ho can you rape?," stated a California State Senator in 1979, and this shocking statement reflects how society has viewed the marital relationship.
Russell traces the legal cases that have dealt with marital rape, discusses marital rape in other countries, discusses why some wives stay with abusive spouses, talks about femicide (wife murder), covers the role of police and the courts in protecting or not adequately protecting wives, and examines ways women leave these abusive relationships. The main body of the book is her study of rape victims. She describes her research methods and shares the results of her interviews statistically and with numerous references from the actual interviews. She describes the husbands who rape and the role of drugs in the process. She details the victims of rape, the patterns of ex-husbands who rape, and men who refuse to allow a woman to leave them.
The purpose of this book is to serve as an initial step to open the discussion of marital rape. It is important to Russell that both men and women are clear in what their assumptions are about marriage. Women cannot be seen as property, and sex cannot be viewed as a husband's right without a wife's consent. Active dialogue is an important step toward making those changes in our social structure that will put an end to this problem. Rape in marriage has been a part of our society for a very long time, and it had remained an area in the dark for most of that time. Russell's clear, factual and interesting review of the subject sheds much needed light on the subject. Russell feels that rape in marriage is intricately intertwined with the oppression of women she feels our society condones.
Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes was written by Helen Benedict in 1992. Benedict is assistant professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University. She has spent twelve years studying rape and has previously written articles o...