Abstract
After decades of debate and reforms on the rape legislation, a shift from a use of force-based into a consent-based rape offence (with voluntariness as the decisive criteria) entered into force in Sweden in July 2018. The aim of this article is to review and critically analyse Swedish statutory regulation of rape, starting in the historical development and debates as a backdrop. The authors take their starting point in critique put forward within the field of feminist legal studies and uses an everyday life perspective to examine some of the assessments made in the preparatory work in the decisions made on how to best protect the individual’s right to personal and sexual integrity and sexual self-determination. The analysis shows that a male rationale permeates the preparatory works and points at a need for further research on the criterion of voluntariness and its presumptions on autonomy.
Highlights
Criminal legislation on rape has in Sweden been debated and revised several times in the last few decades
The article starts with a brief historical overview of the legislative process, from 1998 until the current rape legislation that will be examined in greater depth
We start by introducing an everyday life perspective and apply the perspective to some concrete examples that we draw from the legislative process
Summary
We will make some reflections and comments on the new construction of rape and point to some examples in the preparatory works that call for further analysis on the requisite of voluntariness and the idea of autonomy that the legislation builds upon. We use an everyday-life perspective which relates to a theoretical concept, lived autonomy, that we will develop in an upcoming article. We start by introducing an everyday life perspective and apply the perspective to some concrete examples that we draw from the legislative process. 106 This can be discussed in relation to the capabilities that Nussbaum argues should be supported in all democracies, see Nussbaum, Kvinnors liv och social rättvisa: ett försvar för universella värden (Daidalos 2002)
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