Male Rape is a Feminist Issue

Feminism, Governmentality and Male Rape

C. Cohen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780230223967
• eBook ISBN: 9781137035103
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book seeks to problematize knowledge and practices regarding 'male rape' and its relationship to feminism, examining this issue from a Foucauldian perspective. Feminist constructions of 'male rape' can plausibly be claimed to operate as a 'regime of truth', but one must question whether this is running counter to patriarchy.

Part I
Contextualizing Chapters – Thinking Differently

1

Introduction – Feminism, Governmentality and ‘Male’ Rape

1.1 Preliminary reflections

Rape has long been a feminist issue.^1,2 So apparently uncontentious is this statement that it is often held as a truism. However, one must attend to the assumptions inherent within this construct.³ Just as feminists highlighted gender bias in language, whereby certain gender-neutral terms were imbued with assumptions of masculinity, so it can be noted that the rise of feminism and its proliferation within victimology has imbued certain categories of victimization as intrinsically female – this is especially the case with rape. Hence the need to denote the male in this ‘gender-neutral’ crime.

Thus, whilst it is now some 20 years since the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994) first recognized the male rape victim in law,⁴ and 19 years⁵ since the first conviction for this crime, we are still far from regarding rape as gender-neutral in terms of victimization – in fact it is vehemently (and erroneously) preserved as gendered. Consider the following statements highlighted in, and seemingly endorsed by, a 1997 jurisprudence text that was published subsequent to the legislative change: ‘rape is still the most gender specific of all crimes’ (Temkin, 1987, cited in Barnett, 1997, p. 387), ‘only a man ... can be the actual perpetrator, only a woman the victim’ (Sexual Offences Amendment Act, 1976, cited in Barnett, 1997, p. 387 (italics added)).⁶ Consider also the official recorded statistics that show an enormous disparity between the incidence of male rape reported to the police and that of female rape.⁷ How might these phenomena be explained? For some, the statistics might be construed as legitimizing the popular misperceptions, enabling us to state that rape is still a disproportionately gendered crime; for others, perhaps the misperceptions can be regarded as generating the statistics – that is, our gendered misperceptions inhibit reporting and recording practices and result in rape merely appearing to be disproportionately gendered. I can certainly see value in each of these explanations, but neither is one I seek to endorse.

A little caution needs to be exercised here. As Foucault (1984, cited in Gordon, 2001, p. xxxiv) states: ‘the work of an intellectual is ... to bring assumptions and things taken for granted again into question, to shake habits, ways of acting and thinking, to dispel the familiarity of the accepted’. It is incumbent on those of us engaged in ‘knowledge production’ to stop and question logics that are taken for granted, common sense, or supposedly obvious. Shared, popular or common knowledge⁸ is essentially what everyone knows to be true, and furthermore ‘what everyone knows everyone knows’ (Graham, 2006, cited in Hassan and Thomas, 2006, p. 64). In many ways the implications and reach of this is far greater than that of the specialist and exclusive realm of the academy – given that it ‘is essential to public debate in democracies’ (Hassan and Thomas, 2006, p. 64). In this sense it is central to civil society, and to social control – to knowing others and one’s self. This caution is doubly so for those of us informed by Foucault, as he urges us to step outside those well-worn conceptual grooves that function both in forming and delimiting our enquiry. We must therefore impel ourselves to ‘think differently’,⁹ or at least attempt to do so.

Thus I do not seek to explain the phenomenon of male rape in respect of either position outlined above, not least because it can readily be observed that British Crime Survey (self-report) data – which seeks to present a more accurate picture of crime and victimization – reveals far less disparity;¹⁰ but also, and more importantly, because each position described above represents a polarized stance that is not reconcilable, and hence serves merely to consume and deflect energies in zero-sum arguments. Most significantly, the above positions are frequently allied to populist rhetoric in defence of feminism versus castigation of feminism respectively. It is in fact this supposedly futile exchange that I find to be compelling and significant.

In line with my peers, the initial inclination I had when first investigating the issue of ‘male’ rape was to place my enquiry squarely within the established debate. Specifically, I sought to attribute this trend to the primacy of feminism in victimology. Or rather, to conceive of feminism as something akin to a paradigm that regulated discourse through the construction of the ‘legitimate’ victim in reference to gendered hierarchies relating to patriarchal oppression. This would function, therefore, to effectively gender the debate in victimology in general and that relating to sexual victimization in particular. Consequently, I saw my objective quite clearly as in line with many of my contemporaries: to assert the normalcy and hence significance of male rape; to rail against the injustices faced by victims; and, moreover, to explicate precisely ‘who’ is to blame for those injustices – where, of course, ‘who’ was already conveniently populated by the supposedly culpable figure of feminism.

These rationales, and facets thereof, are routinely invoked and are explored and elucidated in existing texts in various forms and at various levels, for example, from innocuous bias discussed by Graham (2006) to outright allegations of sexual discrimination in the form of misandry as outlined by Nathanson and Young (2006). Although I will admit all are both plausible and persuasive, they are rationales I have come to be increasingly dissatisfied with for precisely these reasons.

