news

NEWS
new Book - Violation and violence - A History of rape from the 1860s to the Present
Sat, Feb 09, 2008

A History From the 1860s to the Present By Joanna Bourke Virago, 528pp. £25 This is a necessary book. At times it is harrowing and rage-inducing. When the style lapses too much into postmodern jargon, it can also be irritating. But ultimately it is necessary.

It is necessary as a counter to the "we-have-it-all" mantra of privileged Western womanhood. It powerfully demonstrates that in one arena of feminist struggle - against sexual violence - whatever gains have been made in the UK, USA and Australia (the focus of the book) as regards legislative redress and police treatment of victim, these gains have not ultimately led to the eradication of or a dramatic reduction in incidences of sexual violence. For sure, some progress has been made. As recently as the 1970s, UK police could routinely inquire if the victim had experienced orgasm during rape. That wouldn't happen today.
Historian Joanna Bourke began her academic career studying the domestic sphere - Husbandry and Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland, to be precise - then moved to examining more barbarous pursuits, An Intimate History of Killing and Fear: A Cultural History. Based at Birkbeck College, University of London and by now no stranger to horror and trauma, with this book she directs her unflinching gaze to a contemplation of sexual violence (she broadens the definition to include abuse and has a section on female perpetrators of rape too), and, as is her wont, she kicks over the traces.
THE GREAT STRENGTH of the book lies in the extraordinary array of sources Bourke has ferreted out - she uses journals, diaries, testimonies, prison records, ancient medical texts. With this impressive armoury of evidence, she sets about dissecting a panoply of tenacious myths - making a compelling case for the argument that relatively few examples of deception by rape victims take place. She is also unafraid to take on controversies about female aggression, marshalling fascinating arguments about what might fuel female participation in sexual violence. Rape in marriage, date rape, rape in war - Bourke tackles them all. It is clear to Bourke, using the historian's long view, that it has been hard to dislodge certain key ideas about rape. That somehow it is the responsibility of women to protect themselves from sexual attack. Thus, to get drunk or to walk down a dark lane at night is to look for trouble. Would we dare tell the families of murder victims that their dead loved ones should have looked after themselves better?
Even from the very first page - with its account of a gang rape by American soldiers in the Vietnamese war - it is difficult to suppress outrage at the evidence assembled and forensically dissected by Prof Bourke. The fact that she presents this in measured scholarly language heightens its effect. Prof Bourke has lingered long in the killing fields. Those harrowing narratives encompass the grand canvases of conflict. What is striking in this litany of sexual crimes against women down through the centuries is not just the callousness of the perpetrators but also the shabby justifications of these crimes by other, often professional, men; the lawyers, the doctors who have lined up to demonstrate that the victim "asked for it" or that she said no when she really meant yes.
In the UK, the conviction rate for rapes is one in 20, a figure that constitutes a substantial drop over a 30-year period, from the time of "reclaim the night" marches and active and vigorous campaigning by womens' groups. Not all European countries have such a shameful record. However, in one of the few references by Prof Bourke to Irish statistics, it is shown that we have no reason whatsoever to be complacent. According to the Rape Crisis Networks Group, a peculiar set of circumstances places Ireland low down the justice index as regards rape and sexual violence. "What is maybe less widely known is that we in Ireland have the highest rate of attrition in rape cases compared to 20 of our European neighbours"( Rape Crisis Network Ireland's submission to Balance in the Criminal Law Review Group).
Naturally there is much in the book that is hard to countenance, but in some ways the more shocking facts lie buried in ancillary statistics and accounts. In the 19th century' members of the medical fraternity could argue with little opposition, that "a fully matured woman, in full possession of her faculties, cannot be raped". In fact there were also many other groups of women - slaves, women and girls with intellectual disabilities - who were deemed outside of the sphere of sexual violence altogether. In the rare case of rape of a slave woman brought to trial, the offence was conceived of as a property matter, a crime against the slave owner as opposed to the actual victim of the attack. Much more recently, one important study about American campuses revealed the statistic that one in three of male students would sexually assault women if they thought they could get away with it. But of course as Bourke's study bleakly highlights, far too many men are getting away with it. Add to this the fact that classic rape myths - "she was asking for it, your honour" - still exist in populist cultural tropes, taking on multiple new guises, like the many headed Hydra.
HOWEVER, BOURKE DOES not wish to leave us without some crumbs of comfort. She seeks to demonstrate how theories, legislation and popular discourses in relation to rape have changed over time. Thus, she argues, equipped with broader understanding of these developments over the centuries, we might be able to tentatively advance towards a brighter future "in which sexual violence has been placed outside the threshold of the human".
Katrina Goldstone is the communications officer of Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts © 2008 The Irish Times