Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

arrested and charged with raping, on two separate occasions,

a married woman, Joan Smyth. ) 7 In his work, rape is no

longer synonymous with abduction— it has now become

synonymous with love. At issue, of course, is still male ownership— the rapist owns the woman; but now, she loves him as well.

This motif of sexual relating— that is, rape— remains our

primary model for heterosexual relating. The dictionary defines rape as “the act of physically forcing a woman to have sexual intercourse. ” But in fact, rape, in our system of masculinist law, remains a right of marriage. A man cannot be convicted of raping his own wife. In all fifty states, rape is defined legally as forced penetration by a man of a woman “not his

wife. ”8 When a man forcibly penetrates his own wife, he has

not committed a crime of theft against another man. Therefore, according to masculinist law, he has not raped. And, of course, a man cannot abduct his own wife since she is required

by law to inhabit his domicile and submit to him sexually.

Marriage remains, in our time, carnal ownership of women. A

man cannot be prosecuted for using his own property as he

sees fit.

In addition, rape is our primary emblem of romantic love.

Our modem writers, from D. H. Lawrence to Henry Miller to

Norman Mailer to Ayn Rand, consistently present rape as the

means of introducing a woman to her own carnality. A

woman is taken, possessed, conquered by brute force— and it

is the rape itself that transforms her into a carnal creature. It is

the rape itself which defines both her identity and her function: she is a woman, and as a woman she exists to be fucked.

In masculinist terms, a woman can never be raped against her

will since the notion is that if she does not want to be raped,

she does not know her will.

Rape, in our society, is still not viewed as a crime against

women. In “Forcible and Statutory Rape: An Exploration of

the Operation and Objectives of the Consent Standard, ” The

Yale Law Journal, 1952, an article which is a relentless compendium of misogynistic slander, the intent of modern male jurisprudence in the area of criminal rape is articulated clearly:

the laws exist to protect men (1) from the false accusation

of rape (which is taken to be the most likely type of accusation) and (2) from the theft of female property, or its defilement, by another man. 9 The notion of consent to sexual intercourse as the inalienable human right of a woman does not exist in male jurisprudence; a woman’s withholding of consent

is seen only as a socially appropriate form of barter and the

notion of consent is honored only insofar as it protects the

male’s proprietary rights to her body:

The consent standard in our society does more than protect a

significant item of social currency for women; it fosters, and is

in turn bolstered by, a masculine pride in the exclusive possession

of a sexual object. The consent of a woman to sexual intercourse

awards the man a privilege of bodily access, a personal “prize”

whose value is enhanced by sole ownership.. . . An additional

reason for the man’s condemnation of rape may be found in the

threat to his status from a decrease in the “value” of his sexual

“possession” which would result from forcible violation. 10

This remains the basic articulation of rape as a social crime: it

is a crime against men, a violation of the male right to personal and exclusive possession of a woman as a sexual object.