NCJ Number
159490
Date Published
1995
Length
11 pages
Annotation
In developing a theoretical framework that explains both the social causes of rape and the social function of rape laws, this chapter explores the history of women's status as a form of private property in Canadian law.
Abstract
Canadian rape laws were never meant to protect all women from rape or to provide women with any guaranteed right to sexual autonomy. Rape laws were designed to preserve valuable female sexual property for the exclusive ownership of those men who could afford to acquire and maintain it. Women who are not the clear sexual property of a man, that is, promiscuous, separated, divorced, or incorrigible women, are perceived as women who are not credible rape victims, since their behavior places them at risk and causes them to forfeit any right to protection or redress. The system of inequalities that has determined the formulation and application of rape laws is also the root cause of rape. Women and men do not face each other as equals in Canadian society, and their sexual relations are rarely an expression of mutual sexual interest in one another. Sexual relationships are inextricably bound up with economic relationships of dependency and ownership, and they often involve some kind of trade-off, calculation, or coercion. Rape is a byproduct of a system in which sexual relationships are also power relationships in which female sexuality is a commodity and in which some men have no source of power except physical force. The elimination of rape requires an altering of the underlying social structure that produces it. 10 notes