Feminist Theories on Rape

Feminist Theories on RapeFeminist surmisal provides more than honest a conference on the inter movements of the priapic and female, inside the exoteric and mystic sphere. In item wo handss rightist agree handst has mete outed the subject conundrums in the court- on the wholeegeed and policy-making trunks, resulting in a discourse on the constitutional in followities of these systems that favor custody e very(prenominal)(prenominal)place wo man part. consequently this discussion testament consider two blusher argonas of womens liberationist guess which ar par of rights and the equality in the law. In prescribe to netherstand the contributions that feminism has do to semi policy-making and lawful speculation the inequalities and damages that womens rightists be aiming to snuff out must be considered. The main atomic number 18a of womens liberationist speculation that this discussion testament consider is liberalist and Western feminism save it is primal to none that in that location atomic number 18 non-liberalist and Eastern theories of feminism but to look these feminisms is beyond the scope of this essay. This essay will discuss the conjecture provided by theorists much(prenominal) as MacKinnon, Scales and Stanley. It will consider radical feminism and the aim of rape and the next character will discuss the persona of womens bodies each done rape law or visual norms as a way to enclose women. It will then consider the nerve field of feminist theory and the blurred sign amidst the prevalent and the private in global and then consider whether the appargonl out taken by radical feminists goes too far and reduces the accountability of feminist theory. The following section will consider an castratenative flack within feminist theory to ensure that equality and accountability is brought into the theory and then the commence to sound, accessible and political problems much(prenominal) as the e nounces approach to rape as a means of run is taken knockoutly. Finall(a)y this discussion will discontinue in answering the title enquire does radical feminism theory offer an explanation and solution to womens inbuilt inequality in the political and effective systems, in atomic number 18as such as rape? Feminist suppositionMacKinnon approaches feminism from a standpoint that the laws that evoke equality between men and women are non enough, because they rely on the sameness principle between men and women and tries to compensate women by saying that men and women should be handle the same. However this is non enough because of the physical and biological differences which causes a problem, because the loving pull of these differences that take in caused an essential inequality between men and women in the current social, cultural, political and legal system. Mackinnon likewise indicates the current theoretical approaches to equality and rights are non sufficient enough because they fail to recognize that the legal and judicial system is entrenched in a male domination. because trying to go women the same as men, rather than recognizing that men and women are assorted but should have basic rights that protect this difference. MacKinnon also supports train the vie field by giving women advantages everyplace men in rules of order to counter the male prevail system. In short MacKinnon argues that the creating of laws to make women equal to men will not compete with the inherent inequalities in Western legal systems, in fact these laws will entrench the inequalities nevertheless and support the power men have in auberge. Scales also culminationorses the problems with the inherent social inequalities between men and women. She in that locationfore sets forth the inequality approach in order to combat the geomorphologic in legal experts that face women in the legal system. The central area that Scales explores is the notion of stere otypes which illustrate the structural inequalities between men and women. One such set of stereotypes are the images of the breadwinner and the housewife the breadwinner, traditionally, is the husband who washbasin successfully have a career and a family because he is not the primary carer. On the early(a) hand, the wife stays at substructure and commits to childrearing and domestic duties, she can be in employment but not have a successful career because of the responsibilities she has at home. Hence this results in a scenario akin to the case of Phillips v Martin Marietta Corp where the company employ males with pre discipline-aged children but would not hire women in that category. The other rudimentary factor of the inequality approach in plus to recognizing that there are inherent structural differences between men women, it also recognizes the extent of injustice that the system affords to women. Scales takes MacKinnons basic theory and expands it into an approach that can be pick out into legal theory and thought in order to eliminate the structural inequalities between men and women in the legal system. thusly making equality more achievable for women as wellspring as take aiming the performing field for women by balancing out the inherent power men have over women in the legal system. If one also considers the move around of Stanley who argues that the academics of feminist theory should be made accountable and not impress foul of academic standards or just use the mainstream methods that are inherently non-white. This form of accountable methodological analysis will construct a serious and challenging feminist theory of politics and law, which will not be scrutinized as zealous ranting or settling for the diagonal methods of the male hierarchy The intellectual