Transforming a Rape Culture

Essays argue that our culture actually encourages sexual harassment and rape, discusses specific examples, and suggests actions that could be taken

The contributors to this invaluable sourcebook share the conviction that rape is epidemic because our society encourages male aggression and tacitly or overtly supports violence against women. Cumulatively, these 34 essays by such figures as Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Ntozake Shange, Michael Kimmel and Louise Erdrich situate rape on a continuum extending from sexist language to pornography, sexual harassment in schools and the workplace, wife battering and date and marital rape. Most of the selections were written for this volume. Highlights include a proposal to make rape a presidential election issue, an analysis of the churches' ambivalent response to societal violence, guidelines for raising boys to view themselves as nurturing, nonviolent fathers and inspirational visions of personal or institutional change. Buchwald is publisher/editor of Milkweed, Fletcher an English professor at North Hennepin Community College in Minnesota and Roth edits the feminist quarterly, Hurricane Alice.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Well-edited, worthy compendium of writings about sex and violence in our culture. In 34 essays--some reprinted, many published here first--well- known feminist activists, university professors, theologians, novelists, editors, and politicians diagnose and prescribe remedies for a society that daily demeans and circumscribes women with the threat of rape. Andrea Dworkin's famous ``I Want a Twenty-Four Hour Truce'' opens the collection: It's a 1983 speech to a ``men's movement'' seminar in which Dworkin passionately challenges men to begin to shun and punish each other for the act of rape. In ``Erotica vs. Pornography,'' Gloria Steinem makes an early (1977) version of the now-familiar argument for banning pornography as tool of male dominance. In ``Radical Heterosexuality,'' reprinted from Ms., Naomi Wolf analyzes ``relationships'' in light (or gloom) of rape. More positively, in ``What Women Want,'' Milkweed's editor-in-chief Buchwald proposes specific principles that women impart to their daughters as a means to avoid but not fear rape; and in ``How Rape is Encouraged in American Boys,'' sociologist Myriam Miedzian prescribes a curriculum to train boys not to attain gender identity through misogyny and rape. Other essays offer first-person accounts of sexual harassment, enforced subordination, and rape; explore the psychology of gender cruelty; report on sexual intimidation and violence within American churches and on college campuses; and devise new tactics for changing laws and language that normalize sexual aggression. The book closes with a section of ``visions'' of a better world, including Louise Erdrich's a beautiful meditation on women's spiritual liberation from ``The Veils.'' An impressive collection on a subject that should be of wider interest and concern. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.