Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929 (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society)

Karen Dubinsky

ISBN 10: 0226167542 / ISBN 13: 9780226167541

Published by University of Chicago Press, 1993

About this Item

Very Good copy.(see picture) 228 pages including index.Some pencil highlighting in the first half of the book.

Seller Inventory # 014635

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929 (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society)
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226167542
• ISBN 13: 9780226167541
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 2nd Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

Why do men rape women? This is a question for which there are many political, psychological, and sociological answers, but few historical ones. Improper Advances is one of the first books to explore the history of sexual violence in any country. A study of women, men, and sexual crime in rural and northern Ontario, it expands the terms of current debates about sexuality and sexual violence.

Karen Dubinsky relies on criminal case files, a revealing but largely untapped source for social historians, to retell individual stories of sexual danger—crimes such as rape, abortion, seduction, murder, and infanticide. Her research supports many feminist analyses of sexual violence: that crimes are expressions of power, that courts are prejudiced by the victim's background, and that most assaults occur within the victims' homes and communities.

Dubinsky distinguishes herself from most feminist scholars, however, by refusing to view women solely as victims and sex as a tool of oppression. She finds that these women actively sought and took pleasure in sexuality, but they distinguished between wanted and unwanted sexual encounters and attempted to punish coercive sex despite obstacles in the court system and the community.

Confronting a number of key theoretical and historiographic controversies, including recent debates over sexuality in feminist theory and politics, she challenges current thinking on the history of women, gender, and sexuality.

About the Author

Ken Dubinsky is assistant professor of history at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.