The discussion on Rape was an important subject with which feminists have been involved. There are disagreements as well as agreements among feminists on how rape is best understood, and about how rape should be remedied both legally and socially. Feminist theories on rape have progressed with the understanding that there will be an immediate need to ‘break the silence' surrounding rape as well as the beliefs around it. Rape is often believed to be an extraordinary offense in a patriarchal society, with the narrative of a black rapist jumping on an innocent white woman in a dark street. Feminist groups have tried to dismiss the racist and sexist myths surrounding rape with the help of "speak outs" and increased awareness groups by communicating the rape victims' perceptions. In the early phase of rape movements by feminists, the conceptions of a woman's place as a personal asset or "sexual objects" of a man, “good girls are not raped,'' rape is an assault and violation not on a woman's physical integrity but the male owner of her sexuality' were attacked. Marital rape exclusion in law was an application of the presumption that a woman, when married, cannot really be raped by her partner mostly because of the fact that, in the sacrament of marriage, she gave herself to her husband and could not undo it. The premise would be that at the time of the marriage, the wife gives the partner the privilege to intercourse at any moment, wherever, in any manner. The observations of Sir Matthew Hale, 17th century Chief Justice of England who shaped the rape Laws in England is an eye opener, “The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by the mutual consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.” (Ryan 941-1001)
The first and most fundamental question feminists raise to conservative views of rape is the acceptance of rape as a crime towards the victim herself that challenges a woman's presumption of property. In addition, the significance of this sexual asset was calculated on the basis of the rape victim's ‘sexual purity' which accounted for the custom of providing reimbursement either to the parent or the partner. The amount of money was based upon the accuser’s ‘sexual purity'. It has been believed that a virgin's wedding chances were weakened after she had been raped. Thus, an unmarried woman's parent was paid compensation. The woman who was not perceived to be any man's personal property, say, a prostitute, was believed to be unrapable, as no man possessed their sexuality, therefore no one was wounded by her rape. Also attempting to break the rape myths, feminists have also not resulted in reforming the legal terms of rape but also in removing many outdated and patriarchal traditions of rape trials. For example, "rape shield" laws now limit the adequacy of proof on the sexual past of a defendant, and most legislatures have abolished the necessity for "speedy reporting," the necessity for supporting evidence, and the recitation of the conventional "cautionary rule" (FPR) which reflected the patriarchal prejudice of Sir Matthew Hale's argument that as an accusation, rape is easy to charge, hard to prove and even harder to disprove. Feminists have developed rape crisis centers and help lines to help victims of rape regardless of whether or not they want to pursue charges against them. Slowly all feminists have concluded with the idea that rape as a crime is firmly rooted in our society's oppressive patriarchal belief system, not a psychopath's unmanageable desire. Nevertheless, further than this, feminists still disagree about the severity of the crime. Roughly speaking, it is possible to split the feminist theorists of rape into two heads-liberal and radical. The fundamental difference between the liberal and radical perspective to rape is that liberal feminists see rape as another sort of sexual assault, an anomaly outside the context from which normal and natural sexual experiences can and do occur. Radical feminists, though, contend that the demarcation line between sex and rape is lack of consent. Despite the patriarchal culture in which women find themselves, no valid consent can be given by a woman for any kind of sexual activity. Radical feminists pull on the concepts of sexuality and social behavior to argue that "normally" some power on the part of a man and some opposition on the part of a woman are perceived normal forerunners to sexual activity. It makes it hard to establish a distinctive distinction between so-called normal heterosexual intercourse and rape, as both claims tend to be similar.