Instead of pursuing an enquiry in relation to substantive ‘truth’ or ‘justice’ then, or orienting my discussion to the influence of feminism, I move my discussion beyond these concepts and issues. I argue instead that we ought to focus on the specific construct of the rape of the male, to its particularization, transformations and consensus that contribute to a discursive regularity; and thus to its potential significance within governmentality. In doing so I recognize that oppositional polemics – and indeed the ‘evidence’ upon which these are based – are necessarily implicated in this process, rather than existing outside of it.

In pursuing this agenda and its line of enquiry, I have deliberately revolted against the siren song emanating from the established debate and from its well-worn path of least resistance. However, can that original thesis simply be dismissed as a marker of what should not be? Retained here merely as a sketch of an abandoned or failed project? Not at all. That thesis has influenced my work pervasively in that I have felt it necessary to sustain a clear rejection of it – not because it was readily abandoned or clearly failing, but precisely because it was neither. I have constantly struggled to free my work from its persistent murmurings and its temptation. In this sense, the contours of that thesis, and the debate of which it was so comfortably a part, have been enormously influential – and so it is a problematization of that debate that I specifically explore.

Consequently, that original thesis has been complexified to query how and why male rape is presented as a feminist issue. My interest therefore is not a rights- or justice-based agenda, but recognition that the male victim of rape is constructed at present in reluctant and stilted conversation with feminism and, outside of rape crisis activism, as a product – at least in part – of a circumspect and defensive positioning that may be attributed to fear of backlash, such as can be noted in analyses by Gillespie (1996), Gavey (2005) and Bourke (2007). I acknowledge and respect such concerns, but propose that ‘male rape’ in its current form functions far more effectively as part of backlash by virtue of such protectionism, not despite it.

The conclusion I have reached is that male rape is indeed a political (and politicized) issue – just not in the way that I first thought. The ‘feminism as a paradigm’ rationale is seductive, appealing and simplistic. This in itself should be a cause for concern. Foucault conceptualizes power as operating on subjects via a ‘polyhedron’¹¹ of technologies – dynamic, multifarious, complex and confounding – to enable governance. Most significantly, for the purpose of this work, he notes the utility of counter-discourse as assimilated and affirming,¹² implicitly suggesting therefore that we should not seek the ‘truth’ but the ‘irony’¹³ in order to divest ourselves of the progressive illusion.

Hence, my interest in this area concerns the ways that current constructs of male rape – especially feminist, pro-feminist and pseudo-feminist constructs – function ‘ironically’, for example, being self-defeating and conformist despite appearing to be empowering and subversive. The ultimate example of which I argue to be the phenomenon of recursion or ‘writing back’.¹⁴ In this sense, I posit that the supposedly competing knowledges around rape, especially gendered knowledges regarding a particularization of male versus female rape, can actually be said to comprise a single archive that runs along several corresponding registers; and that, therefore, constructs relating to the supposed specificity of male rape draw from and in effect resuscitate previously discredited (ostensibly female oriented) rape myths¹⁵ that are in themselves recognized as having a concrete impact on all victims of sexual violence.¹⁶ I speculate that this functions to reinforce, support and perpetuate hegemonic masculinities¹⁷ and patriarchal power relations; and that our understanding of rape then is not so much gendered as it is gendering – coming to constitute the subject¹⁸ in line with patriarchal gender norms.

Suffice to say that feminist discourse, and indeed faux-feminist(ish) discourse, in relation to male rape can plausibly be claimed to operate as a ‘regime of truth’,¹⁹ but as a Foucauldian, one must necessarily question whether this runs counter to patriarchy.²⁰ This is my attempt to ‘think differently’ about the discourse around male rape and feminism.

1.2 Overview

Above all, this work is an experiment in, and conversation with, Foucauldian thought. Situated ostensibly at the interface between feminism and victimology,²¹ this book is divided into three discrete but interrelated parts. Part I contextualizes the forthcoming triangulation and consists of: Chapter 1, the introduction; Chapter 2, ‘Problematization: A Critical Ontology of the Present’, which presents the case for the need to ‘think differently’ in relation to the phenomenon of male rape as a problematic. In so doing, it re-examines the historical and thematic trajectories of academic knowledge in this area, contributes a genealogy of male rape to the field, and provides the justification and context for the following discussion; and Chapter 3, ‘A Foucauldian Triangulation?’, which explores methodological and epistemological considerations for thinking and investigating through Foucault, and therefore focuses on clarifying and substantiating my particular method and its contribution to the field which includes, but is not limited to, the concept of recursion. Part II deals with the application of my method and presents new data and original analysis. Part III summarizes the key findings in this work, presents new analysis and critique and articulates the theoretical implications of these for the continuing dialogue between Foucauldian thought and feminism; and of Foucauldian theory to criminology.

