APA NEWSLETTER | FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY raised their hands during question periods, how often each gender was called on, and other information that would track patterns of behavior consistent with genderbased discrimination during question periods. The past decade had transformed my friend into someone who felt a pressing need to do something about the environment for underrepresented groups in philosophy of science. My friend and I are both still (hopefully) early in our careers, and the changes we have both undergone since beginning graduate school give me hope to imagine what we might find, and what we might create, at philosophy conferences thirty or forty years from now. Although my term as a co-chair of the Women's Caucus has ended, I hope that as the Caucus continues to grow and evolve, it will make more contact with broader efforts to diversify philosophy in the APA as well. None of the initiatives discussed here were targeted solely at improving the climate for women in philosophy of science. The Women's Caucus has some of those initiatives too. However, the more obviously intersectional efforts discussed here have played a significant part in creating a PSA meeting with a climate that is more welcoming to a wider net, more generally. There are more women and more people of color coming to meetings, as well as more accommodations available for people with children and people with special needs. With a little luck and a lot of effort, and with the continued support of a governing board that has chosen to recognize and prioritize the need for coordinated efforts to improve diversity in the PSA, I can only hope the situation will continue to improve. It would be nice to leave the sweater at home someday. BOOK REVIEWS What Is Rape? Social Theory and Conceptual Analysis Hilkje Charlotte Hänel (Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2018). 320 pp. $100.00. ISBN 978-3837-64434-0. Reviewed by Caleb Ward STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY (SUNY) Over the past forty years, philosophical discussions of rape have focused on two sometimes-overlapping aims. With key insights about power and social structure, feminist social and political theorists (e.g., Susan Brownmiller, Carole Pateman, Claudia Card, Ann Cahill) have sought to produce more adequate accounts of the causes, social functions, and lived effects of rape and to articulate viable avenues for resistance and societal transformation. Meanwhile, moral and legal philosophers-both those who explicitly adopt feminist commitments (e.g., Susan Estrich, Lois Pineau, Keith Burgess-Jackson, Jean Hampton, Joan McGregor) and those who don't (e.g., David Archard, Alan Wertheimer, Donald Dripps)-have asked a different set of questions: What is the wrong of rape? How can legal definitions reflect this wrong? How ought culpability to be determined? With What Is Rape? Hilkje Hänel enters the debate from a refreshingly new angle, leveraging contemporary critical theory and social ontology to analyze how the phenomenon of rape is conceptualized, upstream from the normative and definitional concerns of moral and legal theory. She expands the project of feminist structural critique to look beyond rape's causes and effects to the question of how the conceptualization of "rape" is itself shaped by power relations and socially available epistemic resources. Her careful analysis produces a convincing social theory of how rape fits into sexist ideology and a rigorous, constructive account of how rape ought to be conceptualized-not only to reflect the complexity of the phenomenon but also to account for "rape" as a concept susceptible to ideological distortion. While the category of rape is widely contested in legal and popular discourses, Hänel diagnoses a common, often implicit working understanding of rape shaped by defective beliefs and judgments colloquially known as "rape myths." Rape myths are a particular kind of cultural narrative that "shape our understandings of sexual activities and sexualized violence," particularly in ways that "legitimize male entitlement to a female body" (35). Rape myths serve both explanatory and justificatory functions in shaping attitudes and interpretations of sex; in other words, they shape both how people interpret the factual events of a sexual encounter (e.g., "it wasn't really rape") and how they apportion blame for harms (e.g., "she/I was asking for it"). It is characteristic of rape myths that they are generally false but widely held either implicitly or explicitly to be true and that they circulate in both "everyday depictions and symbols" and by means of "everyday language practices" (44–45). Given their ready-to-hand cultural accessibility, Hänel argues that the distortionary effects of rape myths are especially great when they stand in as "indicator properties" to help us interpret situations where other evidence or information is lacking or where alternative explanations appear less salient. Hänel argues that despite increasing institutional uptake of more adequate formal definitions of rape (replacing force with lack of consent, recognizing marital rape, etc.) the pervasive influence of rape myths fuels a dominant working understanding of rape that privileges aggravated stranger rape as the paradigm case, thereby failing to track the wide range of phenomena-date rape, acquaintance rape, war rape, rape in prisons, etc.