A Philosophical Investigation of Rape

Sexual Assault and Testimony: Articulation of/as Violence

“…Feminist theorists such as Du Toit, 26 Young, 27 Bumiller, 28 and Naffine 29 highlighted the misogynist nature of sexual assault and how the neutrality of sexual assault laws mask both the patriarchal paradigm of the law and a non-gender neutral crime. assault is replicated in the experience of domination when victim-survivors participate in an exchange with the law which does not currently represent an adequate acknowledgement or enabling of an empowered subjectivity.…”

“…She calls for a revolutionary imaginary; a disruption to dominant Western patriarchal symbolic order, and instituted social imaginary which resists the autonomy of the 113. Du Toit, 2009Toit, , 2012 victim-survivor. 113 This significant ideological shift is required to not only infiltrate victim-survivors' fantasies relating to testimony and minimize the re-traumatization of victim-survivors in testimony but also to reduce the number of sexual assaults and the associated experience of trauma.…”

“…The crime of sexual assault is gendered, as are the metaphysical significations of voice. 93 Young, in her article ''The Waste Land of the Law, the Wordless Song of the Rape Victim,'' investigates both the role of the perpetrator's metonymic, aphasic-based fantasy of women as ''desirable-yet-indifferent, superficial-yet-deeply-penetrable'' 94 and also the victim-survivor's transformative fantasy, from the pathos of victimization to logos of accusation, when testifying.…”

The Harm of Male-on-Female Rape

“…And, finally, for du Toit (2009),The victim of rape . .…”

“…Du Toit goes further to argue that rape also alters one’s relationship to one’s sense of the self, and in particular to one’s sense of oneself as an effective agent acting in the world. For Du Toit (2009), rape is “a form of domination [that] is world destructive (and, concomitantly, destructive of one’s sense of self and one’s relations with others)” (pp. 76-77, emphasis added).…”