Female Sexuality and the Law

The treatment of women by the law, whether as victims or offenders, is based on certain attitudes towards female sexuality that have influenced legal thinking since 1800. The aim of this book, originally published in 1981, reissued here with a new preface, was to expose and investigate these attitudes and to show how the law has subtly but inexorably been used as an instrument of social control over women and their sexual behaviour.

The study focuses on the treatment of victims of rape and sexual assault. Within the legal process, it is the area of discretion which is as important as the actual formal content of the law. Why is it that one man may be imprisoned for the daring of a kiss, whereas countless others have escaped with fines and admonitions for the most brutal assaults? What influence can a woman’s personal background, material circumstances or mental condition be allowed to have on the case? How brutally assaulted does a woman have to be to prove beyond all doubt that she did not secretly desire the assault.

The scope of the book encompasses law, sociology, psychoanalysis and medicine, and paints a startling picture of the degree of prejudice and masculine interest still woven into the fabric of the law. Today it can be read in its historical context.