A dilemma in rape crisis and a contribution from philosophy

The notion that rape is an act of violence rather than sex is a central tenet in rape crisis support and education. A therapeutic benefit of this conceptualisation of rape is that it counters shame and guilt by affirming that the victim was not a complicit partner in an act of sex. However, this conceptualisation has recently been criticised for not capturing what makes rape an especially serious kind of wrong. This raises an apparent dilemma for rape crisis support. Recent work in analytic moral philosophy on the nature of rape offers a way to resolve this dilemma. It is argued that rape is not sex, but is nonetheless sexual. This distinction allows for a charitable reformulation of the central tenet in rape crisis support, which can facilitate the dual therapeutic aims of countering the sense of shame and of recognising the especially serious kind of the harm suffered by the victim.

The Whole Place Self: reflecting on the original working practices of Rape Crisis

Critiques of the trauma model for understanding the harms of sexual violence raise some important questions about the radical roots of Rape Crisis Centres in the UK and their relationship to the services offered, and funded, today. Drawing from a research conversation with three women from the national umbrella group Rape Crisis England and Wales, this article finds that in contrast to the depoliticised and individualised discourse of trauma, the original ethos of Rape Crisis in England sought to recognise the harms of rape across four interlocking dimensions: personal, cultural, social and structural. This approach demonstrates an understanding of the self as relational, situated and intersectional, aligning with recent philosophical work on sexual violence and suggesting the importance of key working practices that are in tension with the counselling model that currently dominates provision.

The “Bait and Switch” of Sexual Assault Response: Expanded Carceral Power at a Rape Crisis Center

Rape crisis centers (RCCs) were established during the mainstream anti-rape movement in the United States during the 1970s. In the decades that followed, RCCs began to depend on governmental grants to stay open, shifting the antagonistic relationship that existed between many RCCs and state structures. Previous research has conceptualized this RCC institutionalization as a reluctant concession requisite to the continuation of victim services and the anti-rape movement. This article draws upon three years of ethnographic research and 40 interviews at a United States RCC to illustrate how institutionalization facilitated one RCC’s complicity in the expansion of the carceral state. I propose the transformation of this RCC illuminates a sexual assault response “bait and switch” that serves carceral agendas. I reach this conclusion using data drawn from three themes: (1) the outsourcing of the hotline and conversion to criminal-legal victim services, (2) criminal-legal integration that did not expand the influence of the RCC, and (3) the facilitation of the criminalization of victims through a process of net widening. Building from previous research, these findings document the result of criminal-legal integration at one RCC: the expansion of the carceral state into the center, to the detriment of victims and efforts to end sexual assault.

India’s Rape Crisis: Redefining India’s Rape Laws Based on a Constructive and Comparative Analysis of the Rape Epidemic in India and the United States

Summary This Article addresses the rape epidemic in India and provides an analytical comparison to the rape laws in the United States. This Article provides an overview of the laws in both India and the United States and specifically discusses marital rape and the laws concerning it in both nations. This Article concludes with resolutions for the marital rape laws in India and the United States.

The Challenges of Antirape Activism in the 1970s

This chapter examines the conflicts and constraints posed by varying antirape discourses and approaches to antirape activism in the 1970s. At this time, activists in the women’s liberation and black freedom movements confronted one another’s politics on rape, sometimes unable to find common ground. The competing beliefs and approaches that activists brought to their antirape work heightened the potential for discord between movements. This was particularly exacerbated by the increasing role of the state in antirape work. By the mid-1970s, state actors and agencies played a dominating role in antirape work, leaving many feminists deeply concerned about the direction of the movement. State co-optation of key feminist interventions, such as rape crisis centers, resulted in a movement that was largely reformist. Feminists saw their once radical vision of social revolution overshadowed by increasing state efforts for reform-based solutions to the problem of sexual violence.