Susan Brownmiller is the Liberal front's most significant feminist who has worked substantially on rape. Her Against Our Will: Men Women and Rape (1975) is a rigorously researched and well recorded book that is even today considered a rape classic. She also studied rape in different settings, such as oppression, segregation, conflict, protests, police rape, gay rape in jail and child rape. Brownmiller's central idea is that rape is not a criminal act of sex, but of violence and authority. Obviously, it has had two goals – to eliminate the crime's gender relationships and, second, to liberate it from the ambiguous undertones of a sexual crime, where sex is deemed a private consensual engagement. The purpose against such an assertion has also been to support sex while denying abuse. The liberal stance on rape was attacked by Catherine MacKinnon, a female legal expert on the radical front as "abuse not sex." She argues it's a conscience-defeating claim since it ignores the reality that abuse per se is not made illegal by legislation if it is believed to be voluntary. The perceived difference between these two has been challenged by radical feminists. It is understood that the differences between the two are fragile because of how often the judiciary considers the definition of rape as sexual intercourse for a woman, and how often women experience' natural' sex as harmful as rape. Brownmiller further stressed the biological nature of rape i.e. man is genetically shaped as an attacker, while a woman's physically incapacitated body is already that of a victim– “man’s structural capacity to rape and woman’s structural vulnerability” (Brownmiller 13). She does not acknowledge, though, that this is the structure in which a 'usual' sexual intercourse occurs-a penile vaginal sex. Another radical feminist, Andrea Dworkin, occupies this idea and theorizes how unlikely it is to have a stable heterosexual intercourse, despite this already defined genetic structure as the standard in a patriarchal culture. While her claim may be in an extremist view without the likelihood of claiming the role of an individual in establishing a heterosexual intercourse, it is worth mentioning in depth here:
A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused. A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth-- literature, science, philosophy, pornography--calls that penetration violation. This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into ("violate") the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy (Dworkin 154).
It can be claimed that Brownmiller holds on a more ‘politically correct’ position with respect to her interpretation of rape and sexuality, while the role of Dworkin puts us in an unresponsive status quo. This quashes the chance of the woman's role and a breach in that role, and allows biologism the start and end of her contention. The belief of the radical feminists that almost all sex is abuse, sinks one to paralysis. This quashes the idea that women may be allowed to reinterpret and go beyond the rules of an abusive male sexual encounter. In a heterosexual relationship, it leaves no room for women to find physical pleasure, suffering and satisfaction in the context of an agency. Interestingly, in the lack of the penile-vaginal clenching pattern, Dworkin sees the prospect of a more satisfying sexual experience for women. In this respect she relates to the popular feminist sexologist Shere Hite:
Most women do not experience orgasm from intercourse itself. When Shere Hite, in her groundbreaking study, asked women to report their own sexual experiences in detail and depth, she discovered that only three in ten women regularly experience orgasm from intercourse. The women’s self-reports are not ideological. They want men, love, sex, intercourse; they want orgasm; but for most women, seven out of ten, intercourse does not cause orgasm. The women want, even strive for, orgasm from intercourse but are unable to achieve it. Hite, the strongest feminist and most honourable philosopher among sex researchers, emphasizes that women can and must take responsibility for authentic sexual pleasure: ‘the ability to orgasm when we want, to be in charge of our stimulation, represents owning our own bodies, being strong, free, and autonomous human beings’ (Dworkin 158).
Going further than the sphere of sexual satisfaction, Dworkin claims that male power creates a social significance into the action of intimacy in which women are considered to be possessed, occupied individuals. Therefore, it is not only the physical strength of the act that is metaphorically coercive but also the societal concepts that are assembled around it.
