Rethinking Rape

by Ann J. Cahill

Rape, claims Ann J. Cahill, affects not only those women who are raped, but all women who experience their bodies as rapable and adjust their actions and self-images accordingly. Rethinking Rape counters legal and feminist definitions of rape as mere assault and decisively emphasizes the centrality of the body and sexuality in a crime which plays a crucial role in the continuing oppression of women. Rethinking Rape applies current feminist theory to an urgent political and ethical issue. Cahill takes an original approach by reading the subject of rape through the work of such recent continental feminist thinkers as Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Grosz, Rosi Braidotti, and Judith Butler, who understand the body as fluid and indeterminate, a site for the negotiation of power and resistance. Cahill interprets rape as an embodied, sexually marked experience, a violation of feminine bodily integrity, and a pervasive threat to the integrity and identity of a woman's person. The wrongness of rape, which has always eluded legal interpretation, cannot be defined as theft, battery, or the logical extension of heterosexual sex. It is not limited to a specific event, but encompasses the myriad ways in which rape threatens the prospect of feminine agency. As an explication that fully countenances women's experiences of their own bodies, Rethinking Rape helps point the way toward reparation, resistance, and the evolution of feminine subjectivity.

Genres: Feminism, Philosophy, Politics, Gender, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 22, 2001

Reviews

[Zoë · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very important because it creates a new model through which to consider the wrongs of rape and how rape culture might be remedied in Western society. This model is one of embodiment and intersubjectivity, and it revises the claims of Brownmiller (who suggests that rape is not a sexual crime but an act of conquest) and MacKinnon (who considers rape to be contiguous with heterosexual sex relations generally). Taking what is good about Brownmiller's and MacKinnon's arguments, Cahill rethinks how and why rape happens and what we can do to prevent it.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cahill starts out from the classic conflict between feminist arguments that "rape is essentially violence" (Brownmiller, liberal feminists) vs. "rape is essentially sex" (MacKinnon, Dworkin, radical feminists). Cahill deftly shows that contemporary (continental) feminist insights into sex and the subject as corporeal and intersubjectively constituted makes clear that both positions are untenable. Rape is both sex and violence. While this may have already been clear according to (feminist) conventional wisdom today, this book is nonetheless useful for tracing the implications of this fact, especially for understanding the complex harms of rape (and, crucially, of the latent threat of rape in everyday life). If Cahill's description of women's self-defense as central to resistance is not fully developed, that's because it isn't really what this book is about. She should be lauded for moving toward the question of resistance in her final chapter, rather than criticized for what she doesn't say. (I recommend reading Sharon Marcus "Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words" (1992) on resisting rape if you're interested in women's self-defense... she also doesn't address issues like implications for other cultural notions of femininity and the difficulties of such resistance against acquaintances and family members, but hers is an insightful account from an earlier moment in this conversation.)

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rethinking Rape usefully summarizes 1980s and '90s feminist theoretical approaches to rape, sexual difference, and female embodiment to argue for an approach to rape that prioritizes women's embodied experience of assault (and such assaults' ensuing embodied harms), especially in legal settings. In building her argument, Cahill summarizes and responds to works by MacKinnon, Dworkin, Braidotti, Grosz, Butler, Gatens, Young, Bartky, and others. While extremely useful as an overview of feminist theories of the body (I wish I had read this in grad school!), Cahill's book fails to take seriously the reality of sexual dimorphism, especially with regards to men's often superior body strength--itself arguably the reason that rape could historically emerge as such a widespread "assault on the intersubjective personhood of the victim" (207)--landing on a rather Butlerian note that science itself is complicit in materializing "weak" feminine bodies. While that might be true (at least in part), Cahill's concluding appeal to universal self-defense training for women fell flat for me since she fails to consider the ableist, ageist, and classist dimensions of such a proposal. She also does a poor job of accounting for non-white and non-cis experiences. Overall, the book is eminently readable--well-written, clearly argued, and relatively comprehensive in the authors it cites--while suffering from shortcomings that are mostly due to its time of publication in 2001.

[Celeste · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ann Cahill begins by reviewing feminist theories of rape that have either defined it as violence-not-sex (ala Brownmiller) or not-really-different-from-regular-sex (ala MacKinnon). She argues that neither of these theories take sufficient account of rape as an embodied experience that is both violet and sexual in a very distinct way. I think that she is too dismissive of MacKinnon, who clearly recognized the violence (not just the sex) of rape.

Cahill builds her theory of rape on the sexual-difference feminism of Luce Irigaray. I have not read Irigaray myself, so I cannot evaluate Cahill's use of her theory. Irigaray via Cahill argues that sexual difference is fundamental to humanity, and that understanding that difference enables us to understand, and celebrate, other forms of difference. This sexual difference should not be understood as patriarchal biologism, nor should it be defined by any of the characteristics that are in any given context associated with women. While it's clearly related to the female body and in particular genitalia, but beyond that I am unclear as to how the significance of sexual difference should be used.

Cahill argues that understanding embodiment is essential to understanding subjectivity. She rejects the liberal enlightenment model that defines personhood by a capacity for rationality that rests on a mind/body duality. Instead, she argues that embodiment leads to an intersubjectivity in which the self is defined through its relationality and dependence on others. This leads her to argue that rape is best understood as sexually specific violent assault on a woman's subjectivity.

She rests this argument on the idea that because one's personhood is tied to one's body, an assault on one's body is inherently an attack on one's personhood. However, she does not adequately explain why a sexual assault is more of an attack on personhodd than other forms of attack.

[Susan]

Another great rape theory text.