Is it any wonder, then, that when Andra Medea and Kathleen Thompson, the authors of
“Have you ever been raped? ” answered, “I don’t know. ”11
What is rape?
Rape is the first model for marriage. As such, it is sanctioned by the Bible and by thousands of years of law, custom, and habit.
Rape is an act of theft— a man takes the sexual property of
another man.
Rape is, by law and custom, a crime against men, against
the particular owner of a particular woman.
Rape is the primary heterosexual model for sexual relating.
Rape is the primary emblem of romantic love.
Rape is the means by which a woman is initiated into her
womanhood as it is defined by men.
Rape is the right of any man who desires any woman, as
long as she is not explicitly owned by another man. This explains clearly why defense lawyers are allowed to ask rape victims personal and intimate questions about their sexual lives.
If a woman is a virgin, then she still belongs to her father and
a crime has been committed. If a woman is not married and is
not a virgin, then she belongs to no particular man and a
crime has not been committed.
These are the fundamental cultural, legal, and social assumptions about rape: (1) women want to be raped, in fact, women need to be raped; (2) women provoke rape; (3) no
woman can be sexually forced against her will; (4) women
love their rapists; (5) in the act of rape, men affirm their own
manhood and they also
women— that is, women exist to be fucked by men and so, in
the act of rape, men actually affirm the very womanhood of
women. Is it any wonder, then, that there is an epidemic of
forcible rape in this country and that most convicted rapists do
not know what it is they have done wrong?
In
we have been deprived of the power of
engineers of this culture, have defined all the words we use.
Men, as the makers of law, have defined what is legal and
what is not. Men, as the creators of systems of philosophy and
morality, have defined what is right and what is wrong. Men,
as writers, artists, movie makers, psychologists and psychiatrists, politicians, religious leaders, prophets, and so-called revolutionaries have defined for us who we are, what our values are, how we perceive what happens to us, how we understand what happens to us. At the root of all the definitions they have made is one resolute conviction: that women were
put on this earth for the use, pleasure, and sexual gratification
of men.
In the case of rape, men have defined for us our function,
our value, and the uses to which we may be put.
For women, as Mary Daly says, one fundamental revolutionary act is to reclaim the power of naming, to define for ourselves what our experience is and has been. This is very
hard to do. We use a language which is sexist to its core:
developed by men in their own interests; formed specifically to
