Rape: Sex, Violence, History

by Joanna Bourke

Overview

Joanna Bourke takes the issue of rape out from the academic ghettos and distills the truth so often exploited to sell newspapers. Neither prurient nor overly sympathetic, she investigates rape from a historical standpoint examining the history of sexual aggression, the idea of rape as a social construct, and the often–ignored idea of embodiment, and analyzes the physical response of rapists as well as the often–cited "rape is about power" theories.

Indebted to a growing body of sophisticated feminist analyses about rape victims, Bourke here shifts the emphasis from the victims to the perpetrators in order to place rapists in their historical context. An invaluable study, this book delivers the hard truth that if we are to imagine a world free of unwanted sexual violence, then we must consider the issue of rape from every angle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582434667
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	06/30/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	576
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Joanna Bourke is Professor of History in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, where she has taught since 1992. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. Her books range from the social and economic history of Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to social histories of the British working classes between 1860 and 1960s, to cultural histories of military conflict between the Anglo-Boer war and the present. She explores history through the lens of gender, ivtersectionalities, and subjectivities. She has worked on the history of the emotions, particularly fear and hatred, and the history of sexual violence. In the past few years, her research has focused on questions of humanity, militarisation, and pain. She wrote a book entitled What It Means to Be Human. In 2014, she published two books: Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War Games Invade Our World and The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers.

Table of Contents

Preface     vii
Introduction
Sexed Bodies     5
Lies
Rape Myths     21
'No' Means 'Yes'     50
Identities
Rapacious Bodies     89
Brutalizing Environments     119
The Knife (and Other Invasive Therapies)     147
The Couch (and Other Interior Therapies)     180
Case Studies
Female Perpetrators; Male Victims     209
Exhibitionists     249
Sexual Psychopaths     275
Violent Institutions
The Home     305
The Prison     329
The Military     357
Law
Getting Away with Rape     389
Resistance
Violence, Politics, Erotics     413
Notes     442
Bibliography     511
Index     550

Editorial Reviews

Dense, scholarly examination of the nature of rape as it has been experienced and perceived in the United States, Great Britain and Australia from the mid 19th century to the present. Bourke (History/Birkbeck College, Univ. of London; An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare, 1999, etc.) focuses on rapists and what drives them. She exposes the myths that have surrounded the act, its perpetrators and its victims. African-American men, other minorities, immigrants, adolescent "thugs" and the poor have been stigmatized, she writes, while white professional men and middle-class husbands have been let off the hook. Bourke rejects the biological explanations of evolutionary psychologists who trace sexual violence back to our distant ancestors, finding more convincing the claim by feminists and social theorists that societal forces create men who sexually abuse others. She takes a critical look at the writings of criminologists, sociologists and psychiatrists who have studied the motives and behavior of sexually violent offenders, analyzing the shortcomings of the various methods of treatment and punishment they have advocated, from lobotomy and castration to aversion therapy and psychiatric treatment. She also discusses female abusers, psychopaths, exhibitionists and such potentially dangerous environments as prisons, the military and the home. Bourke presents data demonstrating that few rapes are reported, fewer still are taken seriously by the police and of the rapists who are charged, only a small number are convicted. Rape shield laws, she reports, have not been especially effective. While legal reform is needed, she believes it's more important tochange the specific political, economic and cultural environments that give rise to sexual violence. Although Bourke's prose can be off-putting ("feminist functionalism," "etiological resonance," "narrativizing practices"), her scholarship is impressive. Not everyone will agree with her analysis, but she has succeeded in demystifying rape. Provocative and challenging.

Kirkus Reviews