Abstract
Exploring the problems of rape in Vietnam and confronting silence on the subject, I began to wonder whether Vietnam was one of those rare countries that Sanday (1981) would label ‘rape free’. After all, to most people in the West, the crime of rape still evokes the image of the woman accosted on the street by a stranger wearing a ski mask and wielding a knife or gun, forcing her to submit to sexual intercourse against her will and after exerting as much physical resistance as she could muster. This scenario would be quite unlikely to occur in the context of the lives of the vast majority of Vietnam’s people who live agrarian lifestyles surrounded by community members and family. Moreover, rape by intimates and acquaintances, known now in the West to be far more prevalent than rape by a stranger, might not be acknowledged as rape, either by Vietnamese scholars or victims themselves.
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© 1996 Lynne Goodstein
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Goodstein, L. (1996). Sexual Assault in the United States and Vietnam: Some Thoughts and Questions. In: Barry, K. (eds) Vietnam’s Women in Transition. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24611-3_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24611-3_23
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