Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality > Feminist Philosophy > Topics in Feminist Philosophy > Feminism: Rape and Sexual Violence
Feminism: Rape and Sexual Violence
Edited by Grayson Hunt (University of Texas at Austin)
About this topic
Summary | Feminist theoretical works on rape and sexual violence focus on several key questions: 1) What defines rape and sexual violence? 2) What are the meanings of rape and sexual violence? How are those meanings influenced by social, historical, and political contexts? 3) How do rape and sexual violence intersect with and perpetuate various systems of inequality, including those centered on race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and others? 4) How do anti-rape efforts undermine, or, perhaps, perpetuate elements of a rape culture? |
Key works | Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will (1975) offered an early version of the feminist argument that rape is primarily about power rather than sex. Catharine MacKinnon countered this theory in her work Toward a Feminist Theory of State, where she argued that rape is the logical extension of a phallocentric, patriarchal system of sexual inequality. Contemporary works include Susan Brison's Aftermath (the first feminist philosophical work that integrated first-person narrative of a sexual assault), Ann Cahill's Rethinking Rape (which argues against both Brownmiller's and MacKinnon's models), Louise du Toit's A Philosophical Investigation of Rape (which frames sexual violence as an assault on feminine subjectivity), and Debra Bergoffen's Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape (which analyzes decisions in international law that established rape as a violation of human dignity). |
Introductions | See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on "Feminist Perspectives on Rape" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-rape/) for an excellent introduction to the topic. |
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- Feminism: The Body (418)
- Feminism: Disability (220)
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- Topics in Feminist Philosophy, Misc (721)
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Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Esa Diaz-Leon Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |