What Makes Rape a Crime Against All Women?
A crime against a person, not a piece of property
Imagine you’ve heard warnings your whole life. Don’t walk alone at night. Don’t dress that way. Watch your drink. If something bad happens, what were you wearing? These messages teach girls that they are responsible for staying safe, while something dangerous lurks everywhere. For centuries, nearly no one talked openly about that danger. Then, starting in the 1970s, feminist activists and thinkers decided to break the silence. They organized speak-outs where women shared experiences that had been hidden, and they began to show that rape is not rare. Research today confirms what they said: in one large U.S. study, over 18% of women reported being raped or experiencing an attempted rape at some point in their lives. Most were attacked by someone they knew—a partner, a date, a friend—not by a stranger jumping from the bushes. And very few rapists are ever punished; conviction rates in the United States have been estimated as low as two to nine percent.
Feminist philosophers and activists also made a revolutionary move. For much of recorded history, women were seen as the property of men, and rape was treated like a property crime against a father or husband. A raped woman was less valuable, and the law required compensation to the man who “owned” her. The idea that a husband could rape his wife didn’t exist, because marriage was thought to give the husband permanent sexual access. Enslaved women were considered rapeable at will by their owners. Feminists insisted on a different understanding: rape is a crime against the woman herself—against her body, her freedom, her personhood. This shift changed laws, courts, and the way people think about violence.
One attack, or part of a bigger system?
Feminist views on rape spread out along a line from liberal to radical. On one end, liberal feminists think of rape as a gender-neutral assault on a person’s autonomy. It’s like other violent crimes: one person violates another’s rights. The focus is on the harm done to an individual victim. On the other end, radical feminists see rape as something more—a central pillar of patriarchy, the social system where men hold most positions of power, and where control and dominance are seen as masculine ideals. In this view, rape isn’t just bad luck or a few bad men; it’s a practice that helps keep women as a group under male control.
Radical feminists add a few crucial ideas. They argue that rape is one of several forms of male sexual violence that work together, like a coordinated set of tools, to maintain women’s oppression. They also tend to see a continuum between rape and much “normal” heterosexual activity—meaning the line between forced sex and consensual sex is often blurred by pressure, unequal power, and the assumption that female submission equals consent. Finally, many radical feminists examine how rape connects with racism and colonialism, showing that it isn’t only a weapon of patriarchy but also of other systems of domination. Both liberal and radical perspectives have shaped laws and activism, and the tension between them remains live.
The consent puzzle: when does “yes” really mean yes?
Most legal and social definitions of rape rest on the idea of consent: a person must agree to sexual activity, reversing the standing rule that you can’t touch someone else’s body without permission. But what counts as consent? For a long time, courts and ordinary people assumed that a woman’s silence, her clothing, where she went, or her past sexual choices meant she was consenting—or even “asking for it.” Feminists strongly reject that. They argue that consent must be an active and affirmative “yes,” not just the absence of a “no.” Some philosophers prefer a performative account of consent: it’s something you do or say, not just a hidden mental state. After all, what a person wears or where they go doesn’t tell anyone what’s in their mind.
But things get more complicated. If a woman says “yes” because a man threatens to harm her, that’s clearly not meaningful consent. What about nonviolent threats? For instance, a boss who says a promotion depends on sex, or a landlord who threatens eviction, or a partner who makes life miserable unless she agrees. Radical feminists argue that in a patriarchal society, men often hold power over women’s jobs, homes, and well-being, so many kinds of pressure can undermine real choice. Some go further, suggesting that quid pro quo sexual harassment (sex demanded in exchange for a benefit) can be a form of rape. Others extend this thinking to prostitution, seeing the economic pressures that push women into it as a kind of coercion. These are heated debates, and not all feminists agree.
If he thought she said yes, is it still rape?
The criminal law usually requires mens rea—Latin for “guilty mind.” In rape, that means prosecutors must show not only that sex was nonconsensual, but that the man had a certain state of mind about her lack of consent. What should that state of mind be? One old view, from a famous 1976 English court case, said a man isn’t guilty if he honestly believed the woman was consenting, no matter how unreasonable that belief was under the circumstances. Most jurisdictions now use a more moderate standard: the belief must be reasonable. But who decides what’s reasonable?
The philosopher Lois Pineau (20th c.) argued that judgments about reasonableness should be based on a healthy model of sexual interaction. She called the common picture the “aggressive-contractual model,” where women’s flirting is seen as a promise to have sex, male desire is unstoppable, and women aren’t trustworthy. Instead, Pineau proposed communicative sexuality: an approach where partners check in, talk, and pay attention throughout the encounter, treating each other with care and respect. If a man doesn’t communicate and just assumes consent, Pineau argued, his belief is unreasonable. Some feminist legal thinkers, like Catharine MacKinnon (1946–), go even further. They say rape should be a strict liability crime—no mens rea requirement at all—because men are often trained not to notice what women want, so any “reasonable belief” standard will just be filtered through sexist assumptions. This remains deeply controversial.
Why rape hurts all women, not just the victim
Rape isn’t something that only harms the person attacked. Because over 90% of victims are female and almost all perpetrators are male, many feminists argue that rape harms women as a group. It functions as an institution—a structured social practice with unwritten rules about who can do what to whom. The philosopher Claudia Card (1940–2015) compared it to terrorism. Like a terrorist campaign, rape has two targets: the direct victim, who suffers unspeakably, and the wider population of women who receive a message: obey the rules, stay restricted, or you will be next.
This institution creates a protection racket. Men—the same group who create the danger—offer women “protection” in exchange for obedience and loyalty. A woman’s conformity to feminine rules (wearing modest clothes, avoiding certain places, not being alone with men) supposedly earns her a shield; if she steps outside those rules and is raped, she’s blamed for inviting it. Even women who don’t feel personally afraid have been terrorized into following the rules, Card pointed out. The fear of rape molds girls into pre-victims: hesitant, self-surveilling, trained to see their own bodies as dangerously provocative. That fear also intersects with racism. In U.S. history, white men raped enslaved African-American women with total impunity—a tool of terror that reinforced white domination. Racist stereotypes defined black women as always “available” and black men as savagely oversexed, ideas that still affect whose pain is taken seriously. Colonial violence against Native American women relied similarly on rape to break down communities and impose hierarchy. So rape is not just a patriarchal weapon; it also serves racism and colonialism.
Your fears, your rules, and why it’s not your fault
You’ve probably heard the same warnings this article opened with. Maybe you’ve been told to cover up, to be careful, to never go out alone. Those warnings are part of the institution feminists describe: they put the responsibility on you to avoid being raped, while letting the people who commit violence off the hook. But feminist thinkers from both the liberal and radical traditions insist that the real issue is not your choices—it’s a culture that normalizes male aggression, excuses perpetrators, and disbelieves victims. These ideas have already changed laws, making it harder to bring up a victim’s sexual history in court or require her to have physically fought back. They’ve also fueled movements like #MeToo, where millions broke the silence and showed that rape and harassment are ordinary parts of many lives. Understanding the deeper wrongs of rape—the way it terrorizes groups, entrenches inequality, and steals bodily autonomy—gives you a lens to question the rules you’ve been taught and to demand a world where freedom doesn’t mean living in fear.
Think about it
- If a person says yes to sex because they’re afraid of losing their job, do you think that’s real consent? Why or why not?
- Should it matter what the person who forced sex believed about consent, as long as the victim didn’t actually want it?
- Why do you think people often blame the victim for being raped instead of blaming the rapist?
