We consider the complex interactions between rape culture and epistemology. A central case study is the consideration of a deferential attitude about the epistemology of sexual assault testimony. According to the deferential attitude, individuals and institutions should decline to act on allegations of sexual assault unless and until they are proven in a formal setting, i.e., a criminal court. We attack this deference from several angles, including the pervasiveness of rape culture in the criminal justice system, (...) the epistemology of testimony and norms connecting knowledge and action, the harms of tacit idealizations away from important contextual factors, and a contextualist semantics for 'knows' ascriptions. (shrink)

Rape culture is reportedly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. Culture, patriarchy, poverty and religion continue to sustain rape culture. The notions of the objectification of women’s bodies amongst the Shona people are causatives for rape culture within diverse cultural institutions. Africans reasonably uphold marriage with high esteem; unfortunately, the marriage institution is also susceptible to becoming a source of abuse, coercion, and is often used as a tool for controlling women. Some of the entrenched (...) marital rituals embody diverse detrimental and contentious practices, which deprive girls and women their autonomous rights, particularly their sexual and reproductive rights. This research article interrogates numerous aspects within the Shona indigenous religion and culture, which precipitate the construction of rape culture. The study uses African feminism as a theoretical framework. It utilises African feminist cultural hermeneutics to interrogate rape culture amongst the Shona people. The research study is qualitative with a conceptual analysis paradigm. It concludes by proposing the need for tapping into some life-giving and gender inclusive principles within the Shona indigenous religion and culture to be utilised as tools for eradicating rape culture. Contribution: Utilising the African feminist cultural hermeneutical framework, the article interrogated several factors precipitating rape culture amongst the Shona people. It foregrounded that women bear the brunt of burden of rape culture. It concludes by proposing the need for tapping into some positive Shona indigenous traditions as tools for curbing rape culture. (shrink)

The article offers a challenge to, and an invocation of, the values of Lasallian mission against rape culture. It addresses the continuum of violence, from outright misogynistic terrorism to an ongoing threat of assault and harassment, to the normalization of emotional and physical coercion of (primarily) women; and it explores historical responses within the Lasallian tradition to this pervasive problem in society and identifies a few rich resources within its underlying charism for tackling this pernicious evil (the virtue (...) of silence / listening & a paradigm of association). The Lasallian obligation to address rape culture and attitudes of patriarchal normalcy is articulated; and a challenge is issued to actively teach students about healthy relationships, gender norms, and sexuality. Women and men on college campuses need to be willing to engage these difficult but necessary conversations and take responsibility for their part in the transformations needed in society and on college campuses. (shrink)

Social interactions at fraternities that undergraduate women identified as places where there is a high risk of rape are compared to those at fraternities identified as low risk as well as two local bars. Factors that contribute to rape are common on this campus; however, both men and women behaved differently in different settings. Implications of these findings are considered.

The discussion will begin with a narrative introduction, which will fo¬cus on the first occurrence in literature of testimony of a cyber-rape. From this introduction, the main philosophical issues involved in these phenom¬ena will emerge. This introduction will be followed by a brief discussion of the different forms of cyber-rape, which will refer, in particular, to feminist literature on the subject. Subsequently, the chapter will enter the heart of the philosophical dis¬cussion, addressing the first of the topics to (...) which it is dedicated: the nature of acts of sexual and gender-based online violence. Three sections will be devoted to dismantling those arguments that, even accepting that The Dangerous Liaison cyber-rape is a moral wrong, it cannot be considered on the same level as rape. Then, having established that the seriousness of a “virtual” rape is com¬parable to that of a physical rape, it will show how the former occurs more frequently (but is not conceptualised as “real”) than the latter. This will be attributed to an asymmetry between the seriousness of the act and its common perception. Finally, the chapter will go on to question the reasons for this asymme¬try, first exploring the hypothesis—long held by many scholars—of ano¬nymity as a catalyst for violence, only to partially discard it in the face of more recent evidence and replace it with a more convincing explanatory hypothesis. In general, the aim of this chapter is to make a feminist contribution from the perspective of philosophy of technology to the issue of cyber-rape. Tools provided by philosophy of technology will be tested in order to, on the one hand, dismantle the idea that there can be such a thing as a virtual agency that is “less serious” than the real one, and, on the other hand, explore the ways in which digital technologies affect the perception of personal responsibility. (shrink)

