I Never Called It Rape

I Never Called It Rape
	Cover of the first edition
Author	Robin Warshaw
Subject	Date rape
Published	1988
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	227 pp.
ISBN	978-0-06-092572-7
OCLC	797093370

Last updated November 17, 2019

I Never Called It Rape is a 1988 book by journalist Robin Warshaw. The book focuses on the hidden epidemic of acquaintance and date rape. The book is largely based on a nationwide study in the United States, the Ms. Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault. The title references the finding in the study that 73% of women whose sexual assault met the definition of rape did not identify their experience as such.^[1]

Acquaintance rape is rape that is perpetrated by a person who knows the victim. Examples of acquaintances include someone the victim is dating, a classmate, co-worker, employer, family member, spouse, counselor, therapist, religious official, or medical doctor. Acquaintance rape includes a subcategory of incidents labeled date rape that involves people who are in romantic or sexual relationships with each other. When a rape is perpetrated by a college student on another student, the term campus rape is sometimes used.

Date rape is a form of acquaintance rape and dating violence. The two phrases are often used interchangeably, but date rape specifically refers to a rape in which there has been some sort of romantic or potentially sexual relationship between the two parties. Acquaintance rape also includes rapes in which the victim and perpetrator have been in a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship, for example as co-workers or neighbors.

Sexual assault is an act in which a person intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. It is a form of sexual violence, which includes rape, groping, child sexual abuse or the torture of the person in a sexual manner.

The study of acquaintance rape on college campuses funded by the National Institute for Mental Health formed the basis for Warshaw's book, which is subtitled The Ms. Report on Recognizing, Fighting, and Surviving Date and Acquaintance Rape. The study was conducted by Ms. magazine and psychologist Mary P. Koss. They found that one in four women respondents had experienced rape or attempted rape, that 84% of survivors knew their attackers, and that 57% of the rapes occurred during dates.^[2] Warshaw also draws on scholarly studies and first-person accounts in her analysis. She interviewed and corresponded with 150 women for the book.^[3]

Ms. is an American liberal feminist magazine co-founded by second-wave feminists and sociopolitical activists Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes. Its founding editors were Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, and Mary Peacock. Ms. first appeared in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine. The first stand-alone issue appeared in January 1972, with funding from New York editor Clay Felker. From July 1972 until 1987, it appeared on a monthly basis. It now publishes quarterly.

Mary P. Koss is an American Regents' Professor at the University of Arizona, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health in Tucson, Arizona. Her best known works have been in the areas of gender-based violence and restorative justice.

Warshaw finds that there is little to differentiate rapists from non-rapists and victims from non-victims. She stresses that men, learning institutions, families, and other social institutions must share in the responsibility for changing societal attitudes towards rape.^[3]

Reception

In a review in Feminist Teacher, Ann Goetting found the book to be "a thorough, practical, and highly effective presentation of the social dynamics and consequences of acquaintance-rape among college students."^[1]

Katie Roiphe, in her 1993 book The Morning After , questioned whether one in four women are victims of rape, writing "If I were really standing in the middle of an epidemic, a crisis, if 25 percent of my female friends were being raped, wouldn't I know it?"^[4]

Katie Roiphe is an American author and journalist. She is best known as the author of the non-fiction examination The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism (1994). She is also the author of Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End (1997), and the 2007 study of writers and marriage, Uncommon Arrangements. Her 2001 novel Still She Haunts Me is an imagining of the relationship between Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell, the real-life model for Dodgson's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

<i>The Morning After</i> (book) first of author and journalist Katie Roiphes books

The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus is a 1993 book about date rape by author and journalist Katie Roiphe. Her first book, it was reprinted with a new introduction in 1994. Part of the book had previously been published as an essay, "The Rape Crisis, or 'Is Dating Dangerous?'" in the New York Times Magazine.

