Synopses & Reviews
A group of men rape an intoxicated fifteen year old girl to "make a woman of her." An immigrant woman is raped after accepting a ride from a stranger. A young mother is accosted after a neighbor escorts her home. In another case, a college frat party is the scene of the crime. Although these incidents appear similar to accounts one can read in the newspapers almost any day in the United States, only the last one occurred in this century. Each, however, involved a woman or girl compelled to have sex against her will.
Sex without Consent explores the experience, prosecution, and meaning of rape in American history from the time of the early contact between Europeans and Native Americans to the present. By exploring what rape meant in particular times and places in American history, from interracial encounters due to colonization and slavery to rape on contemporary college campuses, the contributors add to our understanding of crime and punishment, as well as to gender relations, gender roles, and sexual politics.
Review
"The book provides some very interesting examples of early legal standards for prosecuting rape charges and charges of child sexual abuse in the United States." - Archives of Sexual Behavior
Review
"Merril Smith's edited volume provides numerous articles that will be of great worth to the historical and feminist communities. The range or articles in this volume goes beyond the usual "hotspots" while still allowing for important comparisons." - Journal of Social History
Review
"Needed historical perspective . . . thorough documentation . . . excellent."
"The book provides some very interesting examples of early legal standards for prosecuting rape charges and charges of child sexual abuse in the United States."
"Merril Smith's edited volume provides numerous articles that will be of great worth to the historical and feminist communities. The range or articles in this volume goes beyond the usual "hotspots" while still allowing for important comparisons."
Synopsis
A group of men rape an intoxicated fifteen year old girl to "make a woman of her." An immigrant woman is raped after accepting a ride from a stranger. A young mother is accosted after a neighbor escorts her home. In another case, a college frat party is the scene of the crime. Although these incidents appear similar to accounts one can read in the newspapers almost any day in the United States, only the last one occurred in this century. Each, however, involved a woman or girl compelled to have sex against her will.
Sex without Consent explores the experience, prosecution, and meaning of rape in American history from the time of the early contact between Europeans and Native Americans to the present. By exploring what rape meant in particular times and places in American history, from interracial encounters due to colonization and slavery to rape on contemporary college campuses, the contributors add to our understanding of crime and punishment, as well as to gender relations, gender roles, and sexual politics.
Synopsis
"Simple, unpretentious narrative makes this volume an accessible and inviting source for nonspecialists. Its many photographs enhance the appeal of the book and provide the faces referred to in the title. Throughout the volume, framed insets open up the text to provide an occasional 'window' for a statistical table, a biographical sketch, or to give voice to a first-person narrative that humanizes the text."
--Multicultural Review
About the Author
Duncan Green is Head of Research at Oxfam GB, a development and relief organization. He was previously a senior policy adviser on trade and development at the UK Governments Department for International Development and a policy analyst on trade and globalization at CAFOD, the Catholic aid agency for England and Wales. He has written widely on economics and Latin America and is the author of Silent Revolution: The Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin America (Second Edition, 2003) and Hidden Lives: Voices of Children in Latin America and the Caribbean (1998).
Table of Contents
"None of the women were abused" : indigenous contexts for the treatment of women captives in the Northeast / Alice Nash -- "Playing the rogue" : rape and issues of consent in seventeenth-century Massachusetts / Else L. Hambleton -- Sexual consent and sexual coercion in seventeenth-century Virginia / Terri L. Snyder -- Coerced sex and gendered violence in New Netherland / James Homer Williams -- Rape, law, courts, and custom in Pennsylvania, 1682--1800 000 / Jack Marietta and G.S. Rowe -- "The law should be her protector" : the criminal prosecution of rape in Upper Canada, 1791--1850 / Patrick J. Connor -- "I was very much wounded" : rape law, children, and the Antebellum South / Diane Miller Sommerville -- "A most detestable crime" : character, consent, and corroboration in Vermont's rape law, 1850--1920 / Hal Goldman -- "In the marriage bed woman's sex has been enslaved and abused" : defining and exposing marital rape in late-nineteenth-century America / Jesse F. Battan -- Race, honor, citizenship : the Massie rape/murder case / Bonni Cermak -- "Another negro-did-it crime" : black-on-white rape and protest in Virginia, 1945--1960 / Lisa Lindquist Dorr -- Sexual coercion and limited choices : their link to teen pregnancy and welfare / Robert Cherry -- Rape on campus : numbers tell less than half the story / Julie Campbell-Ruggaard and Jami Van Ryswyk.