Kate Harding, Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do About It (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2015) ("In the pages that follow, I'll ask you to empathize with many different types of people, but above all women (Specifically, Western women, because exploring rape cultures worldwide would turn this into a lifelong, multivolume project.) Women are no more important than any other potential victims, but we are the primary targets of the messages and myths that sustain rape culture. We're the ones asked to change our behavior, limit our movements, and take full responsibility for the prevention of sexual violence in society. Anyone can be raped, but men aren't conditioned to live in terror of it, nor are they constantly warned that their clothing, travel choices, alcohol consumption, and expression of sexuality are likely to bring violation upon them" "Even if you are a Western woman, empathizing with others of that cohort might not be an easy as it sounds. After all, it was a female, Teresa Carr Deni of the Philadelphia Municipal Court, who described the armed gang rape of a twenty-year-old sex worker as mere 'theft of services.' and told a reporter that such a case 'minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped.' Another female judge, Jacqueline Hatch of Arizona, told the victim of a sexual assault that took place in a bar. 'If you wouldn't have been there that night, none of this would have happened.'" Id at 5-6.).
Louise O'Neil, Asking for It (New York & London: Quercus, 2016) (From the "Afterword": "Our society may not appear to support sexual violence, but you don't need to look very far past the surface to see how we trivialize rape and sexual assault. Sexual assault (from unwanted touching to rape) is so common that we almost see it as an inevitability for women. We teach our girls how not to get raped with a sense of doom, a sense that we are fighting a losing battle. . . ." "I don't want to live in that type of world anymore. I see young girls playing in my local park and I feel so very afraid for them, for the culture that they're growing up in. They deserve to live in a world where sexual assault is rare, a world where it is taken seriously and the consequences for the perpetrators are swift an severe." "We need to talk about rape. We need to walk about consents. We need to talk about victims blaming and slut shaming and the double standards we place upon our young men and women." "We need to talk and talk and talk until the Emmas of this world feel supported and understood. Until they feel like they are believed." Id. at 319-321.).
Louise O'Neil, Only Ever Yours (New York & London: Quercus, 2015).
Jessica Valenti, Sex Object: A Memoir (New York: Dey St./ William Morrow, 2016) (From the book jacket: "From subway gropings and imposter syndrome to sexual awakenings and motherhood, Sex Object reveals the painful, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti's adolescence and young adulthood in New York City.")
Emily Winslow, Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and Justice (New York: William Morrow, 2016) (What is truth, and what is justice? Neither is as simple, or as clear cut, as one may think or want.).
