Rape

Despite the increasing awareness of rape, we still have little understanding of both its personal and social dimensions; as a consequence, our hopes of diminishing it must be small. This collection of essays aims to increase our understanding of rape by subjecting it to scrutiny from many different points of view. The editors bring divergent and scattered debates about rape together without trying to fabricate a consensus. Thus the perspective of evolutionary biology, which sees rape as an evolved behaviour employed by men who lack other viable reproductive alternatives, is set alongside the view of an antropologist who, drawing evidence from non-raping societies, argues that contrary to popular belief men are not human versions of predatory jungle beasts, and that it was heterosexual cooperation that began the `long path to humanity'. A contribution on the media treatment of male-sexuality-with-violence traces the evolution of popular cultural sterotypes of the rapist: so different from the men who assault women in the real world.
Further essays consider the problem posed by rape for any criminal justice system and explore rape in art, myth, history and political philosophy, and the ambiguous legacy of Freud and psychoanalysis in understanding the hidden springs of rape.