The Politics of Rape

Posted: Wed, Apr 23, 2025

Background

Recent NPR story: “Domestic violence is now recognized as a leading cause of traumatic brain injury,” March 13, 2024

The situation:

  • The pervasiveness of sexual assault (& sexual harassment, domestic abuse, etc.): often cited data are that one in six or one in five women (compared to 1 in 71 men) in the U.S. experience rape or attempted rape in their lifetime.
    • In eight in ten cases, the perpetrator is an acquaintance.
    • In nine in ten cases, the rape targets a woman.
  • The under-reporting of sexual assault: data are again tricky, but something like 37% of sexual assaults and 12% of child sexual abuse are reported.
    • Fear of retaliation, victim-blaming, “he said, she said,” etc.
    • Also (this is MacKinnon’s point): line between rape and “normal” sex can be thin in women’s experiences—the latter can involve quite a lot of force, coercion, non-consent, etc. So, for all the wrong reasons, the men who find it hard to distinguish rape from rough sex are right about something.

The property theory of rape: rape wrongs the father or husband qua property owner.

  • Property: the woman and her chastity.
  • Not a wrong against the woman herself: “crime of man against man” vs. “crime of man against woman” (Brownmiller 1975, 18).
  • Just like you can’t steal your own property, you can’t rape your own wife.
    • ~Coverture

William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England: “carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will.”

  • “carnal knowledge” by a man through penile penetration
  • “a woman,” not his wife
  • “forcibly” + “against his will”
    • The focus is to protect men from the perceived high risk of false accusations: the utmost resistance requirement.

A.R.S. § 13-611 (1961)

  • “accomplished with a female, not the wife of the perpetrator”
  • Rape arises out of sexual desires/needs/impulses; it is a response to sexual “provocation” and is in some important connected to testosterone and the penis.
  • Rape is really easy to accuse a man of.
  • Rape is rare, but also the line between rape and “rough” sex is thin.
  • The imagined Black rapist in a dark alley.
  • “No” means “yes.”
  • Rape is a private, individual issue; it is between one man and one woman (or perhaps the woman’s husband or father).

In-class activity: Please read the poems by Sharon Olds and torrin a. greathouse.

  • What is the point that Olds is trying to make?
  • Why does greathouse find it demeaning?

Reconceptualizing rape as a political problem

MacKinnon’s critique: We are understanding rape only from a male perspective; it is what men think rape is and why it’s wrong. But we should understand rape on women’s terms.

  • The focus on penetration: physical intrusion vs. something more.
  • Rape is gendered: even when men experience rape, they often feel like they are treated like women; in a way, they are raped as women.
  • Rape is not biological: it concerns power of men over women; it’s why rape feels powerful and is used as a tool of asserting power (think rape in wars, prisons, etc.).
  • Rape is facilitated by society: it’s no accident that women find it hard to refuse sex (‘no’ is understood as ‘yes,’ women are taught not to refuse men, sexual attraction from men feels good, etc.).
  • In the end, the two types of rape that actually get taken seriously both serve ideological roles: rape of white women by Black men, and rape [of white women?] by strangers.

MacKinnon’s theory of sexuality

Some useful observations to start with:

  • The term ‘sex’ refers to both sexuality and a system of categorization. Coincidence? No?
  • ‘Having sex’ means something different to men vs. women: ‘getting fucked’ is a bad thing, whereas ‘fuck you’ feels good; women are “soiled” by sex, whereas men are empowered by it.
  • What’s sexualized may not involve sex per se (e.g., non-sexual body parts, power/violence), whereas sex need not be sexualized (e.g., the lesbian sex that “doesn’t count”).
  • What feels beautiful/feminine for women is very much the same as what is sexually appealing to men: another coincidence?
    • This is particularly a problem for trans women with abusive partners: being abused by a man feels very gender-affirming.

MacKinnon’s theory of sexuality: heterosexuality is the institution of eroticized dominance and submission, which creates the gender division as we know it.

Male sexual desire: eroticization of dominance and submission
↓
(Hetero)sexual objectification: men (who dominate), women (who submit)
↓
Gender: men (who “fuck”), women (who are “rapable”)

Key claims:

  • Masculinity and femininity are products of a male sexual desire to dominate: masculinity is dominance eroticized, and femininity submission eroticized.
    • E.g., you feel most feminine when you feel most sexy (to men).
  • Men and women are then created through heterosexuality in the model of masculinity/eroticized dominance and femininity/eroticized submission.
    • E.g., women are those who are desired as sexually usable (to men);
  • Sex is a political question: if women’s sexuality is created by male sexual desire, then sexual liberation is not about having more sex or even having less forced, more consensual sex; if working in a sweatshop is not good for you, making it less forced, more consensual does not make it better (if not impossible).
    • Heterosexual love also functions to control women? Domestic abuse cases.
  • The role of pornography: for MacKinnon, pornography is a primary mechanism of (hetero)sexual objectification.