-that ought to be included in the category. This descriptive failure of the concept has significant normative effects in that the inadequate conceptualization of rape hinders victims' abilities to make experiences intelligible to themselves and to others. Even when formal definitions of rape evolve, the influence of rape myths on the dominant working understanding can produce an "institutional mismatch" between such definitions and their application. Victims' experiences are read as "not really rape" if they don't match the dominant working understanding, which undermines victims' ability both to gain private support and to be believed by institutional gatekeepers of justice. Hänel argues, following Sally Haslanger (2012), that the injustices stemming from the failure of the concept to PAGE 38 FALL 2019 | VOLUME 19 | NUMBER 1 APA NEWSLETTER | FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY track reality can and ought to be ameliorated by enhancing the descriptive power of the concept in politically useful ways. However, rather than simply pursue a more refined definition of rape-the project of much feminist moral and legal theory-Hänel argues for a reconsideration of the conceptual architecture used to understand the phenomenon. To respond to the distortions of rape myths, she develops a methodology she calls emancipatory amelioration, which builds on Haslanger's conceptual amelioration by formulating a concept of rape that is not only more descriptively adequate but also "fruitful for overcoming the de facto distorted conceptions of the concept and the equally problematic usage of the term" (24). This project requires two steps: (a) a systematic social theory that locates the phenomenon and its conceptualization within social structures, and (b) a reformulation of the concept to better capture the phenomenon and to become more resistant to the distortions that characterize the status quo. Hänel's social theory identifies rape as a social practice (in the technical sense) within Haslanger's (2017) detailed conceptual map of social structures. With case studies and a careful attentiveness to debates in social philosophy, Hänel argues that rape can be described as an accepted social practice within the social structure because many of its forms are persistently misrepresented and justified according to available schemas (namely, rape myths), and because institutional responses distribute resources to perpetrators of rape (e.g., the ability to get away with it) while denying resources, including testimonial credibility, from victims. Hänel adopts insights from well-established feminist critiques, but she also adds complexity to the classic argument that rape is a feature of patriarchal social control. She argues that the social practice of rape and the way it is popularly conceptualized cannot be understood without examining the sexist ideology-beliefs, attitudes, and practices-of which it is a part. Drawing omnivorously from Haslanger (2017), Barbara Fields (1990), Tommie Shelby (2003), and the Frankfurt School (Geuss 1981), she develops a nuanced view of how different social groups are susceptible to the epistemic distortions that mask rape's injustice. Locating rape within an ideology has the benefit of acknowledging the many social functions of rape beyond the unidirectional domination of women by men (e.g., destruction of communities in war, enforcement of white supremacy), which helps explain why women are not the only targets of rape and men are not alone in reproducing rape myths. All social groups can be located within the ideology, and each plays a role in its perpetuation. Crucially, the ideology explanation of rape also lends itself to the tools of immanent critique, suggesting that contradictions emerge within the social structure to create possibilities for resistance from within. How should rape be conceptualized given its vulnerability to distortion within a sexist ideology? Rather than settle the contested conceptualization of rape with a definition based on necessary and sufficient essential characteristics, Hänel proposes that rape be understood as a "cluster concept," with disjunctively, rather than conjunctively, necessary criteria. (She grounds the theory of cluster concepts with an extensive discussion of Wittgenstein's (1997[1965]) concept of "family resemblance" as a tool for describing social phenomena.) The ten salient criteria she selects for the concept of rape are drawn from empirical observation and social theory and articulated through a wide range of case studies. They include sexual activity, violence, means of physical coercion, means of psychological coercion, lack of consent, context of social vulnerability, and others. Hänel astutely recognizes, however, that these criteria are not binary features cleanly present or absent in particular cases. Rather, they are each time actualized in