Despite pervasive sexual violence against women, especially the extensive problem of rape on college campuses, there is virtually no Catholic response. This paper seeks to fill this lacunae by examining campus rape culture as an instance of social sin. Within this sinful social reality, rape is not deviant, but is the extreme manifestation of gender norms and expectations that construct femininity as sexual availability and masculinity as sexual aggression and dominance. Participation in the sin of (...) class='Hi'>rape culture may range from actions of student and administrative bystanders to the everyday and mundane way that individuals live their gendered and sexual selves. In response, I offer three theological resources for moving toward transformation of rape culture into one that fosters the full human flourishing of all: interruption, conscience, and solidarity. (shrink)

Assuming a relational understanding of the self, I argue that empathy is necessary for individual and cultural recovery from rape. However, gender affects our ability to listen with empathy to rape survivors. For women, the existence of cultural memories discourages empathy either by engendering fear of their own future rape or by provoking sympathy rather than empathy. For men, the lack of cultural memories makes rape what Arendt calls an "unreality," thus diminishing the possibility for empathy. (...) Although empathetic listeningpresents gender specific challenges for both women and men, it should not be abandoned as a strategy for trauma recovery. I make two broad suggestions for promoting empathy. First, we need to teach empathy for victims and survivors. Second, we need to discredit problematic gender norms, which buttress rape culture and sexual violence. (shrink)

In studying the ethics of journalistic practices of the newly globalized and liberalized Indian television news media in the aftermath of the events surrounding a rape that occurred in Delhi, India, on December 16, 2012, the author argues that the Indian television news media's portrayal and coverage of rape is narrowly focused on sexual violence against middle-class and upper-caste women and avoids discussing violence against poor, rural, lower-class, lower-caste, and otherwise marginalized women. The prevalence of shame culture, (...) which views the presence of women in the public space with hostility, is both countered and perpetuated by the television media. If inclusiveness, human dignity, and the ideal of giving space to multiple voices are to be considered ethical precepts for global media, India's television news media fails to achieve such inclusiveness in its portrayal of and reporting on sexual violence, and thus perpetuates a pro-affluent bias. (shrink)

This article is a response to an essay written by an academic in English Literature, Professor John Sutherland. Through close textual analysis,Sutherland purports to resolve a well-known literary question: whether the sexual encounter outlined in the Victorian novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles should be classified as rape or seduction. The present article rejects his conclusion on the matter. An(equally) close analysis of the fictional text in question and of Sutherland's gloss, demonstrates the partiality of his critique, both in literary-critical (...) and critical-legal terms. In addition, examination of the conceptual and historico-legal context regarding the notions of rape and seduction on both sides of the Atlantic highlights parallels between Sutherland's own partiality and that of the law. In short, the apparent objectivity of the textual analysis and subsequent critique undertaken by Sutherland is revealed as a continuation of legal and patriarchal prejudices defining rape and seduction. The use of close textual analysis as the key critical device promotes the apparent probity of his findings. Locating them in an essay collection designed for mass lay public consumption completes the circle – from partisan scholarship to `informed' popular prejudice. (shrink)

In July 2015, Rihanna released a seven-minute long video for her new single, entitled ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ (more widely known as ‘BBHMM’), the violent imagery in which would divide feminist media commentators for its representation of graphic and sexualised violence against a white couple. The resulting commentary would become the focus of much popular and academic feminist debate over the intersectional gendered and racialised politics of popular culture, in particular coming to define what has been termed ‘white (...) feminism’. ‘BBHMM’ is not the first time Rihanna’s work has been considered in relation to these debates: not only has she herself been very publicly outed as a survivor of male violence, but she has previously dealt with themes of rape and revenge in an earlier video, 2010’s ‘Man Down’, and in her lyrics. In this article I explore the multiple and layered ways in which Rihanna, and by extension other female artists of colour, are produced by white feminism as both responsible for perpetrating gender-based violence, and as victims in need of rescue. The effect of such liberal feminist critique, I argue, is to hold black female artists responsible for a rape culture that continually subjects women of colour to symbolic and actual violence. In this context, the fantasy violence of ‘Man Down’ and to a greater extent ‘BBHMM’ dramatises the impossibility of ‘being paid what one is owed’ in a culture that produces women of colour’s bodies, morality and personal trauma as abjected objects of consumption. I read these two videos through the lens of feminist film theory in order to explore how such representations mobilise affective responses of shame, identification and complicity that are played out in feminist responses to her work, and how their attachment to a simplistic model of representation conceals and reproduces racialised relations of inequality. (shrink)

