The Geography of Rape: Shaming Narratives in Norwegian Rape Cases

Abstract

This paper asks how perpetrators and victims are constructed in legal rape cases, and how these constructions are informed by notions of gender, sexuality, race, and nation. It presents an in-depth frame analysis of two legal cases that were processed by appellate courts in 2012. In so doing, I show how the allocation of shame and sympathy for victims and perpetrators is connected to citizenship through gender and race discrimination. The analysis suggests that whereas the perpetrator with a majority racial background was subject to so called reintegrative shaming, the perpetrator with a minority racial background was subject to stigmatic shaming. The politics of shame in the context of rape thus manifests as attribution of guilt (but to a lesser extent shame and stigmatization) to the majority perpetrator, whereas minority perpetrator was constructed as a deviant outlaw deserving of public shame. Prior relationship with the perpetrator, sexually "risk-taking" behavior and alcohol consumption was associated with negative stereotyping of victims. Moreover, violence committed by the perpetrator from a racial-majority group was considered by the court to be a deviation from the civilized and gender-equal mainstream culture. I therefore argue that geography constitutes a specific element in the legal processing of rape cases. With the prosecution of rape as a medium, the courts produce and reproduce a moral community in which some sexual citizens are admitted a share and others are not, while the legal process simultaneously manages the sexual rights of citizens in different physical and social spaces.

Two Sides of the Same Coin: The Relationship Between Modern Racism and Rape Blaming Attitudes among Swedish Students and Community Members

“…One reason for this could be that a large proportion of the immigrants in Sweden have come from the Middle East ( Statistics Sweden, 2010 ). Therefore, in the current study, the words immigrant/native can be thought to somewhat resemble the Black (minority)/White (majority) division that exists in North America ( Bitsch, 2019 ).…”

“…Importantly Sweden has gone from a very homogenous country to a multicultural country in just a few generations ( Runblom, 1994 ). Therefore, race is not a widely used concept to describe individual differences in Sweden or the rest of Scandinavia ( Bitsch, 2019 ; Martens, 1997 ). Instead, the word immigrant is often used to describe someone from a non-European background, and more specifically, from the Middle East ( BöRtz, 2007 ).…”

“…Another study focusing on majority and minority rape perpetrators in Norway found that minority perpetrators accused of rape tended to be stigmatized and shamed by legal jurors ( Bitsch, 2019 ). In contrast, for majority perpetrators, guilt would constitute the dominant moral sentiment.…”