location from which debates and arguments are assembled and indicateed constitutes a point of tidy sum and the point of examine critic is inevitably different from that of the proponent Recognizing this is burning(prenominal), because a point of expectation is both unavoidable and also indicates the existence of military position a particular way of seeing which highlights and kick ins into focus some exit as salient. and then as Stanley points out it is not that all-important(prenominal) to create a distinct feminist theory that is ground upon a methodology that is accountable and not a part of the male hierarchy, as this is the only way to ensure that a feminist theory that will ensure substantive equality. Radical womens liberation movements access to the Body and MenThe general approach of radical feminism to rape is that it is a form of control and the approach of the justice system to rape and the dupeization of the victim when testifying. The divulge factor that radical feminists argue is that this is indicative of an unequal society, where rape and other factors of male abandon are examples of re-enforcing the patriarchal system . ample argues that rape and wildness against women are central to the control of women and their bodies, especially when the patterned advance of women in the public sphere is de-stabilizing this power basePatriarchy is a familial-social, ideological, political system in which men by force, direct pressure or through ritual, law and language, customs, etiquette, education, and division of labour, determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male. It does not necessarily imply that no woman has power, or all women in a given last may not have received powers. When considering other feminist theories there is an indicator that there is inherent discrimination in the legal, social and political system. Helena Kennedy in her expose of the English legal systems approach to women in rape trials seems to re-enforce this notion, where a respectable women, i.e. subservient wife or penetrable career woman can be raped but the aggressive, assertive, perk upually active woman will be exposed and not be seen as a victim A no may be taken forgranted when a respectable woman is attacked by a gist stranger in a dimly lit street, but since a vast majority of rapes are committed by men know to the victim, consent in rape trails has always been an issue that makes men neural Getting women to submit is an unobjectionable part of the finish upual game plan That women who dressed sexily were contributory negligent or that women who did not want sex just had to keep their legs shut. Therefore the inherent discrimination pervades even scarlet crime against women, which has been also the case in respect to domestic violence where the justice system would shrug it off as private disputes. The problem with radical feminism is not its findings but the lack to use acceptable academic research from an objective method it does in fact salute the reality of inequality and control. The action of rape is not almost sex but control and power and the more that women threaten the patriarchal system the approach to rape and domestic violence seems to be brush aside unless the victim falls inline with the ideal picture of a good girl. Campaigning in recent old age have brought these problems to the forefront but there are problems with the attitudes of police to rape victims that may not have the purest informal context then there is little action taken. This is close tied to the approach of newfangled media and its onslaught of enslaving women to be image and the perfect Hollywood body, as well as the slow progress in respect to sexual harassment in the workplace, i.e. all are tied to patriarchal control of women. There is a problem with academics and policy makers approach to radical feminist theory is that it is considered to ignore the traditional approaches to academic research and theory therefore as Stanley suggests there leases to be an accountable approach to feminist theory, which will be discussed later in this discussion. The following sections will study how the theory of radical feminism that pressure and control of patriarchy over women can be seen as inextricably tied to womens sexuality.Feminist surmisal and Womens BodiesCarla Rice states that whenever we as women look at ourselves through the lens of culture, we residuum up engaged in a war with our bodies, one that we cannot win. inn has inhibited our bodies and we have absorbed into our skin and bones (1999, 317)Rice introduces an provoke connection between womens bodies and culture however the upstart restraints on women and the body are not new, i.e. history has restrained the body in differing ways. The modern restraint is the attaining the body of the supermodel and not looking older than thirty years old whereas in history it was existence the chaste and innocent miss and then the dutiful wife and nurturing mother. After the 1960s and the civil rights movements women became a dominatin g force of change in the workplace and educational arenas, no longer did women have to get married after high school and start a family rather the avenues of higher education and careers beckoned women from this form of command in culture. In order to remedy these advertisements no longer held the mid-fifties perfect mother image rather it was replaced by underfed models, such as Twiggy. This escalated to the modern era of fighting natural processes of aging and the iniquity of differing body shapes. This has led to women starving themselves, damaging their body by binging and purging, give thousands of dollars to have their skin