In Athens and other ancient cultures, a woman, whatever her status and whatever her age or social class, was, in law, a perpetual minor. Throughout her life, she was in the legal control of a guardian who represented her in law. Rape, as unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman, warranted a capital charge in the Graeco-Roman world. It still carries a capital charge in some societies and is considered a felony in others. As for adultery, it may be prosecuted (...) in some cultures while in others it is a matter to be decided by the family council. This paper examines laws concerning the abuse of and exploitation of women in ancient and modern societies, especially within the context of their biologically determined roles and sexual culture. It also seeks to establish the socio-legal rights of women, especially those who were traumatised and sexually abused. The research method is mainly content analysis. It employs sources such as legal evidence in the form of recorded speeches of the Attic orators along with literary accounts, historical or legendary and epigraphic inscriptions. (shrink)

There is an undeniable tendency to dismiss women’s sexual assault allegations out of hand. However, this tendency is not monolithic—allegations that black men have raped white women are often met with deadly seriousness. I argue that contemporary rape culture is characterized by the interplay between rape myths that minimize rape, and myths that catastrophize rape. Together, these two sets of rape myths distort the epistemic resources that people use when assessing rape allegations. These (...) distortions result in the unjust exoneration of people we cannot conceive of as monstrous, while making it too easy to believe that some marginalized people could be rapists. I also argue that rape myths enable a novel kind of epistemic injustice. This injustice concerns how our assessments of trustworthiness and our assessments of plausibility interact. I argue that rape myths can result in runaway credibility deflations that can explain both why people fail to believe most women, and also why people may unjustly believe false allegations that white women have been raped by black men. (shrink)

This study conceptualizes rape trauma as embedded in the cultural construction of rape and consequently manifested in the psychological process of individual rape survivors. The author conducted indepth interviews with 35 female rape survivors in Taiwan to examine their self-reported traumatic experiences in relation to the cultural meaning of rape in Chinese society. In analyzing the interview accounts, this study identified several kinds of trauma predominantly experienced among the interviewed rape survivors. This study found (...) that the psychological trauma among individual rape survivors in Taiwan, although similar to rape trauma symptoms documented in Western literature, seems to manifest a relatively distinct cultural construction of rape in Chinese society. Study implications for rape-related educational and treatment programs in Taiwan are suggested in the context of Chinese cultural construction of rape. (shrink)

Sexual violence has become a topic of intense media scrutiny, thanks to the bravery of survivors coming forward to tell their stories. But, unfortunately, mainstream public spheres too often echo reports in a way that inhibits proper understanding of its causes, placing too much emphasis on individual responsibility or blaming minority cultures. -/- In this powerful and original book, Linda Martín Alcoff aims to correct the misleading language of public debate about rape and sexual violence by showing how complex (...) our experiences of sexual violation can be. Although it is survivors who have galvanized movements like #MeToo, when their words enter the public arena they can be manipulated or interpreted in a way that damages their effectiveness. Rather than assuming that all experiences of sexual violence are universal, we need to be more sensitive to the local and personal contexts – who is speaking and in what circumstances – that affect how activists’ and survivors’ protests will be received and understood. -/- Alcoff has written a book that will revolutionize the way we think about rape, finally putting the survivor center stage. (shrink)

Legal definitions of rape traditionally required proof of both force and nonconsent. Acknowledging the difficulty of demonstrating the conjunction of force and nonconsent, many feminists argue that rape should be defined based on one element or the other. Instead of debating which of these two best defines the crime of rape, I argue that this framework is problematic, and that both force and nonconsent must be situated in a critique of social power structures. Catharine MacKinnon provides such (...) a critique, and she reframes rape as a matter of gender inequality. However, rather than rejecting the force/nonconsent dichotomy, MacKinnon focuses exclusively on force, which she thinks can be reconceived to include inequalities. Considering the #MeToo movement and feminist efforts to use Title IX to address campus rape, I argue that the concept of consent is more flexible than MacKinnon suggests and that “affirmative consent” can challenge this liberal model. In requiring active communication, affirmative consent shifts responsibility for rape, opens space for women’s sexual agency, and allows for the transformation of rape culture. Thus, I argue that rape should be defined by the use of force, the lack of affirmative consent, or the presence of both elements. (shrink)

Using material taken from contemporary feminist theory and also from work on human rights, it is argued that rape is a form of torture, and that it operates on powerful levels, both literally and metaphorically. Part of the argument is that rape has achieved the status it has as political force for exploitation because of strong beliefs about cultural reproduction and about the roles that women play in cultural reproduction.

