Taking Account of Male Dominance in Rape Law

Abstract

American legal scholar MacKinnon held that using consent as the legal criterion to draw the line between rape and intercourse would evade the issue of male dominance in heterosexual relations. Feminist lawyers in the Netherlands and England and Wales translated the insight that rape has to do with inequality between the sexes in alternative definitions of rape. They also struggled to get these alternative definitions incorporated in law. However, in the Netherlands as well as in England and Wales, feminist proposals to broaden the concept of coercion or non-consent to include submission met with serious obstacles from within the legal system. This article describes the process the feminist proposals to redefine coercion or non-consent in rape law went through in the Netherlands and in England and Wales. It tries to answer the following question: To what extent can the obstacles in this process of forming a broad definition of coercion be attributed to what MacKinnon called the inherent fallocentrism of law?

Keywords

abuse of power coercion male dominance marital rape exemption non-consent political agenda rape law reform rights of the defendant

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