Rape

Many people think that promiscuity is morally acceptable, but rape and pedophilia are heinous. I argue, however, that the view of sexual ethics that underlies an acceptance of promiscuity is inconsistent with regarding (1) rape as worse than other forms of coercion or assault, or (2) (many) sex acts with willing children as wrong at all. And the view of sexual ethics that would fully explain the wrong of rape and pedophilia would also rule out promiscuity. I intend this argument (...) neither as a case against promiscuity nor as either a mitigation of rape or a partial defense of pedophilia. My purpose is to highlight an inconsistency in many people's judgements. Whether one avoids the inconsistency by extending or limiting the range of practices one condemns, will depend on which underlying view of the ethics of sex one accepts. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that many violent sexual fantasies are not vicious. In the first part of this article, I sketch out the nature of violent sexual fantasies and note that many people regularly have them. I then argue many violent sexual fantasies are not vicious. My argument strategy is to explore what makes an attitude vicious and then to note that the vice-making feature need not be present in such fantasies and is in fact probably not present in (...) many of them. I then explore some of the implications of this finding for the nature of virtue and pornography policy. (shrink)

In 1977, Michel Foucault suggested that legal approaches to rape define it as merely an act of violence, not of sexuality, and therefore not distinct from other types of assaults. I argue that rape can not be considered merely an act of violence because it is instrumental in the construction of the distinctly feminine body. Insofar as the threat of rape is ineluctably, although not determinately, associated with the development of feminine bodily comportment, rape itself holds a host of bodily (...) and sexually specific meanings. (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)

Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny combines traditional conceptual analysis and feminist conceptual engineering with critical exploration of cases drawn from popular culture and current events in order to produce an ameliorative account of misogyny, i.e., one that will help address the problems of misogyny in the actual world. A feminist account of misogyny that is both intersectional and ameliorative must provide theoretical tools for recognizing misogyny in its many-dimensional forms, as it interacts and overlaps with other oppressions. (...) While Manne thinks subtly about many of the material conditions that create misogyny as a set of normative social practices, she does not fully extend this care to the other intersectional forms of oppression she discusses. After touching on the book’s strengths, I track variations of its main problem, namely, its failure to fully conceive of oppressions besides sexism and misogyny as systemic patterns of social practices, as inherently structural rather than mere collections of individual beliefs and behaviors. (shrink)

In our first study, undergraduate students (30 men, 30 women) evaluated the ethical acceptability of two previously published studies that used guided imagery in rape situations. In one, women imagined themselves as rape victims; in the other, men imagined themselves as rapist. Most students rated the research acceptable, but there was a significant interaction (g < .05): Women found the study of women as victim less ethical, and men found the study of men as rapist less ethical. In our second (...) study, 30 noncollege women evaluated the research on women as rape victims. After reading the scenario, none of these women said they would have agreed to participate or thought the research was ethically acceptable. We discuss issues of informed consent, demands of the research situation, and potential benefits and risks. (shrink)

Learning about martial sex crimes against men has made me rethink some of my ideas about rape as a weapon of war and how to respond to it. Such crimes can be as racist as they are sexist and, in the case of male victims, may be quite simply racist.

In this unflinching look at the experience of suffering and one of its greatest manifestations—torture—J.M. Bernstein critiques the repressions of traditional moral theory, showing that our morals are not immutable ideals but fragile constructions that depend on our experience of suffering itself. Morals, Bernstein argues, not only guide our conduct but also express the depth of mutual dependence that we share as vulnerable and injurable individuals. Beginning with the attempts to abolish torture in the eighteenth century, and then sensitively examining (...) what is suffered in torture and related transgressions, such as rape, Bernstein elaborates a powerful new conception of moral injury. Crucially, he shows, moral injury always involves an injury to the status of an individual as a person—it is a violent assault against his or her dignity. Elaborating on this critical element of moral injury, he demonstrates that the mutual recognitions of trust form the invisible substance of our moral lives, that dignity is a fragile social possession, and that the perspective of ourselves as potential victims is an ineliminable feature of everyday moral experience. (shrink)

The Kent indictment sharpens two key questions pertaining to the complex relationships between sexual harassment and rape law. ... However, none of the jurisdictions that criminalize nonconsensual sex per se acknowledge that submission to unwanted sex, resulting from being threatened or placed in fear of economic or professional harm in the workplace, academia, and other professional and institutional settings warrants criminal regulation. ... Failure to Align Social Norms with Legal Changes. While many scholars believe that the key to legal change (...) lies with re-defining the offense of rape as sex without consent, a prevailing social perception views rape as a forceful act involving either physical violence or the threat of it. ... Effectively allowing community views and prevailing social norms to define what qualifies as consent to sex is conceptually misdirected and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for rape law reforms to draw on the problematic notion of consent to sex. . ... Robinson further contends that "for rape reformers, the approach may suggest focusing public discussion and education on the impropriety of coercive pressures for sex - building the analogy between psychological coercion and physical coercion - and on the harmful effects of intercourse without consent - building the analogy to assault". ... Anderson concedes that rape constitutes an interference with one's sexual autonomy, but argues that focusing on sexual autonomy as the main harm of rape fails to capture its full harm. ... Baby is the paradigmatic example for the inadequacy of consent models to account for the complainant's lack of meaningful choices. ... These models are unable to take into consideration the background context and the underlying circumstances that characterize the sexual relationships between the pastor and the young boys: When "consent" is induced by exploitation of power disparities and by abuse of the victims' trust and reliance on the perpetrators, apparent permission should not render these sexual abuses legally permissible. ... In response to the drawbacks in current rape law which focuses on the notion of lack of consent to sex as the essence of the offense, this Article has advanced an alternative framework of rape discourse, one which better aligns with the actual experiences of victims, better captures the harm inflicted on them, and better accounts for the wrongdoing embodied in the perpetrator's culpable conduct. (shrink)