Rape is a form of violence that causes destructive consequences to both the physical and spiritual health of women. Due to its taboo nature as well as the societal response to the victim, rape is especially harmful and results in han, a Korean concept that signifies a compressed suffering. The continual torment caused by han damages the rape victim’s spiritual health and ultimately leads to spiritual death. This article offers a definition of spiritual death and explores how (...) the experience of the violent act of rape within a rape culture constructs han. Specifically, the victims’ inability to express pain as well as assumed qualities of shame, self blame, and invisibility are examined with a focus on the societal response’s ability to provoke these qualities, further contributing to the emotional and spiritual trauma which results in a spiritual death. The possibility for multiple spiritual resurrections through various practices including the application of the traditional practice of Han-Pu-Ri, a Korean shamanistic ritual that releases han is discussed. (shrink)

Stephen Schulhofer's book, Unwanted Sex: The Culture of Intimidation and the Failure of Law, provides a carefully constructed and powerful case for rape-law reform. His effort is distinctive in three ways: (1) it takes the basic question of reform to be the moral one of determining which sexual interactions ought to be the subject of the criminal law, (2) it takes the right of sexual autonomy to serve as the basis for any successful legal reform, and (3) it (...) makes a philosophically sophisticated case for his own reform proposal. Schulhofer's efforts should be of great interest to philosophers, especially feminist legal philosophers, interested in questions that bear direct relevance to the relationships between autonomy, coercion, and consent as constrained by the requirements of due process. His careful and scrupulously fair discussion of influential reform recommendations set the stage for his own position (discussed in section VII), a critical evaluation thereof (sections VII and VIII), and sympathetic recommendations in VIII and IX. Of special value here is Schulhofer's attempt to extend his analysis of coerced consent to include certain "offers" made in contexts (e.g., the workplace) characterized by significant power differentials between persons. Section IX offers suggestions, generally friendly to Schulhofer's overall reform proposals, for identifying wrongful sexual interactions occurring in certain institutional or professional contexts. (shrink)

This paper considers Linda Martín Alcoff’s discussion of sexual agency and sexual violation in Rape and Resistance. It is argued that Alcoff’s move away from ‘sexual violence’ to ‘sexual violation’ to address the harms of rape and rape culture is significant with regard to conceiving of a feminist sexual ethic more generally and to understanding the harm of rape and sexual assault in particular. More specifically, this paper focuses on Alcoff’s norm of self-making and considers (...) the way it can interrupt racialized heterosexist sex and sexuality and normative feminine subjectivity vis-à-vis temporality. (shrink)

This paper interrogates the language that mediates sex and sexuality among the Shona of Zimbabwe. It draws from the method of ordinary language philosophy to argue that culture, and specifically language, can constitute an effective incubator for the emotions that result in rape. Further, the paper shows how the constructions of masculinity among the Shona render the female body a subject of male dominance. The paper contends that culture, through the stories that it tells about sex and (...) the language it uses to tell them, has a strong potential to initiate and sustain emotions and behavior that lead to rape. However, this predatory behaviour can be struggled against and contested by revisiting the language that society uses in the important domain of sex. (shrink)

Representations of rape and sexual violence abound in Victorian painting, but art historical analysis of this phenomenon has been scarce. This article uses Arthur Hacker’s 1892 painting Syrinx to examine late nineteenth-century approaches and responses to visually representing rape. How did the representation of rape relate to the newly respectable aesthetic category of the artistic nude? Syrinx depicts a standing unclothed young woman attempting to cover her body with reeds, subject matter derived from Book I of Ovid’s (...) Metamorphoses. The painting has been on public display in Manchester Art Gallery since 1893. This article examines how a rape narrative from antiquity was remade as part of the public culture of Victorian Britain, examining the aesthetic, material, literary, legal, medical and museum contexts in which its meanings were produced. It also considers how the representation of rape in this Victorian painting continues to be rethought in Manchester Art Gallery today. (shrink)

