Rape: a history from 1860s to the present (London: Virago and Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2007)
Joanna Bourke unflinchingly examines the nature of rape, drawing together the work of criminologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists to analyse what drives the perpetrators of sexual violence. The rapist, not the victim, is at the centre of this book.
She looks at the perception of rape, both in the mass media and amongst the wider public. We are deluged by stories and images of sexual violence: one in ever eight Hollywood movies includes a rape scene, and journalism increasingly describes horrific sex attacks. And yet most acts of rape are not reported and fewer than five per cent of those that are end in a conviction. Importantly, this book considers the crucial questions of treatment and punishment. Should offenders be given drugs or be castrated? Does the answer lie with the behaviourists or the analysts?
Wrestling with the definitions of rape and rapists, of consent and coercion, she shows how rape and sexual violence are deeply rooted in their time, and are ever changing according to specific economic, political, and cultural environments.
"Men" are not rapists. Some men are/ Rapists are not born; they become. Joanna Bourke dares to imagine a future in which different choices are made. A future without sexual violence
It has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Czech, Russian, and Greek.
Table of Contents
Section One: Introduction
1. Sexed bodies
Section Two: Lies
2. Rape myths
3. "No" means "yes"
Section Three: Identities
4. Rapacious bodies
5. Brutalizing environments
6. The knife (and other invasive therapies)
7. The couch (and other interior therapies)
Section Four: Case Studies
8. Female perpetrators; male victims
9. Exhibitionists
10. Sexual psychopaths
Section Five: Violence Institutions
11. The home
12. The prison
13. The military
Section Six: Law
14. Getting away with rape
Section Seven: Resistance
15. Violence, politics, erotics