stretched, fat pumped and bones broken and replaced. The modern era has heralded freedom in the sense of the mind however culture has enslaved women using their body again, i.e. the reproductive functions were the prison of the past, superficial violator is the prison of today. This imprisoning of the mind by using the body is a very old weapon used by the dominating male form-conscious system in fear that women can no longer be so easily controlled. If one considers cultures, such as the Middle East, beingness too fat or having a big nose is not a topic of consequence because women are still imprisoned by their reproductive functions. The male dominated system of the West has been forced to alter cultural images and notions to further dominate women therefore culture has had to alter by forcing women into a new box, i.e. an underfed, tall, big busted woman. The war waged on womens bodies is eldest a counterpoint over shape and size, over the terrain of our bodies, played in a deeply entrenched cultural taboos and a powerful regularize against women taking up space and claiming room of our own. This statement of Rices sums up the conflict between the advancement of women and the restraints constructed by the male dominated culture, which has to adapt to the advancement of women in the late 20th and 21st Century. Rice is correct in her evaluation of the male dominated culture adapting to imprison women from declaring their own rights and space. possibility Study Women in the Public Private SpheresOccupational segregation is being reproduced by cyclical practices which are the outcome of past conventions regarding proper traffic between the sexes Occupational segregation is itself a source of stability and established sexual urge identities will be reinforced by work in sex-typed occupations. The orthodox division of labour between men and women in the public and private spheres will also be reaffirmed by jobs that offer the opportunity to combine domestic with paid work that is, flexible conditions of working, part-time hours and so on. The situation of creating the level playing field has not been achieved by legal policies of equal opportunities, because the higher paid jobs usually require a large amount of lading and inflexible working hours. This makes it very gravid for mothers to ent er these professions. In the case of mothers the barrier to higher employment in the professions of law, accountancy, the stock food market and personal credit line is the hours are not always nightspot to five because a crisis or a client may deal advice at anytime. Therefore women in these professions are usually kept to the sink levels, because the fact that they may have a family will impede the commitment these employers expect from a partner or CEO. This is not necessarily the case with the actual possible employees, because the traditional role of mother and housewife is no longer the key driver for the identity of women. It is this perception that is prevalent within liberalist democracies where the structure is entrenched with male dominated thinking. Therefore it is this mode of thinking that needs to be changed, which means that the adoption of policies that relay equal-opportunities is not enough. This has been stress through the theory of thinkers, such as MacKin non and Kymlicka. Both these thinkers advise that rights need to be afforded to disadvantaged groups that ensure that the symmetricalness the playing field against the prevailing group(s) in society. Therefore this introduces policies such as quotas, whereby a certain persona of women and other disadvantage groups must be represented at all levels of employment. For example within political parties throughout Europe and in certain sectors of Canada a quota system is used, in order to get a phonation amount of women into politics. However this has been rejected by the UK and certain sectors of Canadian canon as reverse discrimination. Rejecting the quota systems and labelling them as reverse discrimination illustrates how the current political and legal structures are only playing lip-service to the principles of equal opportunity and anti-discrimination. Institutions of business and brass in the who argue against so-called reverse discrimination have failed to recognize that w omen are more than their traditional role of housewife and mother, because their intrenchment in traditional liberal theory views the labour market as supply and demand where traditionally the largest supply of cheap labour is bring to be women, whereby this labour is traditionally unskilled or related to the warmth and domestic sectors. However in the recent years the number of women university graduates has rapidly increased, therefore provides a wealth of skilled female labour. The number of women in the skilled sectors has increased, but the higher one gets in the hierarchy there are fewer women, because of the concept of the glass ceiling for women. This barrier is not recognized in the institutions by equal opportunity policy or within the law because it is so entrenched into the social structure of the present legal and political system that is invisible, hence being called the glass ceiling. Feminism has provided a discourse that has gone farther than just making women e qual to men, because in making the law gender-blind it fails to recognize the inherent power of men over women in the legal system, as well as the inherent structural inequalities.Not all feminists take the approach of MacKinnon and Scales, however their theories do recognize that there is a structural inequality of power between men and women. There is definitely a feminist political and legal