When sexual violence against a woman is inflicted, how should the law conceptualise and formulate that offence? Should such an offence require proof of the violation of the chastity or the dignity of the woman?1 If it is based on chastity and virginity, the offence is perceived as being against the honour of family, especially the father or the husband, reducing the woman to mere property. If it is based on dignity, it is perceived as being against the person of the woman and is built upon a woman's understanding of abuse and violation of her bodily integrity. Should the offence of rape be based on a gender-neutral, gender-protective or a gender- corrective model of equality?

This book analyzes perceptions of self, power, agency, and gender of Muslim women in a rural community of Bangladesh. Rural women’s limited power and agency has been subsumed within the male dominated Islamic discourses on gender. However, many Muslim women have their own alternative discourses surrounding power and agency. Sarwar Alam intertwines an exploration of these power dynamics with reading of the Qur’an and Hadith, and analyzes how Muslim women’s perception of power and gender are linked to their relationship with religion.

Divided into three parts, this book examines the relationship between law and culture from various perspectives, both theoretical and empirical. Part I outlines the framework for further considerations and includes new, innovative conceptualizations of two ideas that are essential to the topic of law and culture: legal culture and customary law. Both of these reappear later in the more empirically oriented chapters of Parts II and III. Part II includes chapters on the relationships between law, customs, and culture, drawing heavily on the tradition and achievements of the anthropology of law and touching on important problems of multiculturalism, legal pluralism, and cultural defense. It focuses on the more intangible meaning of culture, while Part III addresses its more material, tangible aspects and the issue of cultural production, as well as its intersection with law.

International Approaches to Rape gives an overview of rape law and policy in nine different countries, including the United States and Canada. Many governments have begun to take rape more seriously than in the past and have started to implement wide-ranging reforms; this book describes those reforms and assesses the degree to which they have been successful. Introducing readers to various national perspectives on rape, the contributors outline a comparative approach that highlights the similarities and differences between countries, contexts, laws, issues, policies, and interventions.

Despite its both physical and psychological harm, marital rape has not obtained recognition as a social, legal or institutional problem in some countries. In many cultures, sexual relation is part of marriage setup. It is considered unnatural for a woman to refuse to have sex with her husband creating a misunderstanding that marital rape is impossibility. Stereotypes about women and sex such as women "enjoy forced sex," women say 'no' when they really mean 'yes', and the wife has the 'duty' to have sex continued to be reinforced in many cultures. Such messages not only mislead men in to believing that they should ignore a woman's protest, they also mislead women in to believing that they must have 'sent the wrong signal', blaming themselves for unwanted sexual encounters, or believing that they are bad wives for not enjoying sex against their will. So apart from its economic and cultural significance, the special 'contract' called marriage grants husbands impunity for the crime of 'raping' their wives. True most countries have abolished the long lived exemption of marital rape but there are countries like Ethiopia where the exemption is still alive. This book shows the way forward

In 1968, Pope Paul VI published Humanae vitae, the encyclical that reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s continued opposition to the use of any form of artificial contraception. In Sex, Violence, and Justice: Contraception and the Catholic Church, Aline Kalbian outlines the Church’s position against artificial contraception as principally rooted in three biblical commandments. In addition, Kalbian shows how discourses about sexuality, both in the Church and in culture, are often tied to discourses of violence, harm and social injustice. These ties reveal that sexual ethics is never just about sex; it is about the vulnerability of the human body and the challenges humans face in trying to maintain just and loving relationships. As Kalbian explores and contrasts the Catholic Church’s stance toward condoms and HIV/AIDS, emergency contraception in cases of rape, and contraception and population control, she underscores how contraception is not just a private decision, but a deeply social, cultural, and political one, with profound global implications. Kalbian concludes that even the most tradition-bound communities rely on justificatory schemes that are fluid and diverse. Taking this diversity seriously helps us to understand how religious traditions change and develop. Sex, Violence, and Justice will be of interest to students and scholars of Catholic moral theology, sexual ethics, religion and society, gender and religion, as well as to specialists and practitioners in public health.

A new edition of the 1988 classic text that exposed the extreme prevalence of rape in America, coining the term acquaintance rape and establishing the disturbing statistics on sexual assault that still hold just as true today—now featuring an original preface from Gloria Steinem, a new introduction by Salamishah Tillet, an updated afterword by Mary P. Koss, PH.D., as well as an updated resources section. “Essential. . . . It is nonpolemical, lucid, and speaks eloquently not only to the victims of acquaintance rape but to all those caught in its net.”— Philadelphia Inquirer In 1988, Robin Warshaw wrote I Never Called It Rape, the ground-breaking book that revealed a staggering truth: 25% of women were the victims of rape or attempted rape. Over 80% of these women knew their assailants. Warhsaw based her reportage on the first large-scale study into rape ever, conducted by Ms. Magazine in the late 80s. Thirty years later, we now have a wealth of statistics on rape. The disturbing truth is that the figures have not diminished. That our culture enables rape is not just shown by the numbers—the outbreak of allegations against serial rapists from Bill Cosby to Harvey Weinstein and the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump, a man who was recorded bragging about sexual assault, have further amplified this horrifying truth. With over 80,000 copies sold to date, I Never Called It Rape has served as a guide to understanding rape as a cultural phenomenon for tens of thousands—providing women and men with strategies to address our rape endemic; survivors with the context and resources to help them heal from their experiences; and pulling the wool from all our eyes on the pervasiveness of rape and sexual assault today. As relevant today as when it was first published, this new edition features Warshaw’s original report and her 1994 Introduction, as well as an original Preface from Gloria Steinem, a new Introduction by Salamishah Tillet on how the cultural landscape has evolved since the 1980s, an updated Afterword by Mary P. Koss, PH.D., examining the ways she would approach the research she did for Ms. differently today, as well as an updated resources section.

The Flame of Yahweh offers a thorough exploration of gender relationships and sexual activity in the Old Testament. Topics include sexuality in Eden, the elevation vs. the denigration of women, exclusivity vs. adultery and pre-marital sex, permanence vs. divorce and remarriage, intimacy vs. incest, and sexuality in the Song of Songs.