In his article ‘Did the Athenians Regard Seduction as a Worse Crime than Rape?’, CQ 40 , 370–7, Edward M. Harris rightly casts doubt on the value of Lysias 1.30–5, which has generally been accepted as evidence that the Athenians did indeed regard seduction as the worse of the two crimes. Euphiletos in this speech is defending himself on a charge of murder, and, as Harris says , ‘Euphiletus’ presentation of the Athenian statutes regarding rape and seduction is dictated by (...) the rhetorical constraints of his case. It is not a reflection of widely held social attitudes.'. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed rape and sexual violence used on such a massive scale and often in a widespread and systematic program that the international community has had to recognize that rape and sexual violence are not just war crimes but might be crimes against humanity or even genocide. I suggest that just war theory, while limited in its applicability to mass rape, might nevertheless offer some framework for making the determination of when sexual violence and rape constitute war crimes, (...) crimes against humanity, or genocide. In addition, just war theory can provide the normative justification individual soldiers need to resist orders and actions that demonstrate egregious moral breakdown as found in instances of mass rape and systematic use of sexual violence, and just war criteria demonstrate that the use of rape and sexual violence in war time can never be legitimated, especially in the case of prisoner interrogation. (shrink)

It is a truism of modern discussions of Athenian law and oratory that the Athenians regarded adultery as a more heinous offence than rape. This consensus has been challenged in a valuable paper by E. M. Harris. But although Harris has successfully placed in question a number of assumptions about this area of Athenian law and ethics, I wish to argue that the traditional position is in its broad outlines correct. In this as in so many aspects of Athenian law (...) it is difficult to make firm statements. Firstly, for the Athenian system as a whole we lack evidence for many issues of legal prescription and procedure for the period before the restoration of the democracy, and our evidence is frequently lacunose even for the period after the restoration. As a result we are presented with a ‘snapshot’ of the Athenian system at a particular stage in its development and are rarely able to trace chronological developments in detail and frequently unable to trace them in broad outline. A further result of this ‘snapshot’ effect is a false impression of coherence. Legislative measures belonging to different periods are likely to present themselves as the result of an integrated design rather than the product of accretion. Finally, and most importantly, our sources distort. Occasionally they provide information on the laws and on legal procedure in passing, in order to contextualize an argument or narrative; but in general they are presenting us with information in an attempt to persuade. (shrink)

This book offers a critical feminist perspective on the widely debated topic of transitional justice and forgiveness. Louise Du Toit examines the phenomenon of rape with a feminist philosophical discourse concerning women’s or ‘feminine’ subjectivity and selfhood. She demonstrates how the hierarchical dichotomy of male active versus female passive sexuality – which obscures the true nature of rape – is embedded in the dominant western symbolic frame. Through a Hegelian and phenomenological reading of first-person accounts by rape victims, she excavates (...) an understanding of rape that also starts to open up a way out of the denial and destruction of female sexual subjectivity. (shrink)

Why we have done this research and written this book -- Immoral panics -- A courageous proposal, but this would be a high risk study : ethics review procedures, risk and censorship -- Truths and stories -- Confused, angry and actually betrayed : it was time to get out -- Timpson versus Regina -- How do you tell teenage children that their father's been -- Accused of sexual abuse?? -- It didn't take long for the rumour mill to start grinding (...) -- Nobody can prove anything for definite -- Endwords. (shrink)

Learning about martial sex crimes against men has made me rethink some of my ideas about rape as a weapon of war and how to respond to it. Such crimes can be as racist as they are sexist and, in the case of male victims, may be quite simply racist.

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.

Standards of reasonability play an important role in some of the most difficult cases of rape. In recent years, the notion of the reasonable person has supplanted the historical concept of the reasonable man as the test of reasonability. Contemporary feminist critics like Catharine MacKinnon and Kim Lane Scheppele have challenged the notion of the reasonable person on the grounds that reasonability standards are gendered to the ground and so, in practice, the reasonable person is just the reasonable man in (...) a gender neutral guise. These critics call for the explicit employment of a reasonable woman standard for application to the actions of female victims of rape. But the arguments for abandoning a gender-neutral standard are double-edged and the employment of gendered standards of reasonability is likely to have implications that are neither foreseen by, nor acceptable to, advocates of such standards. Reasonable agent standards can be dropped, in favor of appeals to the notion of a reasonable demand by the law. However, if reasonable agent standards are to be retained, gendered versions of such standards are not preferable to gender-neutral ones. (shrink)

: Because "rape" has such a powerful appraisive meaning, how one defines the term has normative significance. Those who define rape rigidly so as to exclude contemporary feminist understandings are therefore seeking to silence some moral perspectives "by definition." I argue that understanding rape as an essentially contested concept allows the concept sufficient flexibility to permit open moral discourse, while at the same time preserving a core meaning that can frame the discourse.