Turning to the legal perspective, it seems difficult to convict rape when there is no difference, as Dworkin seems to say, between rape and ' natural ' sexual intercourse. MacKinnon, though, considers law as a key tool in the battle against sexual abuse. Her main argument is to accept sexual abuse as a civil offense and not a criminal act. Civil offenses are private crimes: criminal offences are federal crimes. Switching sexual abuse into a civil offense would put the victim in charge of the judicial process that would protect her from the public prosecutor's indifference. The fundamental incoherence of her argument, though, is that, on the one side, she claims to be rape for all or at least most sex, while, on the other, she tries to outlaw and punish only some kinds of sex, i.e. those which could be classified as 'sexual abuse.’ On many other points Mackinnon was criticized. Throughout MacKinnon's analysis, Carol Smart found ‘determinism’ and ‘relativism’ particularly troublesome. MacKinnon said, “Sexuality is to feminism what work is to Marxism: that which is most one’s own, yet most taken away” (MacKinnon 575). This approach shows the first two issue points of her concept, that is, relativity and determinism. Notwithstanding many discrepancies amongst them MacKinnon views women as a class. In comparison, she sees women as passive beneficiaries of society, tradition, language, race, etc. that are exploited by men, while she puts them outside the scope of this framework as producers. She considers women's uniqueness as a challenge and claims that they can shape sisterhood on the grounds of their sexuality and common experience. Through the increasing of awareness that is fundamental to her feminist ideology, she thinks that women discover truth in their lives, which in effect is liberating. So, she builds another knowledge framework, in which only the feminist Truth takes precedence. Thus women who do not adhere to this variant of theory disqualify themselves as true feminists. Perhaps notably, her focus on law as the future place for women's aspirations to be legitimized is fragile. As Carol Smart goes on to claim:
The history of law reforms in the areas of rape, equal pay, domestic violence must surely reveal the failures of law to legitimate women’s claims. There are other ways of challenging popular consciousness other than through law, even though law on occasion provides a catalyst. But it is also mistaken to imply that once legitimized by law, women’s claims will not be de-legitimized by law at a later stage… I agree with MacKinnon that law is powerful in silencing the alternative discourses of women, but I see it as far less powerful in transforming society to meet the various needs of all women. (Smart 81)
Drucilla Cornell criticizes the essentialization of 'female' by MacKinnon as a common category where strength and control are the only potential sexual interactions with males. It becomes as irreversible as biological sex, with such a mechanistic view of the social phenomenon of gender. (Cornell 120)
Brownmiller challenges the idea that rape occurs from a man's unrestrained lust for sexual intercourse with a woman by historizing and interpreting rape in different situations, showing that it is mostly a deliberate, cold-blooded offense. It adds to the neurosis of rape that all women suffer- “It (rape) is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” (Brownmiller 13) Arriving to explain a feminine definition of rape which was tried by feminists both liberal and radical, she refers to the weaknesses in the existing definitions of rape, which is a patriarchal concept – “If a woman chooses not to have sexual intercourse with a specific man and the man chooses to proceed against her will, that is a criminal act of rape.” (Brownmiller 18) She points out:
A sexual invasion of the body by force, an incursion into the private, personal inner space without consent – in short, an internal assault from one of several avenues and by one of several methods – constitutes a deliberate violation of emotional, physical and rational integrity and is a hostile, degrading act of violence that deserves the name of rape. (Brownmiller 376)
Some of Brownmiller's goals were to put forward as a legislative reform a "gender-free, non-activity-specific law governing all manners of sexual assaults." Including Catherine MacKinnon, radical feminist has this strategic attitude too. The issue with this scenario though is that since the term ' rape ' automatically puts a very sexist and derogatory perception into people's minds along with the judge. Even the word 'sexual assault' faces similar limitations. The term 'assault' places stronger focus on the victim's aggression and harm, rather than the sexual aspect. This seems more like trying to get rid of the sexual part of a sexual offence. This distinction doesn't really do justice to the rape victims, who have however sustained no injuries or to the victims who submitted at the point of the weapon. In this kind of cases, the offender may be classified as Third Degree sexual assault, a much less serious term, although the victim's suffering would be the same as the victim of First Degree sexual assault. In comparison, bringing rape law gender-free will hardly fix women's suffering in a patriarchal culture of rape where many women are victims and most definitely only men are offenders. Sexual equality in law also doesn't resolve the feeling of shame and humiliation associated with rape in culture as such beliefs are strong-seated in the collective subconscious, and a simple law change hardly can alter the perception. Brownmiller also disputes her previous position on the physical structure of male and female body as that of humans and other animals, namely.
