ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to set the scene for the rest of the book by looking at the emergence of date rape as an issue against the background of the way public thinking on rape has changed over the last twenty years or so. I start by pointing out that although public attitudes have shifted towards feminist views of rape (for example, that rape is 9 serious crime, that a woman’s general sexual history has no relevance to whether or not rape has been committed, etc.), British court procedures have not kept pace. In particular, there is a vast gulf between the claims made on the basis of various surveys that date and acquaintance rape is very extensive, and the relatively low numbers of convictions in British courts. I then look briefly at some of the theories used to account for rape, noting the changes in the theoretical scene made by feminist interventions since the mid1970s, but also making some comments on the ability of the theories to explain date rape. I then move on to look at British legal definitions of rape, and ask where date rape might fit. Finally, I justify my approach of considering rape as a moral rather than a legal category. The definition of date rape is a major substantive issue which I wish to leave to the next chapter. For the purposes of this chapter it suffices to recall the definition from the introduction, i.e. date rape is ‘a specific type of acquaintance rape that involves a victim and a perpetrator who have some level of romantic relationship between them’ .1 Note that the stress is on some level of pre-existing relationship of a romantic sort, rather than specifically that the event happens on a date, and that date rape will be narrower than acquaintance rape because it excludes non-romantic acquaintances.
