Exploring Rape as an Attack on Erotic Goods

Abstract

This chapter aims to conceptualise what is sexual about sexual violence, that is, to say how a sexual attack differs from non-sexual forms of physical attack. While it is understandable that early feminist writing on sexual violence emphasised its violent aspect in order that this form of personal attack might be taken seriously by the law as an instance of violence uberhaupt (Brownmiller, 1975), this does not mean that we finally have to choose between viewing such attacks as either violent or sexual. This chapter instead grapples with the question of why, how and to what effect certain violent attacks take a sexual form, that is, target a person’s body in its sexual and erotic capacities. I thus work to resist the obfuscation of the problematics of sexual violence that happens when it is either viewed simplistically as a sexual or lust crime (thereby neglecting its violent nature) or viewed simplistically as a violent crime (thereby neglecting its sexual nature).