Susan Brownmiller and the history of rape

Abstract

The historical chapters of Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape deserve close attention. Her view of rape as a crime of violence and aggression has received some corroboration from recent historical .studies. Her view of rape as a property crime in ancient societies can not only be seen in the laws of the Hebrews and Babylonians, which she considers, but in other early legal codes as well. Rape was defined in them not as an offense against the victim, but as a crime against the male under whose authority she lived. Brownmiller perceives a breakthrough in this dismal history of rape laws occurring in thirteenth‐century England with the Statute of Westminster (1285). This interpretation does not hold up under close examination. It can be shown that the first real advance in rape laws took place in the work of church lawyers of the twelfth century who began to distinguish rape from property crimes and include it among crimes of violence against persons. If historians will set aside the a...