McKeever, N orcid.org/0000-0002-0799-1623 (2019) Can a Woman Rape a Man and Why Does It Matter? Criminal Law and Philosophy, 13 (4). pp. 599-619. ISSN 1871-9791
Abstract
Under current UK legislation, only a man can commit rape. This paper argues that this is an unjustified double standard that reinforces problematic gendered stereotypes about male and female sexuality. I first reject three potential justifications for making penile penetration a condition of rape: (1) it is physically impossible for a woman to rape a man; (2) it is a more serious offence to forcibly penetrate someone than to force them to penetrate you; (3) rape is a gendered crime. I argue that, as these justifications fail, a woman having sex with a man without his consent ought to be considered rape. I then explain some further reasons that this matters. I argue that, not only is it unjust, it is also both a cause and a consequence of harmful stereotypes and prejudices about male and female sexuality: (1) men are ‘always up for sex’; (2) women’s sexual purity is more important than men’s; (3) sex is something men do to women. Therefore, I suggest that, if rape law were made gender neutral, these stereotypes would be undermined and this might make some (albeit small) difference to the problematic ways that sexual relations are sometimes viewed between men and women more generally.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Gender; Sexual assault; Sex; Rape law; Sexual Offences Act |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 13 Mar 2019 13:18 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:45 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11572-018-9485-6 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:143590 |
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