Statutory Rape: A Feminist Critique of Rights Analysis [1984]

Statutory rape laws provide a concrete example of the advantages and disadvantages of rights analysis. This chapter suggests a variety of rights-oriented arguments that could be made in favor of very different revisions of gender-based statutory rape laws to illustrate the indeterminacy of rights analysis. California's law against "unlawful sexual intercourse" is typical of the gender-based statutory rape laws that remain on the books in a minority of states. Gender-based statutory rape laws reinforce the sexual stereotype of men as aggressors and women as passive victims. Underage females might discover that although the abolition of statutory rape laws would protect their rights against the state, it would remove some of their already-minimal protection against individual men. The critique of social control of women and of freedom for men to exploit women is really a way of getting at the broader complaint about the quality of sexual freedom and the nature of social control.