Customer Reviews

Rethinking Rape

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When I was seeking ways to articulate my experience of being raped in 2000 I looked through existing feminist works on rape and on the body and was disappointed. Cahill's book was the book I was looking for then, for me she expresses thoughts I had but could not formulate clearly in language. Not that this is in anyway a self-help book, it is a work of philosophy concerned to understand what it is to be human and specifically the meaning behind what is often categorised as 'senseless violence'. For many victims of senseless violence the question of 'why' burns at the mind, and this book addresses that question in a systematic scholarly way. Cahill carefully considers the significance of our bodies to our sense of 'self' and in this consideration she captures precisely the nature of the harm that rape does. She provides an excellent review of existing theories of rape and also of recent theories of the body. Drawing out elements of theories of the body in considering how to think about human beings as subjects she argues that the human subject must be understood as both embodied and as intersubjective. This is in contrast to mainstream political theory of the subject as fundamentally rational mind which has 'property in' its body. An understanding of the body-as-self and of the self as formed in relation to others illuminates the precise nature of the harm done by rape that an understanding of the self as autonomous mind that 'has' a body cannot. Rape is not a crime against one's property in one's self, it is a crime against the self. Only by such a re-thinking of the nature of the subject can we see rape as a direct assult on the 'self' and thus understand why rape is so profoundly disordering of the self. Furthermore, Cahill's analysis of the impact of the threat of rape on female bodily comportment fuses insights from the feminist anti-rape tradition with post-Foucaultian understandings on how power acts on and through the body. Thus this book theoretically grounds many of the insights of feminist activism against rape with extraordinary clarity and is an important achievement.

This accessible and very readable book explores the devastating nature of rape with a firm grounding in philosophy. Without losing sight of the viciousness of the act itself, Cahill conducts a phenomenological (a descriptive account of human being in the world) investigation of the specific harms that rape inflicts and what the survivors may do to understand and prevent them. This work needed to be written--there are reasons rape is so catastrophic that goes beyond superficially viewing rape as an immoral but evolutionarily strong behavior (see the disasterous book by Thornhill for this) or viewing rape as psychological trauma, but never seriously examining its damage to one's sense of self, relations with others, the world, and human experience. Besides considering these basic philosophical themes, Cahill also examines previous views of rape and breaks them down conceptually, revealing their biases and inaccuracies--for instance the view that rape is either sex or violence, or that the victim should be blamed. Since nearly all of rape law to my knowledge is based on these distorted viewpoints, exposing their misrepresentations of women and the assailant/perpetrator are vital.
(Also, the reasons Cahill gives for rape's devastation undermine the traditional foundations of Western metaphysics--generally, the idea that human reason is infinite and all-knowing, and that humans' bodies only serve to distract from divine knowledge and pure Ideas.)
Cahill does all of this with clarity, philosophical rigor and passion. As a philosophy student trying to understand and relate to my best friend who was raped it was awesome.
Finally the other amazing and brilliant book I would recommend for a philosophical and personal look at sexual assault is Susan Brison's Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self.

Ann Cahill is almost where we need to be (and judging by one review, she's way ahead of some). The only thing missing in her work is explicit recognition of the fact that our species has two distinctly different mating strategies, one primitive and one modern.

We first identified these two contradictory sets of behaviors about twenty years ago, during research into gender-related anomalies in human communication. Since then at least two other species of higher primates have been found to possess a similar pair of contradictory mating strategies.

The primitive strategy is inherently rapacious; any male who chooses to apply the related behaviors is announcing his intent. Interacting with a female using the primitive strategy always results in some damage, regardless of how far he goes with it.

It's doubtful many males will make such a choice once the details of the two strategies become better known. For example, the primitive behaviors have a warped metric of pleasure, yielding experiences that are insignificant by comparison to the normal (modern) behaviors. This is likely a significant factor in the current prevalence of ED.

We picked this book up used several years ago (at the Wooden Shoe, a great, real walk-in book store in Philadelphia). Well worth the read...

Rethinking Rape by Ann Cahill is truly truly absurd. At best it is a horrendously poor work of philosophy. Ms. Cahill is a professor of philosophy who is a feminist too. Philosophy is about truth while feminism is pure advocacy regardless of truth; so the two don't often make for an easy combination. In this case we are spared that contradiction because the philosophy and advocacy are both too trivial to be concerned with but you, the reader, are then left with virtually nothing. If you, like Bill Clinton, are made weak in the knees and quizzical about what the meaning of "is" is, then this book might hold some appeal. Or, if you want to know, not how to prevent rape, but whether it is merely an act of common violence or the natural extension of the erotization of masculine dominance, then this book might hold some interest too.
More importantly though this book is an insult to women who have been raped and those who will be, and their loved ones. When it comes to rape perhaps the most relevant question is not how to think and philosophize about it but, for God's sake, how to prevent it. In the last 5 pages of the book Ms. Cahill finally at long long last comes up with her answer: karate! Never mind that this idea has been practiced, promoted, sold, advertised and tried off and on for 100 years by feminists and black belt entrepreneurs alike. If ever their was an argument about the triviality of philosophy in particular areas of learning this book is surely it.
Queerly missing in an absolute and total way is a recognition that crime is related to punishment. If there was no punishment against bank robbery starting tomorrow, the banking system would collapse starting tomorrow. If there was no punishment for rape the changes would be equally profound. But, suppose you increased the penalties against rape or even made it a death penalty offense on the second DNA conviction? Given that rape is a highly unique crime, education about the death penalty for it would spread very quickly.
Cahill does manage, despite herself, to point out that rape is profound. It makes women: refuse eye contact, not go out at night, live in fear, cross their legs in public, be afraid even to think freely, to be victims long before they are victimized, blame themselves when what they fear will happen (thus preventable) actually does happen, be picked as mates rather than pick the mate they want, and fail to realize much of their potential as human beings (the book: "The 91% Factor" covers this topic in a brilliant and accessible way) I don't doubt that rape is that profound, which begs the truly philosophic question: why don't feminists and philosophers and civilized people in general do anything to increase the penalty for rape and thus eliminate it?. Ms Cahill would surely like to eliminate or greatly reduce rape but oddly she seems unable to propose it?