arrested and charged with raping, on two separate occasions,
a married woman, Joan Smyth. ) 7 In his work, rape is no
longer synonymous with abduction— it has now become
synonymous with love. At issue, of course, is still male ownership— the rapist owns the woman; but now, she loves him as well.
This motif of sexual relating— that is, rape— remains our
primary model for heterosexual relating. The dictionary defines rape as “the act of physically forcing a woman to have sexual intercourse. ” But in fact, rape, in our system of masculinist law, remains a right of marriage. A man cannot be convicted of raping his own wife. In all fifty states, rape is defined legally as forced penetration by a man of a woman “not his
wife. ”8 When a man forcibly penetrates his own wife, he has
not committed a crime of theft against another man. Therefore, according to masculinist law, he has not raped. And, of course, a man cannot abduct his own wife since she is required
by law to inhabit his domicile and submit to him sexually.
Marriage remains, in our time, carnal ownership of women. A
man cannot be prosecuted for using his own property as he
sees fit.
In addition, rape is our primary emblem of romantic love.
Our modem writers, from D. H. Lawrence to Henry Miller to
Norman Mailer to Ayn Rand, consistently present rape as the
means of introducing a woman to her own carnality. A
woman is taken, possessed, conquered by brute force— and it
is the rape itself that transforms her into a carnal creature. It is
the rape itself which defines both her identity and her function: she is a woman, and as a woman she exists to be fucked.
In masculinist terms, a woman can never be raped against her
will since the notion is that if she does not want to be raped,
she does not know her will.
Rape, in our society, is still not viewed as a crime against
women. In “Forcible and Statutory Rape: An Exploration of
the Operation and Objectives of the Consent Standard, ” The
Yale Law Journal, 1952, an article which is a relentless compendium of misogynistic slander, the intent of modern male jurisprudence in the area of criminal rape is articulated clearly:
the laws exist to protect men (1) from the false accusation
of rape (which is taken to be the most likely type of accusation) and (2) from the theft of female property, or its defilement, by another man. 9 The notion of consent to sexual intercourse as the inalienable human right of a woman does not exist in male jurisprudence; a woman’s withholding of consent
is seen only as a socially appropriate form of barter and the
notion of consent is honored only insofar as it protects the
male’s proprietary rights to her body:
The consent standard in our society does more than protect a
significant item of social currency for women; it fosters, and is
in turn bolstered by, a masculine pride in the exclusive possession
of a sexual object. The consent of a woman to sexual intercourse
awards the man a privilege of bodily access, a personal “prize”
whose value is enhanced by sole ownership.. . . An additional
reason for the man’s condemnation of rape may be found in the
threat to his status from a decrease in the “value” of his sexual
“possession” which would result from forcible violation. 10
This remains the basic articulation of rape as a social crime: it
is a crime against men, a violation of the male right to personal and exclusive possession of a woman as a sexual object.
Is it any wonder, then, that when Andra Medea and Kathleen Thompson, the authors of Against Rape, did a study of women and rape, large numbers of women, when asked,
“Have you ever been raped? ” answered, “I don’t know. ”11
What is rape?
Rape is the first model for marriage. As such, it is sanctioned by the Bible and by thousands of years of law, custom, and habit.
Rape is an act of theft— a man takes the sexual property of
another man.
Rape is, by law and custom, a crime against men, against
the particular owner of a particular woman.
Rape is the primary heterosexual model for sexual relating.
Rape is the primary emblem of romantic love.
Rape is the means by which a woman is initiated into her
womanhood as it is defined by men.
Rape is the right of any man who desires any woman, as
long as she is not explicitly owned by another man. This explains clearly why defense lawyers are allowed to ask rape victims personal and intimate questions about their sexual lives.
If a woman is a virgin, then she still belongs to her father and
a crime has been committed. If a woman is not married and is
not a virgin, then she belongs to no particular man and a
crime has not been committed.
These are the fundamental cultural, legal, and social assumptions about rape: (1) women want to be raped, in fact, women need to be raped; (2) women provoke rape; (3) no
woman can be sexually forced against her will; (4) women
love their rapists; (5) in the act of rape, men affirm their own
manhood and they also affirm the identity and function of
women— that is, women exist to be fucked by men and so, in
the act of rape, men actually affirm the very womanhood of
women. Is it any wonder, then, that there is an epidemic of
forcible rape in this country and that most convicted rapists do
not know what it is they have done wrong?
In Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly says that as women
we have been deprived of the power of naming. 12 Men, as
engineers of this culture, have defined all the words we use.
