Given the seriousness for both women and men of misunderstanding or miscategorising sexual victimization and coercion, scholarly engagement with this topic must be self-critical and careful about its methods and conclusions. This article seeks to test the plausibility and justifiability of some key claims made within feminist scholarship as regards the implications of the traditional sexual script and the prevalence and impact of the ''real rape'' myth. The criticisms offered below with respect to these claims identify three problems: (a) that evidence that would challenge carceral feminists' framing of the traditional sexual script as essentially a blueprint for rape is either marginalized or excluded from consideration altogether; (b) that within that framing the scripted roles of the coercive male and the passive female who is victimized have been allowed to solidify into immovable and immutable stereotypes; (c) that studies purporting to show that rape myth acceptance is highly prevalent and influential on popular attitudes are flawed in ways hitherto not fully acknowledged or explored.
There is no doubt that being ‘critical’ about victim-blame requires ensuring first that it is the perpetrator and not the victim who is held responsible for sexual offending. At the same time, engagement with this topic requires critical acuity as to how victim-blame is identified, and to the boundary between raising legitimate questions about the presence or absence of consent in less than ideal circumstances, and falling back on to myths and stereotypes that are unfair to complainants and damaging to victims. This paper identifies and critiques three purported intersections of rape myths and victim-blame that have gained widespread acknowledgement within feminist legal studies: first, that a woman is blamed for voluntarily putting herself into circumstances in which ‘rape happens’; secondly, that a woman is blamed for ‘miscommunicating’ her refusal; and, thirdly, that consent is wrongly understood to have been given in circumstances where a woman in fact lacked the freedom to do so. This critique of methodological and analytical approaches to identifying victim-blame as a symptom of rape myth acceptance focuses on research published recently by the Office of the Children's Commissioner,‘“Sex Without Consent, I Suppose That Is Rape”: How Young People in England Understand Sexual Consent’.
This article focuses on the language and metaphors used in debating rape myths, arguing that it is their uncanny aesthetic and affective qualities that accounts for the debate's fractious nature but also brings the possibility of a more productive politics. For much feministinformed rape myth acceptance scholarship (FRMAS),`myths' in this context are more than merely mistaken beliefs: rather, they comprise a world made up of illusions or spectres that must be laid to rest. Critics of this view, too, while critical of feminists' reliance on`myths' as a way of stifling open discussion, likewise tend to use a discourse of myths explicitly or implicitly and with a similarly disorienting effect. For both sides of the debate then,`myth' serves as a disquieting, uncanny metaphor that displaces and substitutes whatever else apparently erroneous beliefs, attitudes, and knowledges about rape might signify.Grateful thanks to Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Ian Ward, Alex Dymock, Sue Chaplin, Robin Lister, and Mark Thomas for feedback and advice on previous drafts; also to Oren Ben-Dor, Ummni Khan, and Helen Reece for arranging for this article to be double-blind peer-reviewed and to the anonymous reviewers who provided those reviews.
This article focuses on the language and metaphors used in debating rape myths, arguing that it is their uncanny aesthetic and affective qualities that accounts for the debate's fractious nature but also brings the possibility of a more productive politics. For much feminist‐informed rape myth acceptance scholarship (FRMAS), ‘myths’ in this context are more than merely mistaken beliefs: rather, they comprise a world made up of illusions or spectres that must be laid to rest. Critics of this view, too, while critical of feminists' reliance on ‘myths’ as a way of stifling open discussion, likewise tend to use a discourse of myths explicitly or implicitly and with a similarly disorienting effect. For both sides of the debate then, ‘myth’ serves as a disquieting, uncanny metaphor that displaces and substitutes whatever else apparently erroneous beliefs, attitudes, and knowledges about rape might signify.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.