Abstract:This article places Foucault's 1977 suggestions regarding the reform of French rape law in the context of ongoing feminist debates as to whether rape should be considered a sex crime or a species of assault. When viewed as a disciplinary matrix with both physical and discursive effects, rape and the rape trial clearly contribute to the “hysterization” of women by cultivating complainants' confessions in order to demonstrate their supposed lack of self‐knowledge.
“…Indeed, Foucault's (1990) call for "desexualisation" (c.f. Hengehold 1994;Henderson 2013) can be seen as a plea to "to release 'bodies and pleasures' from the legal control of the state" (de Lauretis 1987;Cahill 2001, 144) and a plea which is shared by many contemporary queer and feminist theorists alike. 6 Bell explains however, that Plaza's notion of sex is different from Foucault's.…”
Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty that "wartime rape is not about sex (it's about power/violence)" under critical scrutiny and poses questions about the stakes of the erasure of the sexual in explanations of conflict-related sexual violence. It argues that the particular urgency that accompanies this erasure reflects the workings of familiar distinctions between war and peace, as well as efforts to clearly recognize violence and separate it from sex. Erasing the sexual from accounts of wartime rape thus ultimately reinscribes the normal and the exceptional as separate, and reproduces a reductive notion of heterosexual masculine sex (in peacetime) that is ontologically different from the violence of war.
“…Indeed, Foucault's (1990) call for "desexualisation" (c.f. Hengehold 1994;Henderson 2013) can be seen as a plea to "to release 'bodies and pleasures' from the legal control of the state" (de Lauretis 1987;Cahill 2001, 144) and a plea which is shared by many contemporary queer and feminist theorists alike. 6 Bell explains however, that Plaza's notion of sex is different from Foucault's.…”
Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty that "wartime rape is not about sex (it's about power/violence)" under critical scrutiny and poses questions about the stakes of the erasure of the sexual in explanations of conflict-related sexual violence. It argues that the particular urgency that accompanies this erasure reflects the workings of familiar distinctions between war and peace, as well as efforts to clearly recognize violence and separate it from sex. Erasing the sexual from accounts of wartime rape thus ultimately reinscribes the normal and the exceptional as separate, and reproduces a reductive notion of heterosexual masculine sex (in peacetime) that is ontologically different from the violence of war.
“…The gauntlet was immediately taken up by Monique Plaza (1981), and later most directly by Winifred Woodhull (1988) and Vikki Bell (1991), although several other feminist works on Foucault (including Biddy Martin [1988]) have mentioned the problem in passing. Most recently, Laura Hengehold (1994) has attempted a new analysis by locating the crime of rape in the overall system of hysterization of women which Foucault himself posited. While her argument succeeds in doing just that, it and other feminist theories seem unable to answer the question posed by Foucault: why should an assault with a penis be treated any differently in the legal world than an assault with any other body part?…”
In 1977, Michel Foucault suggested that legal approaches to rape define it as merely an act of violence, not of sexuality, and therefore not distinct from other types of assaults. I argue that rape can not be considered merely an act of violence because it is instrumental in the construction of the distinctly feminine body. Insofar as the threat of rape is ineluctably, although not determinately, associated with the development of feminine bodily comportment, rape itself holds a host of bodily and sexually specific meanings.
“…In the aftermath of a sexual assault, a woman’s faith in the credibility of her own discourse and self‐understanding is seriously shaken. (Hengehold 1994, p. 98)…”
Despite recent reforms internationally, significant criticism has been levelled at police departments regarding their service delivery to crime victims, and particularly for the disbelieving and insensitive attitudes officers may display towards women reporting rape and sexual assault. Police responses are frequently influenced by negative judgements regarding the victim’s dress, behaviour, and demeanour. These are flawed and ‘imperfect’ women – what right have they to expect ‘perfect’ treatment? This paper approaches this issue from the other end of the lens by considering the positive lessons to be learned from how ‘perfect victims’ were policed.
The material presented is based on interviews conducted with 14 of the women attacked by the same serial rapist, supplemented by interviews with police investigators. The paper aims to identify what contributed most to victim satisfaction with police performance, and to present this as evidence of ‘best practice’ to inform future developments in adult sexual assault investigations.
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