Men, as the makers of law, have defined what is legal and
what is not. Men, as the creators of systems of philosophy and
morality, have defined what is right and what is wrong. Men,
as writers, artists, movie makers, psychologists and psychiatrists, politicians, religious leaders, prophets, and so-called revolutionaries have defined for us who we are, what our values are, how we perceive what happens to us, how we understand what happens to us. At the root of all the definitions they have made is one resolute conviction: that women were
put on this earth for the use, pleasure, and sexual gratification
of men.
In the case of rape, men have defined for us our function,
our value, and the uses to which we may be put.
For women, as Mary Daly says, one fundamental revolutionary act is to reclaim the power of naming, to define for ourselves what our experience is and has been. This is very
hard to do. We use a language which is sexist to its core:
developed by men in their own interests; formed specifically to
exclude us; used specifically to oppress us. The work, then, of
naming is crucial to the struggle of women; the work of naming is, in fact, the first revolutionary work we must do. How, then, do we define rape?
Rape is a crime against women.
Rape is an act of aggression against women.
Rape is a contemptuous and hostile act against women.
Rape is a violation of a woman’s right to self-determination.
Rape is a violation of a woman’s right to absolute control of
her own body.
Rape is an act of sadistic domination.
Rape is a colonializing act.
Rape is a function of male imperialism over and against
women.
The crime of rape against one woman is a crime co
mmitted
against all women.
Generally, we recognize that rape can be divided into two
distinct categories: forcible rape and presumptive rape. In a
forcible rape, a man physically assaults a woman and forces
her, through physical violence, threat of physical violence, or
threat of death, to perform any sexual act. Any forced sexual
act must be considered rape— “contact between the mouth
and the anus, the mouth and the penis, the mouth and the
vulva, [contact] between the penis and the vulva, [between
the] penis and anus, or contact between the anus or vulva”
and any phallic substitute like a bottle, stick, or dildo. 13
In a presumptive rape, we are warranted in presuming that
a man has had carnal access to a woman without her consent,
because we define consent as “meaningful and knowledgeable
assent; not mere acquiescence. ”14 In a presumptive rape, the
constraint on the victim’s will is in the circumstance itself;
there has been no mutuality of choice and understanding and
therefore the basic human rights of the victim have been violated and a crime has been committed against her. This is one instance of presumptive rape, reported by Medea and Thompson in Against Rape:
The woman is seventeen, a high school student. It is about four
o’clock in the afternoon. Her boy friend’s father has picked her
up in his car after school to take her to meet his son. He stops by
his house and says she should wait for him in the car. When he
has pulled the car into the garage, this thirty-seven-year-old
father of six rapes her. 15
This sort of rape is common, it is contemptible, and needless
to say, it is never reported to the police.
Who, then, commits rape?
The fact is that rape is not committed by psychopaths. Rape
is committed by normal men. There is nothing, except a conviction for rape which is very hard to obtain, to distinguish the rapist from the nonrapist.
The Institute for Sex Research did a study of rapists in the
1940’s and 1950’s. In part, the researchers concluded that
“. . . there are no outstandingly ominous signs in [the rapists’]
presex-offense histories; indeed, their heterosexual adjustment
is quantitatively well above average. ”16
Dr. Menachim Amir, an Israeli criminologist, did an intensive survey of 646 rape cases handled by the Philadelphia Police Department from January to December 1958 and from
January to December 1960. In his study, Patterns of Forcible
Rape, he criticizes psychoanalytic interpretations of rapists’
behavior by pointing out that studies “indicate that sex offenders do not constitute a unique clinical or psychopathological type; nor are they as a group invariably more disturbed than
the control groups to which they are compared. ”17
Or, as Allan Taylor, a parole officer in California, said:
“Those men [convicted rapists] were the most normal men
[in prison]. They had a lot of hang-ups, but they were the
same hang-ups as men walking out on the street. ”18
In Amir’s study, most rapists were between fifteen and nineteen years old. Men twenty to twenty-four constituted the second largest group. 19 In 63. 8 percent of the cases, the
offender and the victim were in the same age group ( ± 5
years); in 18. 6 percent, the victim was at least ten years
younger than the offender; in 17. 6 percent, the victim was at
least ten years older. 20
The FBI, in its Uniform Crime Reports, reported that in
1974, 55, 210 women were raped in this country. This was
an 8 percent increase over 1973, and a 49 percent increase
over 1969. The FBI notes that rape is “probably one of the
most under-reported crimes due primarily to fear and/or embarrassment on the part of its victims. ”21 Carol V. Horos, in her book Rape, estimates that for every rape reported to the
police, ten are not. 22 Applying Horos’ estimate to the number
of rapes reported in 1974 brings the total estimate of rapes
committed in that year to 607, 310. It is important to remember that FBI statistics are based on the male definition of rape, and on the numbers of men arrested and convicted for rape
under that definition. According to the FBI, of all those rapes
reported to the police in 1974, only 51 percent resulted in
arrest, and in only one case out of ten was the rapist finally
convicted. 23
According to Medea and Thompson who studied rape victims, 47 percent of all rapes occurred either in the victim’s or the rapist’s home; 10 percent occurred in other buildings; 18
percent occurred in cars; 25 percent occurred in streets, alleys, parks, and in the country. 24 Both Amir, who studied rapists, and Medea and Thompson, who studied rape victims,
agree that the chances are better than 50 percent that the
rapist will be someone the victim knows— someone known by
sight, or a neighbor, a fellow worker, a friend, an ex-lover, a
date. 25 Medea and Thompson also ascertained that 42 percent of rapists behaved calmly, and that 73 percent used force. 26 In other words, many rapists are calm and use force
at the same time.