This study is a critical examination of news reports, editorials, and other stories directly related to the rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi, India, on 16 December 2012. I examine newspaper stories published in two widely circulated newspapers, The Times of India and Dainik Jagran from 17 December to 31 December, two days after the victim died of the injuries incurred during the rape on 16 December. Studies have shown that English or regional language newspapers in (...) India do not give fair treatment in terms of coverage of incidents related to violence against women. This story, however, was different. I provide a critical discourse analysis of news reports, editorials, and comments on this episode to show that the social construction of violence against women, ideological prisms of the reporters, socio-cultural contexts of the media reports, and neoliberal subjectivity that was shaken by this episode played into the newspapers’ treatment of this news. (shrink)

United States law and culture have yet to find a constructive and fair way to talk about rape, especially in “non-paradigmatic” rape cases like acquaintance or date rape. Particularly on college campuses, acquaintance rape is an ongoing, severe problem. Leading legal minds disagree sharply on how to address it. In part, this polarizing debate stems from our collective inability to free our language of the myths and stock stories that plague the subject of rape. (...) No court case better exemplifies the problem than the notorious decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Berkowitz, one of the most widely taught rape cases in the United States. In his empirical study of attitudes on rape, Professor Dan Kahan used the Berkowitz facts in part because they are such an iconic representation of some of the more difficult and troubling issues surrounding acquaintance rape. In that study, Kahan concluded that whether people perceive a story as describing “rape” depends primarily on cultural cognition, meaning the cultural group to which the reader of the story belongs. The text and substance of the law’s definition of rape mattered little. Kahan concluded that if we wish to change outcomes in rape cases, the cultural understandings of rape, more than the law, must change. This essay takes Kahan’s conclusion that cultural understanding is the primary driver of rape outcomes and asks the question: from where does that cultural understanding come? In no small part, this essay argues, those cultural beliefs come from the law, particularly from legal narratives. The facts of judicial opinions reflect the judges’ cultural understanding of rape and then that cultural understanding becomes what rape is (and isn’t). That image of rape then powerfully influences cultural understanding within and outside of law. It is a recursive process by which legal narratives create and reinforce cultural understanding which then itself creates and reinforces legal narratives and so on in an endless loop. In this way, law is neither irrelevant nor innocent in the outcome of rape cases. It is just exerting its influence, often imperceptibly, through rhetoric. (shrink)

This article engages with the vogue for predicting the effects of the Human Rights Act 1998 by focusing on the rape prosecution and trial. The specific interest is feminist scrutiny of the right to a fair trial, particularly the concept of ‘fairness’, in light of the increasing use of disclosure rules (in Canada and England) to gain access to medical and counseling records. Transcending the two contemporary narratives of ‘victims’/women’s rights and defendants’ rights in the criminal justice system, the (...) authors argue for the infusion of the legal debate on disclosure with feminist understandings of wider cultural debates. They suggest that an increased reflexivity about intimacy, publicity and power, leading perhaps to the development of a concept of ‘democratic publicity’ (Fraser, 1997, p. 100), might help to revision the meaning of ‘relevant’ evidence in the rape trial. They also suggest that the wide-ranging cultural debate about memory, truth and history, and the emerging commitment to experimentation in responding to massive, institutionalised human rights violations (including apartheid, war crimes and child abuse) might be of use in deepening current thinking about the rape trial and listening to the ‘voice’ of the complainant. (shrink)

Feminist critics of evolutionary psychology are often accused of committing the naturalistic fallacy, that is, of inferring certain normative conclusions from evolutionary psychology’s purely descriptive accounts. This article refutes the accusation of the naturalistic fallacy, by showing that evolutionary psychology’s accounts of human behavior are not purely descriptive, but rather grounded on biased value judgments. A paradigmatic example is Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer’s well-known book A Natural History of Rape. I argue that at least three biased judgments are (...) at work in Thornhill and Palmer’s evolutionary psychology account of rape: (1) adaptationist approaches to evolution, (2) willful ignorance of cultural and social context, and (3) binary understanding of gender and sex. In that Thornhill and Palmer’s account cannot hold without the three biased value judgments, it is not a purely factual description of rape. Therefore, feminist concerns over its normative implications do not commit the naturalistic fallacy, as it is not the case that they infer a normative conclusion from a pure description. (shrink)

