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This chapter sets out to explore whether the lineage of social change and social development has led to any change in public attitudes towards female rape victims. People campaigned for the amendments in the rape laws and raised their voices to support concern for the security and dignity of women but overlooked the reality of the attitudes that victims face when they seek help. Victims are continued to be seen as a scar on the fabric of society which bears strong cultural and social norms echoing patriarchal values. The research study collected data from a sample of 130 family members of female victims of rape and 100 people from areas where rapes were predominantly reported in Delhi City. The findings that follow are that: those sampled reacted insensitively to the victims of rape. In addition to this they increased control over their female family members fearing that they would be raped. For those in the study, rape continues to be viewed as bringing shame to victims and their families.

Monika Fabijanska's groundbreaking exhibition The Un-Heroic Act showcased 20 representative artworks to survey the iconographic variety of representations of rape in contemporary women's art in the United States since the 1960s. Organized by the Andrew and Anya Shiva Gallery at John Jay College, City University of New York in 2018, the exhibition's wide range of pieces was brought together in dialogue for the first time to confront prevailing sexual violence misconceptions, rape myths, and to fill the void in women's art history.

In this chapter, Fabijanska is interviewed to glean insight into the curatorial strategies she deploys as challenges and sensitivities surrounding rape play out in the context of an art exhibition and catalog. Although The Un-Heroic Act has attracted substantial media coverage and scholarly attention, the role of curatorial intention and considerations in mediating difficult content to viewers in an educational setting, and shaping understanding of a complex issue, has not yet been explored in depth. Through this interview, these pertinent questions are unpacked.

Addressing some of the curatorial challenges she faced, Fabijanska brings to light the value that exhibition texts, audience engagement programs, contextualizing comments, and teaching hold. She shares her careful selection process, highlighting the necessity of taking a collaborative approach and working toward crafting “safe spaces” within which difficult questions can be broached.

This chapter deals with the concept of intersectionality with particular reference to the interconnectedness of gender, class and caste discrimination in India. Even though much of the work on intersectionality has been carried out by scholars from the United States with specific emphasis on gender and race, this framework can be applied universally to understand the multiple axes of power within a society that results in further marginalisation of certain groups of women. The 16th December 2012 Nirbhaya rape case forms the core of this chapter as it resulted in one of the biggest gender movements in India.

In order to develop a critical analysis a case study approach was adopted and data collected by analysing online news reports, videos, articles on blogs and posts on social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter.

The findings of the research showed interesting intersections of gender and class with relation to this case, which has not been deeply analysed in order to understand the reasons behind the public uprising which resulted in the government action.

It is important to look at gender violence in India through the lens of intersectionality since often it is the result of multiple levels of discrimination on the basis of class, caste, religion and geography. This is important to recognise in order to ensure that activism, education and changes in policy help to resolve problems related to extreme oppression and violence against women across the country.

I intend to provide an understanding of the possibilities that exist for the judgment of wartime rape at the international, domestic and in-between levels.

What is required is an examination of prosecutions and judgments of the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda), the SCSL (Special Court for Sierra Leone) and the ICC (International Criminal Court). I employ an international law and gender studies approach.

To count as a crime against humanity, war rape must have been committed as part of a widespread attack on a civilian population. This reflects the idea that war rape is not based solely in the violation of a woman’s body. The problem is that war rapes occur absent the explicit purpose to destroy a community. This chapter provides insight to the historical background of wartime rape to scholars, feminist legal theorists, sociologists, NGOs and lawyers.

By alerting us to the fact that the international community appears to elevate violations of groups or communities over the violation of individual women during conflict, the chapter suggests that the human rights of women may not be fully protected.

In 2001, the rape of “baby Tshepang” triggered a media frenzy in the small community of Louisvale, located in the Northern Cape of South Africa. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how gender discrimination and colonial discourse framed the way the rape of Tshepang was reported in print media.

From the newspaper archives of the Cape Town National Library, the University of Cape Town Library as well as newspaper articles found online, this chapter offers a reading of articles printed between 2001 and 2004. Patterns of troping were identified from the articles examined, and a number of themes were selected to be further examined using a gender perspective. Work already done by African feminist scholars on the grammar of rape was applied to deconstruct the ways in which the media presented this specific case. This chapter works with Sara Ahmed’s (2004) thoughts on shame, Linda Alcoff’s (1991) writing on Othering, Helen Moffett (2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2006) and Jane Bennett’s (1997) work on gender and rape, as well as Achille Mbembe’s (2001) notion of facticity within colonial discourse.

This chapter argues that the ways in which the media understood this event were through well-worn stereotypes of Africa and women. An overarching theme of shame dominated how journalists represented the event. The label “A Town of Shame” stuck onto Louisvale through the mobilization of colonial and gender discourse. Quickly the town was known for its “barbaric” and “savage” existence; a town with no future and a disgrace to the country. Essentialist thinking about women was used to condemn and blame the mother of Tshepang, concretizing the myth that rape is always the fault of women.

Through relying on palatable stereotypes that create a self and Other, we move further away from engaging in the difficult questions of understanding rape. When rape becomes a spectacle, detached from the greater global socioeconomic realities, we deny our responsibilities of difficult and multilayered engagement.

This chapter explores the challenges associated with proving an absence of consent in rape cases involving non-violent sexual coercion. It is argued that the continuing influence of the ‘real rape’ stereotype perpetuates an expectation in jurors’ minds that a ‘real rape’ will be attended by significant levels of physical violence and/or serious injury. The chapter considers rape law in Ireland and England and Wales to examine how existing law might be reformed to improve the potential of appropriately punishing experiences of non-consensual sexual intercourse which might be categorized as sexual coercion.

The need to revisit the current law in this area is particularly pronounced now that domestic abuse law has been reformed to recognize coercive control. This leads to the incongruous situation where coercive and controlling behaviour is recognized in the context of domestic abuse but it remains very difficult to successfully prosecute offences involving sexual coercion. The chapter discusses a number of reforms which would improve the prevailing law in this area and better align the approach to coercion in domestic abuse and sexual abuse contexts. Reforms proposed include: further developing legislative and non-legislative guidance on consent, introducing a specific offence of sexual coercion, and exploring the potential of prosecuting sexual coercion within intimate partner relationships as domestic abuse, rather than as a sexual offence.

The conflict in Darfur reached crisis proportions in 2003 when rebel groups began to attack Government of Sudan forces. These attacks were motivated by years of neglect by the government and by political polarization of the area. Despite ceasefires and peace talks, the violence continues in 2018. This essay examined the crisis in Darfur from the perspective of social structure. Three social structures were identified: global climate change, race, and gender. Although there are significant complexities associated with these three social structures, possible paths to agency for the people of Darfur are discussed.

Feminist criminologists are well acquainted with how their research on sexual harms and gendered forms of victimisation may serve as powerful levers for punitive agendas. In recent years, culturalist interpretations of sexual violence have become key themes in debates on migration and integration in liberal welfare democracies, such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In this, complex issues of gender, ethnicity and power are involved, and the balancing of these, both analytically and ethically, poses a challenge to feminists in their attempts to contribute to social change. This chapter will, based on examples from debates in Sweden, present and discuss how argumentation about sexual freedom and integrity is enlisted in attempts to reinforce borders and ideas about dangerous Others, and outline how a fruitful meeting between criminology and feminism can advance the scholarship on sexual violence.