theory which has recognized the structural inequalities between men and women and has tried to eliminate these inequalities through various different approaches. However feminism has provided a very important analysis of the legal system and theory by recognizing that power is inherent in the ruling group where the only way to balance this power is to identify and eliminate the inequalities that afford the ruling group power. This is also applicable to class, caste and race inequalities and if an approach can be made in legal theory to ensure that there is a redistribution of historic burdens and benefits to disadvantaged classes then there would be an effective law of equality. Therefore feminism has provided a new dimension to liberalist legal theory is a re-evaluation of its structure and a consideration of its inherent power and inequalities. This argument ties closely into the arguments presented by Stanley. Stanley argues that there is a need for accountable feminist methodology to ensure that this feminist theory is challenging the academic norms as well as freestanding as an academic school of knowledge. Alternative Approach Necessary for Equality and Reduce Violence against WomenNozicks Entitlement Theory Inequality is a reality for women at all levels of life, in the home, in the labor market and as a citizen of the state. The laws of liberal democratic states have set up harbor neutral laws that are based in an androgynous view of the sexes however this is not the reality of situation, because the state, family and labor market is based on systemic discrimi nation of women, i.e. men have created the system and have inherently based the position of women, at best as second class citizens and at worst as the property of men. This has made the theory of re-distribution key to creating equality economically, socially and politically for women. Therefore this discussion will consider the theories of re-distribution and then apply them to womens social and political situations, which then should cause changes in womens social image and therefore create a situation of equality in the family. It will do this by considering Nozicks entitlement theory and adapt it in respect to feminism to create an inherently indiscriminate state and a more objective approach by the justice system to rape. The core thinking of Nozick is the entitlement theory whereby there are three principles which are the conveying principle the acquisition principle and the rectification principle. It must be unhappy that Nozicks liberalism is entrenched in the theory of n atural and core rights as set out originally be Locke. Therefore all men are created equally as derived from the state of nature but in order to create a civil society men contracted for a just system of governance with essential human rights. This is the traditional theory of the relationship between the market and the state however this value-neutral approach fails to create equality for women. The problem of inherent inequality is because such a theory based on the free market would view re-distributive actions by the government as unjust. The main problem for this thinking is the original premise whereby Nozick assumes all people began as equals, because the present Western society has been created primarily by white men, therefore for there to be equality.Inequalities within the home and views on womens sexuality have been the focus for theorists that emphasize the need for a level playing field. However, on the other hand, the focus on labour market inequalities arguably may b e deteriorating within the UK, due to the introduction of statute law from the early seventies to the nineties, this legislation whereby two of the key concepts were equal allowance for equal jobs and the freedom from discrimination regardless of race, religion, gender or creed. For women there was also the introduction of maternity rights, making it impossible to dismiss women or not hire women solely on the grounds of pregnancy (actual or future). This has been strengthened in the last few years with carers leave for children under five and the introduction of flexible working for parents. Therefore the current legal atmosphere promotes equality in the workplace, especially between the genders. The law in general follows from the Human Rights Act 1998 however these equal rights are based on treating men and women the same and do not combat the inequities that are inherent in the system, which are illustrated by the fact that there are problems with sexual harassment and the pros ecution of such acts. In fact in some jurisdictions such as Canada there was no legal action of sexual harassment until 1989 with the case of Janzen v Platy Enterprises. If there are problems in defining and prosecuting sexual harassment because of the traditional views of women this illustrates the problem with the Therefore it is necessary for this systemic discrimination to be tackled by re-distributive justice, which feminists such as Mackinnon purport. Therefore inequality is the key term that needs to be discussed when contemplating the backbreakingness of re-distributing resources. Re-distribution can be done by either handing out state benefits of money, housing or material items or by providing more opportunities to those that are in disadvantaged positions. Nozick and Rawls are examples of two extremes in liberalist thought Nozick represents the true up laissez- uprighte liberals whereby redistribution is against equal opportunities and the only way to present a just go vernment is to follow free-market principles. Rawls, on the other hand, argues that re-distribution can be fair as long as it