A Woman Scorned - Hardcover

Sanday, Peggy

3.86

37 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385477910 ISBN 13: 9780385477918

Publisher: Doubleday, 1996

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A study of American sexual culture and the politics of acquaintance rape identifies and examines the sexual stereotypes that obstruct justice and considers such topics as the St. John's University rape case and the Violence Against Women Act. Tour.

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Review:

According to University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday, half of all women who have been raped are victims of a crime committed by someone they knew. Her book charts America's attitudes towards sex and rape from the time of the Puritans (who Sanday says led spirited sex lives) when the incidence of rape was low; through the 18th century, when the number of rapes rose as masculinity came to be equated with sexual aggression and femininity with passivity; to the present, when male sexual violence is often condoned and juries would rather believe that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," than accept that a woman can be raped by an acquaintance.

From the Publisher:

The venerable and often misquoted phrase "Hell hath no fury like a womanscorned" continues to haunt American women who accuse men of sexual harassmentand rape. In this bracing study of American sexual culture and the politics ofacquaintance rape, esteemed anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday identifies thesexual stereotypes that continue to obstruct justice and diminish women.
Beginning with a harrowing account of the St. John's rape case, Sanday reachesback through British and American landmark rape cases to explain how, with theexception of earliest Colonial times, rape has been a crime notable for placingthe woman on trial. Whether she is charged as a false accuser, gold digger,loose or scorned woman, stereotypes prevail. American jurisprudence and thepublic at large remain divided on acquaintance rape. And now, as the ViolenceAgainst Women Act--the most important legislation for women in twentyyears--has been passed, a new breed of antifeminists has stepped up to theplate to subordinate women's bid for sexual autonomy and freedom.

A groundbreaking work of scholarship that coherently challenges the anti-rapebacklash and its rhetoric, A Woman Scorned brings a broader perspectiveto our understanding of acquaintance rape and envisions, finally, a newparadigm for female sexual equality.
Copyright 1996 by Peggy Sanday.

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