Interpreting Media Representations of a "Night of Madness": Law and Culture in the Construction of Rape Identities

Thinking Woman-to-Woman Rape: A Critique of Marcus’s “Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention”

“…Ristock suggests that in striving to ''deconstruct limiting categories and discourses'' (p. 21), Marcus enables the recognition of violence between women. My puzzlement only grew when I encountered articles by Hirsch (1994) and Buss (2009) which drew on TPRP in formulating perspectives that were in fact quite amenable to my work. Looking more closely, I identified the logic of the second argument.…”

“…Although Hirsch uses paradigmatically gendered language, her article foregoes heterosexist assumptions about rape's causes and effects. Hirsch (1994) uses TPRP to compare American to Kenyan media constructions of the St. Kitizo Mass Rape. She focuses on how ''media accounts of rape reproduce 'culturally appropriate' stereotypic images of rape victims and rapists'' (p. 1054).…”

“…American representations elide important cultural and political elements of the Kenyan context. For Hirsch (1994), attending to rape's various forms and contexts illuminates hidden aspects of women's oppression while encouraging innovative prevention practices. She applies the second mode of rape as process to the first of Marcus's three angles on rape as linguistic fact, i.e., cultural representations of women:…”

“…As Marcus and other scholars from feminist and critical perspectives demonstrate, media representations of women and violence are potential sites for contesting cultural ideas about deviance and law and about gender, race and class relation…Following Marcus, I argue that the uncritical assumption that rape ''experiences'' are identical is precisely the means through which scripts of rape are reinscribed and thereby depict women as ''always, already '' victims. (p. 1025) By insisting on the various forms this violence can take, Hirsch (1994) follows Marcus in ways that implicitly open the door to woman-to-woman rape. More precisely, rather than moving from rape's gendered representations to its gendered facts, she exposes overgeneralizations to reveal obscured forms of sexual violence.…”

“…Consistent with Argument Two, her article concludes favouring a focus on specific rape situations: ''It is at this level of detail, with all the inconsistencies and complexities revealed, that it becomes possible to imagine a situation where rape is not inevitable'' (p. 161). Hirsch's (1994) and Buss's (2009) analyses remind us of what Crenshaw (1989) has called ''the complexities of compoundedness'' (166). Racism as well as other axes of oppression such as ethnocentrism, classism and ablism, intersect with Thinking Woman-to-Woman Rape gender as rape incidents and social responses to them unfold.…”