Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence

In this intersectional reconceptualization of US rape culture, Alisa Kessel reveals how sexual violence is a political act that preserves and emboldens the dominant sociopolitical order.

The imperative to dominate through rape is unique among crimes against other people. While other violent crimes, such as assault or murder, can be committed out of a material need or desire for security, and may even have political motivations, theft and murder are not exclusively motivated by a desire to dominate others. What convinces perpetrators of rape to dominate through sexual violence? How do perpetrators identify who they are entitled to dominate?

In Rape Fantasies, Alisa Kessel makes the case that to prevent sexual violence in the US and elsewhere, we must confront rape as a crime that is not born of natural sexual appetites, simple miscommunication, or ethical breach. Instead, Kessel argues that rape is a political act, and that the myths and practices of a rape culture identify both who is dominable and who is entitled to dominate. In US rape culture, sexual violence is an essential political tactic to preserve--and, oftentimes, to embolden--hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

Kessel provides an intersectional reconceptualization of rape culture that reveals how it evolves and expands to discipline any group that threatens the sociopolitical order. While most contemporary accounts of rape culture focus on women and girls as the targets of sexual violence, domination through sex can happen along many dimensions. And, consequently, these accounts of rape culture--contrary to their best intentions--actually conceal the victimization of those who do not fit within normalized accounts of rape, particularly those who are subordinated by white supremacy, settler and capitalist exploitation, cisnormativity, and heteronormativity. Original, ambitious, and compelling, Rape Fantasies reveals how an entire culture can reproduce the myths and practices of rape culture and ensure that sexual violence persists as a reliable technique of political domination.

Alisa Kessel is Professor of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound. Her previous work has been published in American Political Science Review, Political Theory (with Michaele Ferguson under the pen-name A. Fergus Kastle-Michaelson III) and Contemporary Political Theory.