Related Research Articles

A significant proportion of victims of rape or other sexual violence incidents are male. Historically, rape was thought to be, and defined as, a crime committed solely against women. This belief is still held in some parts of the world, but rape of males is now commonly criminalized and has been subject to more discussion than in the past.

A date rape drug is any drug that incapacitates another person and renders them vulnerable to a sexual assault, including rape. The substances are associated with date rape because of reported incidents of their use in the context of two people dating, during which the victim is sexually assaulted or raped, or suffers other indignities. The substances are not exclusively used to perpetrate sexual assault or rape, but are the properties or side-effects of substances normally used for legitimate medical purposes. One of the most common incapacitating agents for date rape is alcohol, administered either surreptitiously or consumed voluntarily, rendering the victim unable to make informed decisions or give consent.

Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. The study of victimology seeks to mitigate the prejudice against victims, and the perception that victims are in any way responsible for the actions of offenders. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as the greater tendency to blame victims of rape than victims of robbery if victims and perpetrators knew each other prior to the commission of the crime.

A rape kit—also known as a sexual assault kit (SAK), a sexual assault forensic evidence (SAFE) kit, a sexual assault evidence collection kit (SAECK), a sexual offense evidence collection (SOEC) kit, or a physical evidence recovery kit (PERK)—is a package of items used by medical personnel for gathering and preserving physical evidence following an allegation of sexual assault. The evidence collected from the victim can aid the criminal rape investigation and the prosecution of a suspected assailant. DNA evidence can have tremendous utility for sexual assault investigations and prosecution by identifying offenders, revealing serial offenders through DNA matches across cases, and exonerating those who have been wrongly accused.

Rape culture is a sociological concept for a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality. Behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, slut-shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by sexual violence, or some combination of these. It has been used to describe and explain behavior within social groups, including prison rape and in conflict areas where war rape is used as psychological warfare. Entire societies have been alleged to be rape cultures.

Rape can be categorized in different ways: for example, by reference to the situation in which it occurs, by the identity or characteristics of the victim, and by the identity or characteristics of the perpetrator. These categories are referred to as types of rape. The types of rape described below are not mutually exclusive: a given rape can fit into multiple categories, by for example by being both a prison rape and a gang rape, or both a custodial rape and the rape of a child.

Rape by gender classifies types of rape by the sex and/or gender of both the rapist and the victim. This scope includes both rape and sexual assault more generally. Most research indicates that rape affects women disproportionately, with the majority of people convicted being men; however, since the broadening of the definition of rape in 2012 by the FBI, more attention is being given to male rape, including females raping males.

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability or is below the legal age of consent. The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.

Causes of sexual violence are debated and explanations of the cause include military conquest, socioeconomics, anger, power, sadism, sexual pleasure, psychopathy, ethical standards, laws, attitudes toward the victims, and evolutionary pressures.

The anti-rape movement is a sociopolitical movement which is part of the movement seeking to combat violence against and the abuse of women. The movement seeks to change community attitudes to violence against women, such as attitudes of entitlement to sex and victim blaming, as well as attitudes of women themselves such as self-blame for violence against them. It also seeks to promote changes to rape laws or laws of evidence which enable rapists from avoid penalties because, for example, victims are discouraged from reporting assaults against them, or because the rapist is entitled to some immunity or because a rapist is capable in law of denigrating the victim. The movement has been successful in many jurisdictions, though many of these attitudes still persist in some jurisdictions, and despite changes to laws and significant increases in reporting of such assaults, in practice violence against women still persists at unacceptable high levels.

David Lisak is an American clinical psychologist. He received his PhD from Duke University, and is a retired Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Lisak's research focuses on "the causes and consequences of interpersonal violence...motives and behaviors of rapists and murderers, the impact of childhood abuse on adult men, and relationship between child abuse and later violence".

