![]() Renzetti, on this chapter appears at the end of the chapter. Rape's critical function is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear. Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe. ![]() Man's structural capacity to rape and woman's corresponding structural vulnerability are as basic to the physiology of both our sexes as the primal act of sex itself. But we do know that human beings are different. No zoologist has ever observed that animals rape in their natural habitat, the wild. The subject of rape has not been, for zoologists, an important scientific question. Critical to our study is the recognition that rape has a history, and that through the tools of historical analysis we may learn what we need to know about our current condition. ![]() So it remained for the latter-day feminists, free at last from the strictures that forbade us to look at male sexuality, to discover the truth and meaning in our own victimization. Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Adler, Jung, Deutsch, Horney, Marx, and Engels were mostly silent on the topic of rape as a social reality. ![]() With over 2.5 million copies sold, this seminal book is unanimously regarded as the definitive work on the subject of women's psychology. Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, by Susan Brownmiller (1975). Feminist Icon Phyllis Chesler's Pioneering Work, Women and Madness, Remains Startlingly relevant today, over thirty years since its initial publication in 1972. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |