Listening to Women's Voices

This chapter is an examination of feminist standpoint epistemology and questions of objectivity in relation to sociological studies regarding rape. More specifically, it examines two of Christina Hoff Sommers’s objections to the Koss study, the source of the well-known statistic that one in four women is the victim of rape or attempted rape in contemporary American society, which raises crucial issues concerning epistemology. The chapter argues that Sommers employs a naive meaning of “listening to women’s voices,” one that implies a problematic version of standpoint epistemology. It then discusses an alternative and more sophisticated account of standpoint epistemology and argue that on this version, the Koss study does listen to women’s voices, and in doing so can be a source for continued important feminist research on rape. The chapter addresses questions about the meaning and value of objectivity raised by Sommers’s charge of “advocacy research.”