As pointed out earlier, one of Brownmiller's greatest accomplishments in her work has been historicizing the crime. She starts her review with psychology experiment of the rape problem popularized predominantly by Sigmund Freud and his student Helene Deseutch. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, who defended inequality by showing the world very logically “the primacy of the penis” (Smith), the very concept of rape was labeled as coming from the dark female fantasy. The psychologist worked with his female patients who claimed that they had been sexually molested during their childhood. Freud concluded that since women really are misanthropic, rape would fulfill women's soul-destructive desires, either in fantasy or in reality. Freud's popularization of the concept that females are misanthropic by default, and thus desire to weaken sexual attention, is interconnected with the idea of pornography. Helene Deutsch was the significant contributor to the belief that exhibitionism is an important part of femininity, and a consequence of her sexual gratification. He believed the vagina to be totally passive, which has to be aroused by the male sex organ being overwhelmed, and the process is traumatic for women. For her, indeed, the intercourse was rape but it was necessary, so be treated better. She placed the presence of misanthropic behaviour as the standard as part of a healthy and desirable female character. These widely prominent psychoanalytic scholars did not address rape as a real phenomenon perpetrated by 'average' people. Then they concentrated on the rape fantasies in a perfect misanthropic woman's life. In this way the real physical rape was the natural result of the psyche-inflicted pain of the rape victim. While early psychoanalytic thinkers dismissed male responsibility in rape later writers accepted male involvement in sexual crimes but questioned the role of such persons as repressed or psychopathic or simply narcissistic. Usually, the anomaly of men's psychosexual development was seen as the 'cause' of those criminal tendencies. A traditional sexual predator was expected to be a terrified, incompetent, emotional, nervous, reckless, irresponsible psychopath, lacking social competence, getting a self-concept distorted in the areas of psychosexual identity, and unable to determine the implications of his own actions, or in the most simplistic hypothesis, is having a confusing and painful relationship with his mother or any other elderly woman in childhood. A study of rape psychoanalytic concepts reveals that they are strongly bigoted and biased toward women, because they tend to avoid the clear facts around rape. Saying that a victim wants to be raped without further reliable evidence for the same is really implausible. A survey of convicted rapists shows that most of them are living a normal life, working respectable jobs and having friends. (Scully) Having them mentally disturbed narcissists is akin to establishing an inexistent theory without any regard for the facts. However, these theories neglect society's function in fostering violent masculinities and passive femininities and defining them as the standard.
Brownmiller analyses meticulously women's rape as part of the strategy in warfare to demoralize the side of the opponent. The defensive and predatory roles that men take in regard to their spouses are not only similar depending on the situation, but both attitudes objectivize women in the way that women's bodies no longer belong to them. It continues to represent the male's dominance, women's safety being the emblem of male pride while the ownership of the woman's body stands for male advancement. She criticizes the conduct of both the war workers and the state toward the ongoing sexual exploitation of women as puppets. It has been believed that rape in battle happens mainly due to the unavailability of suitable sex partners. Yet an interview with a U.S. leader Combat Evaluation Army Court reveals that “Rape has nothing to do with the availability of willing women or prostitutes…Wherever there are soldiers, there are prostitutes in a war.” (Brownmiller 76) Yet with this, rape occurs, somehow. This is understood better if we consider the function and importance of male aggressive behavior in a patriarchal society, and particularly in a circumstance of war time.
Liberal feminist rape scholars such as Susan Brownmiller weren't the only ones to have a clear policy reform plan. Catherine MacKinnon, one of radical feminist spokespersons, was the force behind the overhaul of rape law in Canada and Michigan, which are deemed examples of successful rape law. Rather than seeing the rape epidemic as a particular oddity which can impede successful legislation, though, she found the whole patriarchal system to be an anti-women rape society. Liberal feminism's viewpoint on rape is that it is a gender-neutral attack on a person's individual liberty or physical integrity against his or her will that is equal to any other form of violence or unconstitutional theft. Therefore, the emphasis is more on the actual victims and the hazards they experience. On the other side, radical feminism retained that rape is a tactic which upholds the foundation of patriarchy. Radical feminists interpret rape in the light of male power and influence as the product of patriarchal structures of gender and sexuality, and stress the damage that rape does to women specifically. A woman is denied of her bodily authority in a patriarchal society and that's why rape could be one of the modes of sexual violence against women. Radical feminists have tried to study in detail how male power structures deliberately weaken the sexuality and sexual liberation of women, and find female resistance to be their affirmative consent. This is the gap where feminism's liberal and radical views vary, where radical feminists see a spectrum between rape and so-called normal sexual intercourse.