Abstract
This chapter examines sexual assault from the point of view of a survivor, indicating that its consequences extend beyond the emotional or physical. Philosophical issues are raised by this experience, such as its effects on personal identity, notions of “harm“, the role of denial, victim blaming, as well as its political implications for gender equality. Given the significance of these concerns and the extent of sexual assaults, it is imperative the harms of violence against women be taken more seriously by philosophers.
This chapter is reprinted (with minor changes) by permission of Wiley.com and the Journal of Social Philosophy, where it appeared in vol. 24, no. 1, Spring 1993 (pp. 5–22).
I would like to thank the North American Society for Social Philosophy for inviting me to give the substance of it as a plenary address at the Eighth International Social Philosophy Conference, Davidson College, August 1, 1992. I am also grateful to the Franklin J. Matchette Foundation for sponsoring the talk. This essay was written just 2 years after I had been raped and it would be different in many ways were I to write it now. But I have left it in its original form (except for a few minor stylistic revisions) in order to convey my perspective soon after the event.
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- 1.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, 1989, 6.
- 2.
Robin Warshaw (1988) notes that “government estimates find that anywhere from three to ten rapes are committed for every one rape reported. And while rapes by strangers are still underreported, rapes by acquaintances are virtually nonreported. Yet, based on intake observations made by staff at various rape counseling centers (where victims come for treatment, but do not have to file police reports), 70–80% of all rape crimes are acquaintance rapes” (12).
- 3.
National Coalition against Domestic Violence, fact sheet, in “Report on Proposed Legislation S.15: The Violence against Women Act,” 9. On file with the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- 4.
After I presented this paper at Davidson College in 1992, Iris Young drew my attention to Jeffner Allen’s (1986) discussion of her rape. Since that time, I’ve been pleased to see that more professional philosophers have been giving talks and publishing articles on rape.
- 5.
Another, more perceptive, article is Lois Pineau’s (1989) “Date Rape: A Feminist Analysis.” In addition, an excellent book on the causes of male violence was written by a scholar trained as a philosopher, Myriam Miedzian (1991). Philosophical discussions of the problem of evil, even recent ones such as that in Nozick, 1989, don’t mention the massive problem of sexual violence. Even Nel Noddings’s book, Women and Evil (1989), which is an “attempt to describe evil from the perspective of women’s experience,” mentions rape only twice, briefly, and in neither instance from the victim’s point of view.
- 6.
See Patricia Williams’s discussion of the Ujaama House incident in The Alchemy of Race and Rights (CitationRef CitationID="CR24">1991</CitationRef>: 100–116); Mari Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s Story” (1989); and Charles R. Lawrence III, “If He Hollers, Let Him Go: Regulating Racist Speech on Campus” (1990).
- 7.
As the authors of The Female Fear note: “The requirement of proof of the victim’s nonconsent is unique to the crime of forcible rape. A robbery victim, for example, is usually not considered as having ‘consented’ to the crime if he or she hands money over to an assailant [especially if there was use of force or threat of force]” (Gordon and Riger, 1991: 59).
- 8.
Quoted in the New York Times, September 13, 1991, p. A18. Although Judge Thomas made this statement during his confirmation hearings, his actions while on the Supreme Court have belied his professed empathy with criminal defendants.
- 9.
Barnes, 1984: 2191–92. I thank John Cooper for drawing my attention to this aspect of Aristotle’s theory of the emotions.
- 10.
For a clinical description of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), see the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 3d ed., rev. (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). Excellent discussions of the recovery process undergone by rape survivors can be found in Bard and Sangrey, 1986, Benedict, 1985, Judith Herman, 1992, and Janoff-Bulman, 1992. I have also found it very therapeutic to read first-person accounts by rape survivors such as Estrich, 1987and Ziegenmeyer, 1992.
- 11.
American Psychiatric Association, CitationRef” CitationID="CR2">1987</CitationRef> 247.
- 12.
S.15, sponsored by Sen. Joseph Biden (D–Del.), was drafted largely by Victoria Nourse, Special Counsel for Criminal Law, Office of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I am particularly interested in Title III, which would reclassify gender-motivated assaults as bias crimes. From the victim’s perspective this reconceptualization is important. What was most difficult for me to recover from was the knowledge that some man wanted to kill me simply because I am a woman. This aspect of the harm inflicted in hate crimes (or bias crimes) is similar to the harm caused by hate speech. One cannot make a sharp distinction between physical and psychological harm in the case of PTSD sufferers. Most of the symptoms are physiological. I find it odd that in philosophy of law, so many theorists are devoted to a kind of Cartesian dualism that most philosophers of mind rejected long ago.
- 13.
New York Times, April 19, 1992, p. 36
- 14.
She characterized a certain theory of equality in this way during the discussion after a Gauss seminar she gave at Princeton University, April 9, 1992.
- 15.
For an illuminating discussion of the ways in which we need to treat people differently in order to achieve genuine equality see Minow, 1990.
- 16.
As recently as 1948, the United States Supreme Court upheld a state law prohibiting the licensing of any woman as a bartender (unless she was the wife or daughter of the bar owner where she was applying to work). Goesaert v. Cleary, 335 U.S. 464 (1948)
- 17.
New York Times, June 19, 1992, p. 1.
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Brison, S.J. (2019). Surviving Sexual Violence: A Philosophical Perspective. In: Teays, W. (eds) Analyzing Violence Against Women. Library of Public Policy and Public Administration, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05989-7_2
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