Chapter 2 traces the contours and transformations of ‘knowledge’ produced in respect of male rape within the academy. In doing so it performs two functions: it serves as a cursory literature review, whilst in itself comprising a contingent aspect of the first stage of the triangulation by highlighting trends, consensus and transformations in accepted ‘truths’, which in the subsequent chapters will then be tracked across the dimensions that are taken to comprise governmentality. In essence, this is intended to vindicate the need to ‘think differently’ in respect of this problem and expressly explicates my resultant problematization of this issue.

The aim of Chapter 3 is twofold: to clarify my interpretation of Foucauldian thought and to justify the application of that to this issue. In essence, it explores how one might investigate differently by thinking through Foucault. I am sensitive to the resistance to and denigration of a (stereotyped) notion of Foucauldian thought within certain sectors of criminology, particularly those that regard themselves as ‘crime science’, and to the exploitation of a simplified and perhaps even erroneous adaptation within others.²² Consequently, in this chapter I highlight relevant debate around the defining of Foucault’s concepts, the extent to which these concepts might be operationalized as methods and indeed the issues surrounding whether in fact they should be.²³ Chapter 3 explicitly addresses such concerns, delineates core concepts for the purpose of this book and explores guiding assumptions. In so doing it establishes the overarching method for this work, provides an example of how other criminologists might go about ‘doing’ Foucault, and extends an invitation to them.

Part II is concerned with the application of my method, and addresses three separate, albeit interrelated, areas of concern: representations, bio-politics and individuation, which together comprise governmentality – or, more accurately, come to constitute the individual or subject as the site of and vehicle for governmentality. The aim here is not only to apply my particular Foucauldian ‘method’, but also to reflexively evaluate and modify it. It is enough to say at this point that Foucault’s power/knowledge is not a nexus as such, rather it is a complex and multifaceted process²⁴ that has been incisively abridged by authors such as Mendieta (2002) as Foucault’s ‘triangulation’ – a beautifully simple distillation of Foucault’s oeuvre that provided the impetus for the creation of my own methodological approach, briefly described below.

Foucault (1997, p. 24) simplified governmentality as discernible by two limits: ‘on the one hand, the rules of right that formally delineate power, and on the other hand, at the opposite extreme, the other limit might be the truth-effects that power produces, that this power conducts and which in their turn, reproduce power. So we have the triangle: power, right, truth.’ Mendieta (2002, p. 6) sketches this as lying ‘between the discourses of the production of truth, the power that these discourses enact and make available to social agents, and the constitution of a political rationality that is linked to the invention and creation of its horizon of activity and surveillance’. In my method these limits have been disaggregated to contrive three social ‘realms’ that co-constitute the subject – this is intended to illustrate governmentality in action whilst comprising what Nadeson (2008, p. 12) termed a ‘genealogy without history’.

I have allowed this to guide and divide my areas of interest thus: the production of the truth of male rape and sexual victimization located in the media; the power that these enact, arguably located at the level of the individual and in institutional practice and ‘expertise’; and the horizon of activity and surveillance concerned with what Mendieta, (2002, p. 6) calls the ‘regulation of life’, which – in this instance – I argue is enabled through the guiding rationalities that promote and facilitate the inevitability and primacy of the conflations of sex/sexuality/gender that enable the discourse on male rape to function as a biopolitic in its deployment of gender. This for me is the crux of male rape when understood through governmentality. Thus, the triangulation chapter as a whole is intended to excavate present homologies in the area of male rape and to counter and problematize the current knowledge and practices that reify²⁵ the male rape victim in accordance with these.

The preceding chapters all involve a discussion of feminist theories and activism, but to a degree that is necessarily tentative and simplified. However, Part III is an explicit reflection on the significance of male rape to feminism(s) and indeed on the significance of feminism to male rape. It involves a sketching of the reflexive opportunities for feminist thought – not least of which compels a reappraisal of what is currently termed Foucauldian feminism, but which I posit might more accurately be regarded as feminist Foucauldianism. At the very least, this will elucidate why my research should not be read as either feminist, anti-feminist or post-feminist.

2

Problematization – A Critical Ontology of the Present

Regimes of truth both prescribe and proscribe the conceptualization of a given ‘problem’ and the parameters for its solution; in advocating particular ways of seeing and doing, they necessarily abjure others. In this sense they are key to the formation of what Foucault (1997, p. 7) termed ‘subjugated knowledges’, which he explains means two things: ‘On the one hand I am referring to historical contents that have been buried or masked in functional coherences and systemizations ... I am also referring to a whole series of knowledges that have been disqualified’ (ibid., p. 7). Not only are regimes of truth key to the creation of subjugated knowledges, but they are also key to the insurrection of subjugated knowledges – as when one destabilizes a regime of truth, one enables the emancipation of those knowledges disqualified by its internal conventions. This is problematization, and it underscores Foucault’s imperative for us to ‘think differently’.

This effort to think differently necessitates a critical grasp of both where we ‘are’ and how we ‘got’ here. The to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Contextualizing Chapters – Thinking Differently
• Part II Triangulation Chapters – Deploying the (Male Rape) Subject
• Part III Concluding Thoughts
• Notes
• References
• Index