In this essay I take issue with entrenched conceptions of individual autonomy for how they block understandings of the implications of rape in patriarchal cultures both 'at home' and in situations of armed conflict. I focus on human vulnerability as it manifests in sedimented assumptions about violence against women as endemic to male-female relations, thwarting possibilities of knowing the specific harms particular acts of rape enact well enough to render intelligible their far-reaching social-political-moral implications. Taking my point of (...) departure from Debra Bergoffen's call for 'a new epistemology of rape', I consider what such a call can amount to within an instituted social imaginary where male domination and female subordination are taken for granted—naturalized. (shrink)

Récompensé par trois prix en 2014 (Prix Darlene Clark Hine de l’Organization of American Historians, Prix Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra de la Western Association of Women Historians, et Prix Emily Toth venant des Popular Culture and American Associations), l’ouvrage d’Estelle B. Freedman, professeur d’histoire des États-Unis à l’université de Stanford et spécialiste de l’histoire des femmes et de la sexualité en Amérique du Nord, Redefining Rape : sexual violence in the era of suffrage and...

Women and children have often been affected by conflicts taking place in India’s Northeast. Although human rights abuse by armed forces and militias has been addressed in academia time and again, the weaponisation of ‘rape’ has not declined in the region as evinced by the recent incident in Manipur. As such this essay argues that solidarity among women can not only prevent such heinous crimes but can also dismantle the patriarchal structures that breed rape cultures. Further, literature can (...) work as an agency through which such consciousness of protest and solidarity can be generated. By taking into account the political and cultural discourses of this region and its manifestation in literary works with reference to Arupa Patangia Kalita’s novel The Story of Felanee the essay argues that ethnic assertions diminish the rights of women due to the patriarchal nature of these societies. Since the inter-ethnic conflicts are engineered by the patriarchs of a community in which the women are hapless sufferers, Felanee’s resilience, like the grannies of Shaheen Bagh, exemplifies resistance against oppressive structures. The essay explores the literary representation of patriarchal conditioning of ethnic resurgence, its contestation with cultural hybridisation, and the subsequent dehumanisation of women. (shrink)

The trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu is by far the most well known and widely discussed case at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a distinction that can be attributed to the fact that it was groundbreaking for several reasons. However, with regard to the importance of this trial both as a precedent for subsequent ICTR cases and within the broader context of international jurisprudence, its most significant contribution has undoubtedly been the recognition and prosecution of rape as a means (...) of perpetrating genocide. The task of collecting admissible evidence to that end was heavily impacted by the necessity of interpreting and translating witness testimonies from their original language of expression, Kinyarwanda, into the working languages of the Tribunal, French and English. The multiple challenges associated with this translation process concerned not only questions of semantic equivalence of specific lexical terms. They also highlighted the considerable ‘cultural collision’ that occurred in the courtroom between the Rwandan witnesses and the international judiciary. This article elucidates the complex task faced by the courtroom interpreters in navigating these linguistic and sociocultural considerations underpinning the evocations of rape within the evidentiary framework of the Akayesu trial. (shrink)

Lack of consent is valorized within popular culture to the point that sexual assault has become a spectator sport and creepshot entertainment on social media. Indeed, the valorization of nonconsensual sex has reached the extreme where sex with unconscious girls, especially accompanied by photographs as trophies, has become a goal of some boys and men.

This essay offers a case study in jus in bello in the American Revolutionary War by focusing on responses to sexual violence committed against American women by soldiers in the occupying British army and their Loyalist auxiliaries. Two main bodies of sources are juxtaposed in order to explore the contexts and manner in which jus in bello was adjudicated: British courts-martial and American Congressional investigations documenting British and Loyalist breaches of the codes of war. By putting the fragmentary evidence of (...) instances of rape in the context of contemporary legal and sociocultural practices of sexual violence in peacetime, as well as of the British army's disciplinary regime, we can elucidate the horizon of experiences and expectations against which survivors, assailants and prosecutors acted. The British army disciplined some soldiers for sexual offenses that violated military law and the codes of war, and it executed a few of them at a time when even their home society featured very low prosecu.. (shrink)

We criticize the following views: only the rapist is responsible since only he committed the act; no one is responsible since rape is a biological response to stimuli; everyone is responsible since men and women contribute to the rape culture; and patriarchy is responsible but no person or group. We then argue that, in some societies, men are collectively responsible for rape since most benefit from rape and most are similar to the rapist.

