vicki@mathcs.emory.edu (Vicki Powers) (10/30/89)
Several postings in this group have included quotes from Susan Brownmiller's
book _Against Our Will_, quotes which make Brownmiller's book look like
a man-bashing diatribe. The use of these quotes have disturbed me somewhat,
not because I think everything Brownmiller says is correct (I agree that
Brownmiller makes some outrageous and unsupported statements in her book), but
because I think it is a very important and ground breaking book and I wanted
to offer some thoughts from another point of view. Also to remind us all that
(in my opinion) feminist writers like Brownmiller have had an important role in
changing the way we think about such issues as rape.
I read _Against Our Will_ in my first year of college, in 1976. My childhood
was a very sheltered and secure one, I grew up in a middle-class suburban
setting with a loving and supportive family. I knew what rape was, of course,
but it never occured to me that rape had anything to do with my life. If
someone had asked me what I thought a rapist would be like, I would have
pictured a manical, drooling man, so crazed by sexual impulses that he hides
in dark alleys and jumps on the first woman to walk by.
_Against Our Will_ changed my way of thinking about rape. Brownmiller
presented the revolutionary (to me) idea that rape was about violence
and rage and power. That people rape because of hatred or to gain a
feeling of power (she discusses, for example, men raping men in prisons
and how that relates to power relationships). The idea that rape is a
violent, hate-filled action, that a penis can be a weapon, does not sound
revolutionary today (at least I hope it doesn't), but this was a new idea to
me, and to many of my friends and fellow students who also read the book.
Brownmiller may not have been the first to present these ideas, but she was
(I think) the first to be widely read. Yes, she does make some outrageous
statements in the book, but perhaps this is a reaction to the outrageous
ideas that went before her.
Vicki
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Vicki Powers | vicki@mathcs.emory.edu PREFERRED
Emory University | {sun!sunatl,gatech}!emory!vicki UUCP
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