Because rape isn't a crime, you see...
Jun. 7th, 2010 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalMy parents were here this weekend, and since the only time I do anything touristy is when my parents come to visit, we went to the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. The museum itself was really interesting and fun, but I was most fascinated by the glaring omission of anything to do with rape IN A CRIME MUSEUM. I blame Gabs for making me all hypersensitive to feminist issues, lol, because as we were walking up the steps to enter the museum, I thought, "I wonder if they'll address rape at all." And... no. They didn't.
The museum chronicles the history of crime (though it's more of a highlights version than a comprehensive history) that includes medieval times, the Salem witch trials, the Wild West, the "public enemies" of the Depression era, mafia families, and notorious serial killers, as well as sections on crime scene investigation and forensics, imprisonment and famous prisons, capital punishment, cold cases, and America's Most Wanted. There were exhibits about murder, kidnapping, robbery, arson, identity theft, counterfeiting, assassinations, fraud, terrorism, and more - and yet, the only mentions of rape were incidental references in, say, the bio of a serial killer who also raped his victims. No exhibit, no statistics, no profiles of cases. Nothing about other forms of sexual assault or domestic violence.
Not exactly a surprise, but still a disappointment. And unfortunately, completely representative of society's attitudes toward rape.
The museum chronicles the history of crime (though it's more of a highlights version than a comprehensive history) that includes medieval times, the Salem witch trials, the Wild West, the "public enemies" of the Depression era, mafia families, and notorious serial killers, as well as sections on crime scene investigation and forensics, imprisonment and famous prisons, capital punishment, cold cases, and America's Most Wanted. There were exhibits about murder, kidnapping, robbery, arson, identity theft, counterfeiting, assassinations, fraud, terrorism, and more - and yet, the only mentions of rape were incidental references in, say, the bio of a serial killer who also raped his victims. No exhibit, no statistics, no profiles of cases. Nothing about other forms of sexual assault or domestic violence.
Not exactly a surprise, but still a disappointment. And unfortunately, completely representative of society's attitudes toward rape.
no subject
Date: Jun. 7th, 2010 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 7th, 2010 04:34 pm (UTC)Now, if it were Robert Pattinson... His fans are ridiculous, so I would totally not be surprised if actual sexual assault were involved.
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Date: Jun. 7th, 2010 04:15 pm (UTC)This makes me sad.
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Date: Jun. 7th, 2010 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 7th, 2010 11:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 8th, 2010 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 7th, 2010 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 7th, 2010 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 7th, 2010 07:03 pm (UTC)It's a history that is in dire need of having light shed on it.
no subject
Date: Jun. 8th, 2010 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 8th, 2010 01:31 pm (UTC)It's certainly got some questionable aspects - for example, taking someone's virginity was seen as a far worse crime because it "defiled" her, with the unspoken assumption that if she weren't a virgin, she had nothing to "protect". There's also the concept that the act of marriage confers perpetual consent to sex with your spouse, which wasn't formally abolished until the 20th century. But the idea that the concept of a woman's own consent wasn't recognised at all doesn't seem to be correct.
This is quoted from Bracton's The Laws and Customs of England written some time around 1230, which itself is quoting from the Laws of King Aethelstan dating back to around 920:
Man-made as well as divine law forbids the rape of women. In ancient times the practice was as follows: if a man meets a woman or comes across her somewhere, whether she is alone or has companions, he is to let her go in peace; if he touches her indecorously he breaks the king's ordinance and shall give compensation in accordance with the judgment of the county court; if he throws her upon the ground against her will, he forfeits the king's grace; if he shamelessly disrobes her and places himself upon her, he incurs the loss of all his possessions; and if he lies with her, he incurs the loss of his life and members. (Athelstan).
By the law of the Romans, the Franks and the English, even his horse shall to his ignominy be put to shame upon its scrotum and its tail, which shall be cut off as close as possible to the buttocks. If he has a dog with him, a greyhound or some other, it shall be put to shame in the same way; if a hawk, let it lose its beak, its claws and its tail. The land and money which the ravisher lost through his amercement shall be given to the woman, the king warranting the whole to her. And if she was a whore ['meretrix'] before, she was not a whore then, since by crying out against his wicked deed she refused her consent.