The challenge of teaching classic religious texts with flawed moral messages from a contemporary point of view is examined in the case of the Beautiful Captive of War (Deuteronomy 21:10?14). A moral dilemma is generated by contradictory ethical stands within the Jewish tradition, between which students have to choose. This dilemma is explored in the context of a kind of religious education which strives for critical commitment to sacred tradition. That kind of education is analysed for its roots in self?persuasion, (...) moral agency in complex social settings and an educational philosophy based on norms and conscience. Other issues explored are sexual education, international human rights, the relationship of abstract moral vignettes to real?life situations and behaviour and the relationship of religious to moral education. (shrink)

In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the innocent Tess is the object of Alec d’Urberville’s dishonorable intentions. Alec uses every wile he can think of to seduce the poor and ignorant Tess, who works keeping hens in his mother’s house: he flatters her, he impresses her with a show of wealth, he gives help to her family to win her gratitude, and he reacts with irritation and indignation when she nonetheless continues to repulse his advances, causing her to feel shame at (...) her own ingratitude and confusion as to what is right. Tess, anchored both by her own sense of virtue and her distrust of Alec’s character, continues to hold out until one fatal night when, through Alec’s machinations, they are lost together in a wood. At Tess’s insistence Alec leaves her to scout out the path home. When he returns, he finds her asleep under a tree. Hardy does not go into detail at this critical juncture. Rather, he reflects “why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order.”. (shrink)

Titian's Rape of Europa is highly praised for its luminous colors and sensual textures. But the painting has an overlooked dark side, namely that it eroticizes rape. I argue that this is an ethical defect that diminishes the painting aesthetically. This argument-that an artwork can be worse off qua work of art precisely because it is somehow ethically problematic-demonstrates that feminist concerns about art can play a legitimate role in art criticism and aesthetic appreciation.

: On February 22, 2001, three Bosnian Serb soldiers were found guilty of crimes against humanity. Their offense? Rape. This is the first time that rape has been prosecuted and condemned as a crime against humanity. Appealing to Jacques Derrida's democracy of the perhaps and Judith Butler's politics of performative contradiction, I see this judgment inaugurating a politics of the vulnerable body which challenges current understandings of evil, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

: This essay provides a critical analysis of rape prevention since the 1980s. I argue that we must challenge rape prevention's habitual reinforcement of the notion that fear is a woman's best line of defense. I suggest changes that must be made in the anti-rape movement if we are to move past fear. Ultimately, I raise the question of what, if not vague threats and scare tactics, constitutes prevention.

In this article I discuss Claudia Card's treatment of war rape in relation to her discussion of the victim's moral power of forgiveness. I argue that her analysis of the victim's power to withhold forgiveness overlooks the paradoxical structure of witnessing, which implies that there is an ungraspable dimension of atrocity. In relation to this ungraspable element, the proposal that victims of atrocity have the power to either offer or withhold forgiveness may have little relevance.

Many of Menander's comedies are structured according to a rape plot pattern in which a young Athenian citizen usually rapes and impregnates a female citizen prior to the opening of the play. In most cases, the rape leads to a happy ending: the marriage of the rapist and victim. This casual treatment of rape is striking because in all other respects Menander's plays are not only scrupulously faithful to Athenian law, they also use Athenian legal and social norms as their (...) own generic conventions. Although the rape of a female citizen was a serious oense in Athenian law, potentially punishable with death, and a flagrant violation of the norms of Athenian citizenship, Menandrian comedy never morally or legally problematizes rape. This study considers how the comedies neutralize the potential legal signicance of rape and what this tells us about Athenian law and the ideology of democratic citizenship. It argues that by portraying a neutral form of rape, Menander's comedies implicitly articulate those factors which had the potential to bring "rape" within the purview of Athenian legal discourse. Menandrian Comedy's strategic fidelity to the norms of Athenian citizenship also tells us something about the gender ideology of Athenian democratic citizenship, that is, the ways in which relations between the sexes support and sustain civic relations between men in Athenian political culture and democratic ideology. While Menander's romantic plots uphold the laws of citizen marriage, they do not passively enact the legal constructs. In one common variant of the rape plot, the gendered construction of citizenship embedded in Athenian law is specically conjoined to democratic norms. In this type of play, a wealthy young citizen rapes and eventually marries the daughter of a seemingly poor citizen. By using rape to generate matrimonial unions between the rich and the poor, these plays extend democratic norms into the social arena. The formation of marriages across class lines disrupts the eects of intergenerationality in reproducing social and economic inequalities. (shrink)

These are women who are not only vulnerable but also evidently worthy of the protections or rewards promised: punishment of the rapist or the hero's love ...