ABSTRACT
In US culture, we needed feminism to name rape as a political, systematic phenomenon that has oppressed women in particular. Susan Brownmiller took up the issue in her groundbreaking work Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, and a variety of feminist thinkers pursued the topic throughout the 1970s. Catharine MacKinnon reexamined rape in a strikingly different way in Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Since that work, little has been done to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon of sexual violence even though feminist thought has developed increasingly sophisticated analytical approaches. These advances make it possible to render new insights about rape and sexual violence and begin to correct the flaws inherent in previous theories. While recognizing the importance of past theories about rape, we must engage with new tools and new paradigms to arrive at a more complex and nuanced understanding of the role sexual violence plays in the everyday lives of women.