The last line is particularly important, saying that even if a woman is a shameless slut, she still has the right to protest against rape and refuse consent to sex, and the law should take her seriously. (The word 'meretrix' was used in Mediaeval Latin to mean 'prostitute' but it carried the more general meaning of someone who slept around and didn't obey the conventions of sexual decorum, rather than only referring specifically to people who sold sex for money; hence presumably why the academic translation I quoted rendered the word as the pejorative 'whore'.)
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Date: Jun. 8th, 2010 03:17 pm (UTC)(because in most ancient laws I ever had a look on, it's at best a sidenote (defining if the woman has to suffer the same punishment or not), the consent of her "owner" being the part that was considered important.
And when was the first law instated that persecutes rape within wedlock? (*Shamelessly uses access to historian*)
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Date: Jun. 8th, 2010 05:35 pm (UTC)At least as far as English law goes, part of the confusion is that there were three conflicting sources of law: traditional custom, where there wasn't really any place for strict definitions; canon law, imposed by the Church; and Statute law, laid down by the King and Parliament. As far as I can discover, the earliest formal legal definition of rape in England came from King Edward I's Statute of Westminster in 1275:
"The King prohibits that anyone should ravish or take away by force any underage girl (neither by her own consent, nor without), nor any wife or maiden of full age nor any other woman against her will."
So consent was there from the beginning.
However, when we come to canon law, the picture gets murkier. The Church considered any sexual activity between unmarried people to be sinful, and it had the power to impose fines on offenders. Canon law used the same word raptus, which is the origin of our own word rape, to describe both what we'd call rape today -- but also instances of seduction and even elopement where the woman was consenting, but acting without the sanction of society and her parents or husband. That's why mediaeval court cases have instances of both the man and the woman being punished for a crime of "raptus", or even them being ordered to marry each other to make things legal. The idea that a woman was 'defiled' by having sex outside marriage, and that this, rather than the question of her consent, was what most deserved punishment, was therefore much stronger in the writings of Church authorities like Gratian than in secular law codes of the time.
Of course, canon law applied everywhere in Europe while English statute law was obviously confined to England. I don't know what the secular laws in mediaeval Austria or the Heiliges Römisches Reich had to say on the matter... (or what Roman law said).
I don't know the answer to your last question, I'm afraid.
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Date: Jun. 8th, 2010 05:47 pm (UTC)Though in this text consent doesn't make a difference as it looks like.
And yes, what you say about the church laws is pretty much what my impression was from the sources I had heard from so far. That the sex outside marriage part was the thing that was bothersome and that the consent issue at best came into play to decide how to punish the woman.
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Date: Jun. 8th, 2010 06:13 pm (UTC)It does if the woman is "of full age". The text I quoted actually lays down two separate rules:
Sex with a girl who is underage is illegal whether she consents or not.
Sex with a woman of legal age is illegal if she does not consent.
the consent issue at best came into play to decide how to punish the woman.
Though bear in mind that it worked both ways... the man was guilty of a crime whether the woman consented or not, though he could naturally expect a more severe punishment if she didn't. In effect, canon law prohibited women from giving their consent (outside marriage), it didn't say that they had no right to refuse it (again, except within marriage).
no subject
Date: Jun. 8th, 2010 06:28 pm (UTC)Misread something, yes that seems clear enough.
it didn't say that they had no right to refuse it (again, except within marriage).
That's why I asked for that particular situation, because it's where the crucial difference comes in, isn't it? The point where rape is constiuted by nothing but the absence of consent.
I looked it up and it looks like the first account of a law against spousal rape is from 1932, Poland. It becoming widely illegal in the west around 1970.
So in the beginning, it was a violation of property and religious convention, then at some point consent entered the picture and became a more important factor over the years, with finally becoming the defining quality when spousal rape was outlawed.
It really would be an interesting history to see pieced together.