varying degrees, which motivates Hänel to add a further dimension of depth to her cluster concept. This is what she calls a "core" to the cluster, where an event that has many criteria actualized to the greatest degree is closer to the core-and therefore most clearly rape-while an event that has few or no criteria to a high degree and others to a low degree will be further from the core. In the latter case, an event may still appropriately fall under the category of rape, but it may also be more adequately included under a neighboring concept, such as another form of sexual mistreatment (e.g., sexual harassment) or a form of morally permissible sex (e.g., high-risk consensual sex). Hänel's approach brings several advantages. By examining the concept of rape apart from its juridical uses, she avoids drawing a sharp line between rape and not-rape, which in turn allows examination of how grey areas can be present not only within rape but also between rape and neighboring concepts. This appreciation for grey areas is also well-served by the variability of degree she builds into each criterion- an ambitious solution to the problem of conceptualizing the multifaceted character of rape, even if the complexity of the solution at times exceeds the metaphors offered to aid the reader's visualization. This approach leaves open substantially more space for discussion and contestation of the concept of rape, allowing a more reflexive stance toward genuine ambiguity and toward shifts in intuitions, such as those that come about in response to survivor movements like #MeToo. Hänel's model views the "consent" criterion, for example, as always actualized in degrees, which enables the significance of an ambiguous expression of consent to be evaluated within a wider consideration of the features and context of an encounter. While standard philosophical discussions of consent acknowledge that context can affect consent's "moral validity," Hänel avoids defining rape according to a lack of morally valid consent alone. By taking into account a wider range of features within a given encounter, she seeks to weaken the potential power of rape myths over how consent is understood and evaluated. Here, however, her discussion would be strengthened and clarified by a more detailed explanation of how her cluster account departs from standard definitions of rape according to valid consent. Hänel allows that the criteria she identifies might be present in varying degrees in any particular rape, but it is not self-evident how she would respond to the argument that some criteria are simply more important to determining whether something is rape-namely, nonconsent and sexual penetration of any kind. FALL 2019 | VOLUME 19 | NUMBER 1 PAGE 39 APA NEWSLETTER | FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY As methodology, Hänel's approach to rape as a normative core-cluster concept can be applied to other social phenomena characterized by grey areas, ideological obscurations, and interference from neighboring concepts. (In footnotes she draws interesting parallels with critical analyses of race and racism.) She usefully reminds us of the need for concepts to accommodate shifting social realities, such as changing cultural norms and practices, and to allow productive contestation to continue. While legal scholars have work to do to figure out whether this flexibility can influence the law-Hänel argues that it can indirectly- critical theory and activist practice will benefit immediately from the move to decouple a concept's adequacy from its authority to resolve all contestation. The book ends with a return to common normative questions, exploring the implications of Hänel's account for holding perpetrators responsible and for enacting solidarity with accusers. Specifically, Hänel considers the problems posed by a "cognitive deficit" (i.e., ignorance-based) interpretation of the ideological distortions surrounding rape. If ideological distortion is straightforwardly a category of ignorance, locating rape within a pervasive ideology might be taken to give perpetrators an excuse for their actions (i.e., because they act out of ignorance) and to undermine the epistemic authority of victims' testimony. Hänel takes a generous approach to perpetrator ignorance, gesturing toward a model of accountability and restorative justice that can "adequately and productively confront ideological beliefs and result in a learning process," even if it softens blame toward perpetrators whose social positions within the ideology (e.g., as cis-males) encourage ignorance as to the harmfulness of their actions (205). Moral philosophers steeped in debates about the nature of responsibility will probably have qualms with Hänel's specific disaggregation of blameworthiness from accountability, but they would do well to remember that her proposal is political-what is to be done?