WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT RAPE?

Estelle B. Freedman, Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2013) ("Today rape remains a word in flux, and how we understand sexual violence continues to influence American politics. Contemporary debates over what constitutes sexual violence resembles conflicts that have recurred for almost two centuries. Women and their allies are still trying to expand the legal definition of rape to make it easier to prosecute men, whether or not they were strangers and whether or not the assault was physically violent. They continue to meet opposition from those who believe that only a narrower construction will protect men, whether from the fear of false accusations or from the loss of sexual privilege. African American and other ethnic minorities maintain their challenges to racial differentials in the prosecution of rape and to the heightened sexual vulnerabilities of women of color. As in the past much more than the legal definition of rape is at stake. The history of repeated struggles over the meaning of sexual violence reveals that the way we understand rape helps determine who is entitled to sexual and political sovereignty and who may exercise fully the rights of American citizenship." Id. at 10-11.).