ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the politics of language around rape as it has morphed into “nonconsensual sex” and what this means for imagining, naming, labeling, and prosecuting sexual violence both on campuses and beyond. This chapter considers the linguistic erasure of rape and “gray-area” sexual assaults (those not clearly labeled as rape but nevertheless coercive), as well as the political and gendered structures for normalizing, finding, and naming rape. Considerations for why women choose to label rape, and the potential benefits and hazards of doing so, are discussed, alongside an analysis of the caricatures and mythologies created around sexual violence that work to sustain sexual violence as normative. Further, the ways that language about sexual violence can serve as a tool of resistance and appropriation are considered, particularly in light of the contradiction of college campuses directing more attention to sexual assault while minimizing the role of men in assaulting women.
