Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

exclude us; used specifically to oppress us. The work, then, of

naming is crucial to the struggle of women; the work of naming is, in fact, the first revolutionary work we must do. How, then, do we define rape?

Rape is a crime against women.

Rape is an act of aggression against women.

Rape is a contemptuous and hostile act against women.

Rape is a violation of a woman’s right to self-determination.

Rape is a violation of a woman’s right to absolute control of

her own body.

Rape is an act of sadistic domination.

Rape is a colonializing act.

Rape is a function of male imperialism over and against

women.

The crime of rape against one woman is a crime committed

against all women.

Generally, we recognize that rape can be divided into two

distinct categories: forcible rape and presumptive rape. In a

forcible rape, a man physically assaults a woman and forces

her, through physical violence, threat of physical violence, or

threat of death, to perform any sexual act. Any forced sexual

act must be considered rape— “contact between the mouth

and the anus, the mouth and the penis, the mouth and the

vulva, [contact] between the penis and the vulva, [between

the] penis and anus, or contact between the anus or vulva”

and any phallic substitute like a bottle, stick, or dildo. 13

In a presumptive rape, we are warranted in presuming that

a man has had carnal access to a woman without her consent,

because we define consent as “meaningful and knowledgeable

assent; not mere acquiescence. ”14 In a presumptive rape, the

constraint on the victim’s will is in the circumstance itself;

there has been no mutuality of choice and understanding and

therefore the basic human rights of the victim have been violated and a crime has been committed against her. This is one instance of presumptive rape, reported by Medea and Thompson in Against Rape:

The woman is seventeen, a high school student. It is about four

o’clock in the afternoon. Her boy friend’s father has picked her

up in his car after school to take her to meet his son. He stops by

his house and says she should wait for him in the car. When he

has pulled the car into the garage, this thirty-seven-year-old

father of six rapes her. 15

This sort of rape is common, it is contemptible, and needless

to say, it is never reported to the police.

Who, then, commits rape?

The fact is that rape is not committed by psychopaths. Rape

is committed by normal men. There is nothing, except a conviction for rape which is very hard to obtain, to distinguish the rapist from the nonrapist.

The Institute for Sex Research did a study of rapists in the

1940’s and 1950’s. In part, the researchers concluded that