Campus sexual assault is the sexual assault, including rape, of a student while attending an institution of higher learning, such as a college or university. The victims of such assaults are more frequently female, but any gender can be victimized. Estimates of sexual assault, which vary based on definitions and methodology, generally find that somewhere between 19–27% of college women and 6–8% of college men are sexually assaulted during their time in college.

Unacknowledged rape is defined as a sexual experience that meets the legal requirements of rape, but is not labeled as rape by the victim. Instead, the victim may label the experience as "bad sex", a "miscommunication", or a regrettable "hook up." This response is more frequently recognized among victims of acquaintance rape, date rape or marital rape.

Rape schedule is a concept in feminist theory used to describe the notion that women are conditioned to place restrictions on and/or make alterations to their daily lifestyles and behaviours as a result of constant fear of sexual assault. These altered behaviours may occur consciously or unconsciously.

Rape myths are prejudicial, stereotyped and false beliefs about sexual assaults, rapists, and rape victims. They often serve to excuse sexual aggression, create hostility toward victims, and bias criminal prosecution.

After a sexual assault or rape, victims are often subjected to scrutiny and, in some cases, mistreatment. Victims undergo medical examinations and are interviewed by police. If there is a criminal trial, victims suffer a loss of privacy and their credibility may be challenged. Victims may also become the target of slut-shaming, abuse, social stigmatization, sexual slurs and cyberbullying.

Katherine H. Koestner is an American activist against sexual assault. She came forward publicly after an alleged rape in 1990 that took place on William and Mary campus which involved her and her date. Koestner started speaking out about her experience in 1991 by lecturing at other college campuses to raise awareness. She also volunteered in rape crisis centers. She was featured in the media, including an HBO special, No Visible Bruises: The Katie Koestner Story (1993). Koestner's work and activism has helped the term "date rape" become part of the larger discussion around rape and sexual assault. Koestner founded several campus sexual assault prevention groups after graduating from the College of William & Mary in 1994. Koester is the current director of the Take Back the Night Foundation, president of Campus Outreach Services and serves as an adivisor for other organizations to help prevent rape and other forms of sexual violence.

References

1 2 Goetting, Ann (Fall 1989). "Review: I Never Called It Rape by Robin Warshaw". Feminist Teacher. 4 (2/3): 57. JSTOR 40545549.
↑ Warshaw, Robin (1994). I Never Called It Rape (Harper Perennial ed.). New York: HarperPerennial. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-06-092572-7.
1 2 Adler, Emily Stier (December 1991). "The Female Fear by Margaret T. Gordon; Stephanie Riger; Surviving Sexual Violence by Liz Kelly; I Never Called It Rape by Robin Warshaw; Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse by Kersti Yllo; Michele Bograd". Gender and Society. 5 (4): 625–629. doi:10.1177/089124391005004018. JSTOR 190111.
↑ Schmid, Stephanie L. (2004). "Date Rape/Acquaintance Rape". Encyclopedia of Rape (1st ed.). Westport, Conn. [u.a.]: Greenwood Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-313-32687-5.

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[Goetting-1] 1 2 Goetting, Ann (Fall 1989). "Review: I Never Called It Rape by Robin Warshaw". Feminist Teacher. 4 (2/3): 57. JSTOR 40545549.

[2] Warshaw, Robin (1994). I Never Called It Rape (Harper Perennial ed.). New York: HarperPerennial. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-06-092572-7.

[Adler-3] 1 2 Adler, Emily Stier (December 1991). "The Female Fear by Margaret T. Gordon; Stephanie Riger; Surviving Sexual Violence by Liz Kelly; I Never Called It Rape by Robin Warshaw; Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse by Kersti Yllo; Michele Bograd". Gender and Society. 5 (4): 625–629. doi:10.1177/089124391005004018. JSTOR 190111.

[4] Schmid, Stephanie L. (2004). "Date Rape/Acquaintance Rape". Encyclopedia of Rape (1st ed.). Westport, Conn. [u.a.]: Greenwood Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-313-32687-5.