For us as women, this information is devastating. Over half
a million women were raped in this country in 1974, and rape
is on the rise. Rapists are normal heterosexual men. At least
50 percent of rape victims will be raped by men they know. In
addition, according to Amir, 71 percent of all rapes were fully
planned; 11 percent were partially planned; and only 16 percent were unplanned. 27
Rape has the lowest conviction rate for any violent crime.
According to Horos, in 1972 only 133 of every 1, 000 men
tried for rape were convicted. 28 Medea and Thompson report
that juries will acquit nine times out of ten. 29 The reason for
this is obvious: the woman is presumed to have provoked the
rape and she is held responsible for it. In particular, when the
woman knows the rapist, 50 percent of the time, there is virtually no possibility of a conviction.
Who are the victims of rape? Women— of all classes, races,
from all walks of life, of all ages. Most rapes are intraracial—
that is, white men rape white women and black men rape
black women. The youngest rape victim on record is a two-
week-old female infant. 30 The oldest rape victim on record is
a ninety-three-year-old woman. 31 This is the testimony of a
woman who was raped late in life.
Rape is not an academic question with the present writer, for
not long ago (June 4, 1971) she, then in her late fifties, joined
the growing army of rape victims. It was a case of forcing a window and entering, forcible assault with the huge bruising hands of the rapist tight around her neck, and was accompanied by
burglary.
All these circumstances convinced the police immediately that
a crime had been committed. (It helps to be elderly and no
longer sexually attractive, too. ) . . .
It was 2 or 3 days before the shock wore off and the full impact of the experience hit her. She became very ill, and now, nearly 3 years later, she has not recovered. The police told her
she was lucky not to have been murdered. But that remains an
unanswered question in her mind. Simple murder would not have
involved the horror, the insulting violation of personhood, the
degradation, the devastating affront to the dignity, and the sensation of bodily filth that time has not washed off. Nor would it have led to years of startled awakenings from sound sleep, the
cold sweats at noises in the dark, the palpitations of the heart
at the sound of a deep male voice, the horribly repeated image
of two large muscular hands approaching her throat, the rumbling voice that promised to kill her if she struggled or tried to scream, the unbearable vision of being found on the floor of her
own home, lying half naked and dead with her legs ridiculously
spread.
What was lucky about it was that it happened nearer the end
of her life than the beginning. What torture it must be to young
women who have to live with such memories for fifty years! This
older woman’s heart goes out to them. 32
This was the testimony of the great Elizabeth Gould Davis,
author of The First Sex, who died on July 30, 1974, of a self-
inflicted gunshot wound. She had cancer, and she planned her
death with great dignity, but I believe that it was the rape, not
the cancer, that distressed her unto death.
Now, I could read you testimony after testimony, tell you
story after story— after all, in 1974 there were 607, 310 such
stories to tell— but I don’t think I have to prove to you that
rape is a crime of such violence and that it is so rampant that
we must view it as an ongoing atrocity against women. All
women live in constant jeopardy, in a virtual state of siege.
That is, simply, the truth. I do however want to talk to you
explicitly about one particularly vicious form of rape which is
increasing rapidly in frequency. This is multiple rape— that is,
the rape of one woman by two or more men.
In Amir’s study of 646 rape cases in Philadelphia in 1958
and 1960, a full 43 percent of all rapes were multiple rapes
Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics Page 6