assault by certain feminist groups, about one out of every two women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape an average of twice in her life, one-third will have been sexually abused as children, and many more will suffer other forms of sexual molestation. These claims are based on figures from several studies, among which the Ms. Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault, directed by Mary Koss, and Diana Russell's survey of sexual exploitation are the most extensive, most widely disseminated, and most frequently cited.
The criminal justice system is more concerned with regulating normative gendered and sexual behaviour than with preventing or regulating harm. Critically discuss with reference to: sexual consent and rape/sexual assault Word count: 3984 Submission Date: 18 th April 2018 I will be focussing my essay on rape and sexual assault of adult women over the age of 16 and the ambiguity of sexual consent when in the context of a rape/sexual assault trial. The mass media highlights the disparaging inequalities regarding gender on what appears to be, an ever-increasing frequency. 1 Perhaps we are on the brink of what might be known as, a gender revolution, where women can gain autonomy over their lives, the same way men do. Trans men and women are becoming increasingly accepted and celebrated within society, and sexual stratification is becoming less binary and more fluid. But how are all of these societal transitions reflected in the arena of a rape trial? Sexual violence against women is ever present, but rape cases continue to fall in favour of the perpetrator, not the victim. Victims are being given a platform to speak on in the form of the mass media and social media, but how does this help progress and change the ingrained social expectations of gendered sexual behaviours? The number of rape cases that do not end with a conviction is extremely disproportionate when compared to any other court case in the criminal justice system. The dialogue used within the courtroom of a rape case is incomparable to any other incident where the victim is the complainant. The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimates that 20% of women and 4% of men have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, with 83% of victims not reporting their incidents to the police. 2 In the year ending March 2017, there were 121,187 sexual offences recorded by the police and this was a 14% increase from the previous year with 5.7% of reported rape cases ending with a conviction. 3 Service users accessing Rape Crisis centres went up last year by 16% with a total number of 67,059 individuals accessing a specialist centre across England and Wales, and 202,666 phone calls to the helpline for the year 2016-17.
Rape Culture: Power, Profit, Punishment
2019
This dissertation project aims to shift ideas about rape and sexual assault from an individualized, narrative account of the issue to map out the methods and purpose of rape culture in America. The result of this project illuminates the various ways American society participates in rape culture and how it is entrenched in our existence, so that we can dismantle the culture of rape and live free from sexual violence. The justice system does not adequately address concerns about rape and sexual assault. Rape culture is a structure and an institution rooted in power, profit, and punishment and works to oppress the lives of certain groups. The conclusion is that rape culture is exposed as a foundational aspect of the United States and provides evidence that government, society, non-profits, and individuals condone and provoke its continuation.
Philosophical Issues, 2021
In their well-known paper, John Gardner and Stephen Shute (2000) propose a pure case of rape, in which a woman is raped while unconscious and the rape, for a variety of stipulated reasons, never comes to light. This makes the pure case a harmless case of rape, or so they argue. In this paper I show that their argument hinges on an outdated conception of trauma, one which conflates evaluative responses that arise in the aftermath of rape with the non-deliberative somatic responses of a central nervous system to a threatening event. In the first part of this paper, I elaborate this objection by drawing on the neurobiological model of trauma. This gives me an opportunity to illustrate the different ways that rape harms its victims, including the central way, what I call ‘threat-circuitry harm.’ This discussion of trauma invites us to rethink the wrong of rape, and sets the groundwork for my argument, in the second part of the paper, that the wrong of rape consists in its central harm.