Sex Without Consent : Rape and Sexual Coercion in America

by Smith, Merril D.

• ISBN13: 9780814797891
• ISBN10: 081479789X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-02-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

Needed historical perspective . . . thorough documentation . . . excellent.-- Library JournalThe book provides some very interesting examples of early legal standards for prosecuting rape charges and charges of child sexual abuse in the United States.-- Archives of Sexual BehaviorMerril Smith's edited volume provides numerous articles that will be of great worth to the historical and feminist communities. The range or articles in this volume goes beyond the usual hotspots while still allowing for important comparisons.--Journal of Social HistoryA group of men rape an intoxicated fifteen year old girl to make a woman of her. An immigrant woman is raped after accepting a ride from a stranger. A young mother is accosted after a neighbor escorts her home. In another case, a college frat party is the scene of the crime. Although these incidents appear similar to accounts one can read in the newspapers almost any day in the United States, only the last one occurred in this century. Each, however, involved a woman or girl compelled to have sex against her will.Sex without Consent explores the experience, prosecution, and meaning of rape in American history from the time of the early contact between Europeans and Native Americans to the present. By exploring what rape meant in particular times and places in American history, from interracial encounters due to colonization and slavery to rape on contemporary college campuses, the contributors add to our understanding of crime and punishment, as well as to gender relations, gender roles, and sexual politics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Studying Rape in American History	1	(9)
Merril D. Smith
``None of the Women Were Abused'': Indigenous Contexts for the Treatment of Women Captives in the Northeast	10	(17)
Alice Nash
``Playing the Rogue'': Rape and Issues of Consent in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts	27	(19)
Else L. Hambleton
Sexual Consent and Sexual Coercion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia	46	(15)
Terri L. Snyder
Coerced Sex and Gendered Violence in New Netherland	61	(20)
James Homer Williams
Rape, Law, Courts, and Custom in Pennsylvania, 1682-1800	81	(22)
Jack Marietta
G.S. Rowe
``The Law Should Be Her Protector'': The Criminal Prosecution of Rape in Upper Canada, 1791-1850	103	(33)
Patrick J. Connor
``I Was Very Much Wounded'': Rape Law, Children, and the Antebellum South	136	(42)
Diane Miller Sommerville
``A Most Detestable Crime'': Character, Consent, and Corroboration in Vermont's Rape Law, 1850-1920	178	(26)
Hal Goldman
``In the Marriage Bed Woman's Sex Has Been Enslaved and Abused'': Defining and Exposing Marital Rape in Late-Nineteenth-Century America	204	(26)
Jesse F. Battan
Race, Honor, Citizenship: The Massie Rape/Murder Case	230	(17)
Bonni Cermak
``Another Negro-Did-It Crime'': Black-on-White Rape and Protest in Virginia, 1945-1960	247	(18)
Lisa Lindquist Dorr
Sexual Coercion and Limited Choices: Their Link to Teen Pregnancy and Welfare	265	(18)
Robert Cherry
Rape on Campus: Numbers Tell Less Than Half the Story	283	(18)
Julie Campbell-Ruggaard
Jami Van Ryswyk
Contributors	301	(4)
Index	305