Historically, numbers of women complainants in rape trials have been regarded suspiciously, or prejudiced in that their credibility has been seriously called into question, or undermined, both from within and outside the courtroom. Arguably, public and legal perceptions as to the expected conduct and behaviour of the stereotypical rape victim have been grounded in the belief that genuine women who allege rape should act and portray themselves as unequivocal victims. This suggests that the contemporary construct of the (...) female rape victim and her associated stereotypical image should be considered not solely as a legal derivative but also within a wider cultural context. This article explores the historical influences that shaped the cultural construct operating in the U.K., in particular, the societal and legal attitudes of the mid-Victorians towards women and sexual violence, creating an historical mystification around the construct of the female rape victim and the crime of rape itself. Reference is made to a number of cases reported in The Times newspaper between 1850–1885 which underline the requisite portrayal of the rape complainant as an unequivocal victim. It is argued that the relocation of this historical and socially constructed mythological imaginary within the context of the law and the trial process has disproportionately contributed to the modern scepticism which surrounds the female complainant. (shrink)

The testimonies of men raped by men in Uganda indicate that the meaning of rape as an aggression that enforces the gendering of women as vulnerable and therefore dependent on men's protection needs to be reformulated to account for the fact that being raped transforms a man into a woman. In describing their humiliation, these men reveal that gendered masculinity is grounded in a flight from vulnerability that depends on the presence of vulnerable/rapeable victim bodies. Their words teach us (...) that as long as men's illicit identity as autonomous and invulnerable is illegitimately secured by stigmatizing vulnerability, heterosexual and male-male rape will be used to denigrate women and men alike. They indicate that the antidote to the scourge of rape lies in delegitimizing gender systems that victimize vulnerability and in creating cultural norms that recognize vulnerability as inherent in the interdependence and dignity of the human condition. (shrink)

What remains invisible in the discourse, contributes to perpetuating multilayered inequalities through discourse. Stereotypical representations, under-representations, hyper-representations, or misrepresentations regulate rape myths, and consequently, particular ways of seeing and behaving of those inside or outside the cultural boundaries. It has, therefore, been studied if and how rape victims and perpetrators have been visually represented and framed in the digital illustrations on rape in Pakistan. Discrepancies concerning identity construction of the rape victims and rapists as well as (...) the depiction of multifarious socio-semiotic dimensions of rape have been analyzed. Thirty-five digital illustrations appearing in 32 blogs and news articles published on rape cases in Pakistan have been purposively selected and studied based on ideational metafunction suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen. Results reveal under-representation of rapists and perpetrators, law enforcement, survivors, and existing myths regarding revenge rape, child abuse, gang rape, marital rape, and gender-based victimhood. The study has implications for semiotics, rape studies, gender studies, and digital discourse. (shrink)

The uneasy relation between violence and sanctity, between oppression and culture, underlies the dramatic action of Euripides' "Ion." Ion's monody ends with his threatening to shoot the birds who would soil the temple, or in other words, to protect purity through violence and death. The earlier part of his song also shows how the forces of exclusion and domination create sacredness. Ritual silence , restricted access to the aduton, ritual chastity, even the irreversible transformation of natural gardens into laurel (...) brooms and jugs of water all suggest how violence and domination create culture out of nature. The rape of Creusa epitomizes the relation between culture and violence. Her meeting with Ion reveals the psychological cost of social oppression and portrays the imperfect interdependence between moral feelings and legal institutions. Various dramatic devices portray the divisions in Creusa's mind that the injustice has created, devices including self-address, riddling speech, self-restraint, and silence. Her reluctance to pose her bold question to the oracle, and her displacement of the story onto the person of a raped "friend," show her resentful awareness that social institutions collaborate in the oppression. Ion's disillusionment echoes her resentment more theoretically. Together their comments show how moral rules and legal institutions, though fundamentally based on personal feelings such as shame and indignation, enact these feelings only imperfectly; the resulting dissonance in turn leads to further indignation and moral reflection. Finally, the allusions to fifth-century politics in Ion's speech on Athenian politics and elsewhere suggest that democracy itself depends on political domination and imperialism. (shrink)