ABSTRACT
And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less – it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape. (Dworkin 1984)
Introduction
This chapter is dedicated to the memory of one of the heroines of the feminist anti-rape movement, Andrea Dworkin, and as her words illustrate, radical feminism imagines a world free from sexual violation. This chapter is about rape and how we know about it, what we are currently doing about it, and where the future lies in striving for a world without rape. The focus is on women, not merely because so many more women are raped but because radical feminism has been centrally concerned with women, not men. It is women who are targeted by rapists; as women, as activists, and as academics (not mutually exclusive terms). This introduction aims to explain our position in relation to anti-rape theory and activism as well as providing an outline of what follows.
