Status
Collection
Publication
Description
This volume presents a diverse group of opinions that lay the foundation for change in basic attitudes about power, gender, race, and sexuality -- for a future without sexual violence. The contributors to this sourcebook share the conviction that rape is epidemic because our society encourages male aggression and tacitly or overtly supports violence against women. Cumulatively, these 34 essays by such figures as Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Ntozake Shange, Michael Kimmel and Louise Erdrich situate rape on a continuum extending from sexist language to pornography, sexual harassment in schools and the workplace, wife battering and date and marital rape. Highlights include a proposal to make rape a presidential election issue, an analysis of the churches' ambivalent response to societal violence, guidelines for raising boys to view themselves as nurturing, nonviolent fathers and inspirational visions of personal or institutional change.… (more)
User reviews
Some of the
The best part about Transforming a Rape Culture is that it offers solutions. It names problems and gives concrete ideas to fix them; discusses strategies that have worked and not worked, such as counseling centers, legislation, artwork; stresses contribution on individual, community, national and global scales. After reading this book, I don't have a much easier time believing that I will see a world in which rape does not exist during my lifetime, but I have more faith in seeing a world working towards that.
Many of them fail to distinguish between violence and counterviolence.
Most of them sincerely believe that simply by changing hearts and minds we can end rape forever.
These are all major faults. And though they don't entirely
Most of the best essays in this book come in at the end, these being some of the most personal. By far the best is Inés Hernández-Ávila's "In Praise of Insubordination".