Male Rape is a Feminist Issue

This book seeks to problematize knowledge and practices regarding ‘male rape’ and its relationship to feminism, examining this issue from a Foucauldian perspective. Feminist constructions of ‘male rape’ can plausibly be claimed to operate as a ‘regime of truth’, but one must question whether this is running counter to patriarchy.

Claire Cohen || Rape has long been a feminist issue. So apparently uncontentious is this statement that it is often held as a truism. However, one must attend to the assumptions inherent within this construct. Just as feminists highlighted gender bias in language, whereby certain gender-neutral terms were imbued with assumptions of masculinity, so it can be noted that the rise of feminism and its proliferation within victimology has imbued certain categories of victimization as intrinsically female — this is especially the case with rape. Hence the need to denote the male in this ‘gender-neutral’ crime.

Cohen, C. (2014). Male rape is a feminist issue: Feminism, governmentality and male rape. Springer.