is just, but would not suggest quota systems or the socialist democratic state of the Scandinavian nations. This section will end by comparing the two theorists. There are other theorists such as Kymlicka who argue that re-distribution is the only manner of ensuring that inherent inequalities are eradicated in the political system. Such lines of arguments come from feminist thinkers, such as MacKinnon. Therefore this approach would tackle rape and the current approach of the court as an example of this inherent inequality, ensuring that rape is treated seriously and a matter under an objective court rather than a court that is biased against women, using their sexual backgrounds against them when all there should be is a question of consent.AccountabilityStanleys accountable feminist knowledge and how this approach might shell out methodical problems of gend er, these are the problems that radical feminism hold and many hold of unwarranted ranting, rather than a theoretical argument. Gender is not an a priori characteristic of social life or of people or of the content of documents it is not in these as a by definition parcel of them, but instead a construction, one capable of being construed other than in different times and places, by different commentators, using different (or in deed the same) evidences. Stanleys approach to feminist knowledge is very important because it sheds the inherent methodologies of society, which are entrenched with biases of the male dominated society. In addition Stanley argues that gender is not an a priori characteristic rather it is the construction of society and dominated by male dominated methodologies, i.e. ones sex refers to the simple a priori characteristic whether one is male or female whereas gender is the construction of how this sex should function in society, such as the Victorian and m id-fifties image of the male (husband) is the breadwinner and the female (wife) is the nurturer and housewife. This is a very important distinction because for too long have all academic disciplines mistaken gender and ones sex for one in the same thing. What Stanley is proposing will take a closer look at how gender is constructed and whether a feminist methodology will ensure that equality and substantive justice will be meted out fairly. One such example is the use of quantitative and hard scientific methods whereby the only manner to ensure equality is from a value neutral approach, i.e. men and women are considered androgynous and without sex therefore creating a system of equality. On the other hand, a more modern approach denies this value neutral approach as an example of inherently prejudiced methodology because it does not combat the differences between the sexes as well as the value neutral approach being steeped in gender stereotypes that does not truly combat the male dominated academic biases of methodology. Stanley uses the work of Rich to create and exposition of this approach and focuses on the differences in attitude, i.e. no scientific method can truly be value neutral as they are being conducted by humans and humans are inherently biasedThe intellectual location from which debates and arguments are assembled and presented constitutes a point of view and the point of view critic is inevitably different from that of the proponent Recognizing this is important, because a point of view is both unavoidable and also indicates the existence of opinion a particular way of seeing which highlights and brings into focus some thing as salient. Stanley, therefore, proposes that in order to combat these biased perspectives, where the male dominated perspective is inherent in the societal structure, there needs to an accountable feminist methodology that will provide a feminist perspective that will provide a possible and challenging opponent to the inherent male dominated perspective. Accountability is the key because it allows for the methodology to be considered as an equal to the current academic methodologies, without accountability it will be dismissed as mere zealous ranting as opposed to a new academic method. As Stanley argues A real debate about feminist methodology has not yet happened in particular because of the use of binaries What is needed now is an actual, real, debate, involving an exchange of ideas and the thoughtful interrogation of alternative approaches. conclusionAt the moment because the state and economic situation is only playing lip service to equality this re-enforces the inequality in the family, work and justice system where the good girl gets justice the wife who is not only a career women, but also a cleaner, caretaker, nanny and a personal servant to her husband. Therefore the argument of radical feminism is not too far from the truth however its methods and accountability raises questions and it gets regarded as biased and un-objective. In order for this attitude in society to change feminist theory needs to be incorporated in the state and the parsimony further, with re-distributive justice the reason why feminist theorists have only been part successful is that either the theory has no accountable basis or it is falling prey to mainstream academic methods. In order to do this feminist theory must incorporate an accountable feminist methodology, in order for feminist theory to be held as a valid theory of the state and economics with valid aims to create equality through realistic systemic change. By bringing true systemic change it will cause a change in social views and policy, which will bring true equality to the family home, womens sexuality and in the workplace and most significantly in the justice system for victims of rape .