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.
Susan Brownmiller is an American journalist, author and feminist activist best known for her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, which was selected by The New York Public Library as one of 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Charlotte Anne Bunch is an American feminist author and organizer in women's rights and human rights movements. Bunch is currently the founding director and senior scholar at the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is also a distinguished professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers.
Diana E. H. Russell was a feminist writer and activist. Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, she moved to England in 1957, and then to the United States in 1961. For the past 45 years she was engaged in research on sexual violence against women and girls. She wrote numerous books and articles on rape, including marital rape, femicide, incest, misogynist murders of women, and pornography. For The Secret Trauma, she was co-recipient of the 1986 C. Wright Mills Award. She was also the recipient of the 2001 Humanist Heroine Award from the American Humanist Association. She was also an organizer of the First International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, in Brussels in March 1976.
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.
Women's History Month is an annual observance to highlight the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. Celebrated during March in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, corresponding with International Women's Day on March 8, it is observed during October in Canada, corresponding with the celebration of Persons Day on October 18.
The National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape was an American research center that compiled and provided information on date and marital rape cases, and on legislation regarding them, and media publications on these subjects, as well as acting as an advocate for marital and date rape victims. It began in 1978 as a project of the Women's History Research Center, with Laura X as its director. It published a pamphlet on the landmark 1978 Oregon v. Rideout case, in which a man was acquitted of raping his wife; the case was the first time in American history a husband was tried for raping his wife while they were living together. In 1983 the National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape conducted the world's first conference on marital rape. In 2004 the Clearinghouse closed, but it maintains its website for posterity.
Dating abuse or dating violence is the perpetration or threat of an act of violence by at least one member of an unmarried couple on the other member in the context of dating or courtship. It also arises when one partner tries to maintain power and control over the other through abuse or violence, for example when a relationship has broken down. This abuse or violence can take a number of forms, such as sexual assault, sexual harassment, threats, physical violence, verbal, mental, or emotional abuse, social sabotage, and stalking. In extreme cases it may manifest in date rape. It can include psychological abuse, emotional blackmail, sexual abuse, physical abuse and psychological manipulation.
Dorchen A. Leidholdt is an activist and leader in the feminist movement against violence against women. Since the mid-1970s, she has counseled and advocated for rape victims, organized against "the media's promotion of violence against women", served on the legal team for the plaintiff in a precedent-setting sexual harassment case, founded an international non-governmental organization fighting prostitution and trafficking in women and children, directed the nation's largest legal services program for victims of domestic violence, advocated for the enactment and implementation of laws that further the rights of abused women, and represented hundreds of women victimized by intimate partner violence, human trafficking, sexual assault, the threat of honor killing, female genital mutilation, forced and child marriage, and the internet bride trade.
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 described below are not mutually exclusive: a given rape can fit into multiple categories, by for example being both a prison rape and a gang rape, or both a custodial rape and the rape of a child.
Statistics on rape and other sexual assaults are commonly available in industrialized countries, and have become better documented throughout the world. Inconsistent definitions of rape, different rates of reporting, recording, prosecution and conviction for rape can create controversial statistical disparities, and lead to accusations that many rape statistics are unreliable or misleading.
Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their 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.
Joy Rosenheim Simonson was a feminist who worked on women's rights and progressive activist.
Laura J. Lederer is a pioneer in the work to stop human trafficking. She is a legal scholar and former Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons in the Office for Democracy and Global Affairs of the United States Department of State. She has also been an activist against human trafficking, prostitution, pornography, and hate speech. Lederer is founder of The Protection Project, a legal research institute at Johns Hopkins University devoted to combating trafficking in persons.
Florence Rush was an American certified social worker, feminist theorist and organizer best known for introducing The Freudian Coverup in her presentation "The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View", about childhood sexual abuse and incest, at the April 1971 New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) Rape Conference. Rush's paper at the time was the first challenge to Freudian theories of children as the seducers of adults rather than the victims of adults' sexual/power exploitation.
Irene Tinker, is professor emerita in the Departments of City and Regional Planning & Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, teaching from 1989 to 1998. She was the founding Board president of the International Center for Research on Women, founder and director of the Equity Policy Center and co-founder of the Wellesley Center for Research on Women.
Sarah Ben-David is an Israeli Professor of Criminology whose scientific and public activity focuses mainly on victimology and criminology and overlapping areas between these two fields. In recent years, Ben-David has worked to encourage research, awareness and therapy in the field of sexual harassment of men and women, and regarding awareness of the reciprocal nature of intimate partner violence and domestic violence.
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.
Carmen Delgado Votaw was a civil rights pioneer, a public servant, an author, and community leader. She studied at the University of Puerto Rico and graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., with a bachelor of arts in international studies. She was subsequently awarded an honorary doctorate in humanities by Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.
Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) is an American nonprofit publishing organization that was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1972. The organization works to increase media democracy and strengthen independent media.