-rather than a metaethical claim about moral responsibility as such. For responding to victims, Hänel prescribes solidarity that affirms the validity of victims' subjective experiences and recognizes that, due to their position within a sexist ideology, they are likely to suffer hermeneutical injustice as well as testimonial injustice (Fricker 2007). However, she stops short of attributing to victims epistemic privilege to wholly define the truth of what took place and its appropriate moral interpretation. Her position is that victims ought to be recognized as full epistemic authorities on their experiences of harm, but the questions of what objectively happened and whether an encounter should be defined as rape often require further interpretation. This argument is a close neighbor to Linda Martín Alcoff's argument in Rape and Resistance (2018)-published when What Is Rape? had already gone to press-and it could be revisited and strengthened in light of Alcoff's insights. Hänel's argument would benefit from Alcoff's point that experiences must also be interpreted-empowerment and solidarity require enhancing survivors' epistemic resources-and from Alcoff's claim that we can recognize epistemic privilege of survivors without granting absolute epistemic authority. On balance, Hänel's prescriptions in the final chapter reflect a laudable commitment to hold the emancipatory aspect of her project accountable to feminist activism, but her claims will require a more sustained treatment-perhaps in her next book?-to satisfy both philosophers and activists who focus on these particular issues. The only true weak point in this ambitious book is the introduction, which doesn't do justice to the breadth or depth of the project and could do more to set up the analysis that follows. In particular, the introduction could have provided more transparency regarding the operative concept of rape that undergirds Hänel's conceptual critique; the basic commitments she names are only peripherally connected to the primary argument of the first two chapters. Moving some of the methodological points forward from chapter three could have grounded the critique of standard conceptualizations of rape, making the argument more convincing by acknowledging that the author's own social position shapes her critical intuitions about the concept (Cf. Alcoff 2018). Still, Hänel's arguments throughout What Is Rape? are characterized by fine-grained distinctions and careful attention to how concepts are produced and used in social reality. Her writing is paced for clarity and marked by abundant signposting. Perhaps the most widely accessible contribution for a general audience will be Hänel's insightful account of the nature and function of rape myths. However, specialists in social philosophy will also benefit from her methodological innovation for analyzing ambiguous and complex social phenomena. The nuance and flexibility of her approach to the topic of rape is welcome, and its importance will only increase as popular intuitions about rape continue to shift and as prevailing sexual values and practices across societies continue to be questioned. REFERENCES Alcoff, Linda Martín. Rape and Resistance. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018. Fields, Barbara. "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America." New Left Review, no. 181 (1990): 95–118. Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Geuss, Raymond. The Idea of Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Haslanger, Sally. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. ---. Critical Theory and Social Practice. Spinoza Lectures. Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum, 2017. Shelby, Tommie. "Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory." Philosophical Forum 34, no. 2 (2003): 153–188. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997[1965]. Debating Pornography A. Altman and L. Watson (Oxford University Press, 2018). Reviewed by Mari Mikkola UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD AND SOMERVILLE COLLEGE This book is part of OUP's Debating Ethics-Series, where authors defend opposing views on pressing ethical, PAGE 40 FALL 2019 | VOLUME 19 | NUMBER 1 © 2019 BY THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION ISSN 2155-9708 Feminism and Philosophy NEWSLETTER | The American Philosophical Association VOLUME 19 | NUMBER 1 FALL 2019 FALL 2019 VOLUME 19 | NUMBER 1 INTRODUCTION Lauren Freeman #MeToo and Philosophy ABOUT THE NEWSLETTER ON FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND INFORMATION ARTICLES Miranda Pilipchuk Good Survivor, Bad Survivor: #MeToo and the Moralization of Survivorship Sarah Clark Miller Beyond Silence, Towards Refusal: The Epistemic Possibilities of #MeToo Cassie Herbert The Speech Acts of #MeToo Lori Watson #MeToo? Alice MacLachlan #MeToo vs. Mea Culpa: On the Risks of Public Apologies Robin Zheng Women, Work, and Power: Envisaging the Radical Potential of #MeToo Julia R. S. Bursten Field Notes on Conference Climate: A Decade with the Philosophy of Science Association's Women's Caucus BOOK REVIEWS Hilkje Charlotte Hänel: What Is Rape? Social Theory and Conceptual Analysis Reviewed by Caleb Ward A. Altman and L. Watson: Debating Pornography Reviewed by Mari Mikkola Shelley L. Tremain: Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability Reviewed by Catherine Clune-Taylor NEWS FROM THE CSW ANNOUNCEMENTS CONTRIBUTOR BIOS