Marital Rape

Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context

Edited by Kersti Yllö and M. Gabriela Torres

Interpersonal Violence

The contributors are leading scholars in their fields; many have garnered international recognition and awards for their work on gender-based violence.
This is the first book to present ethnographic evidence of marital rape around the world.
Explores the criminalization of marital rape, hotly debated in many countries (e.g., India, Egypt, and Guatemala) across the world.
Presents a model for the cross-cultural understanding of human rights violations.
Provides valuable evidence and guidance to policymakers and front-line workers addressing marital rape.

Marital Rape

Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context

Edited by Kersti Yllö and M. Gabriela Torres

Description

Rape in marriage is a global problem affecting millions of women -- it is still legal in many countries and was only criminalized in all U.S. states in 1993. In much of the world, marital rape is too often understood as an oxymoron due to the fact that the ideology of permanent consent underlies the legal and cultural definitions of sex in marriage. From Vietnam to Guatemala to South Africa and beyond, this volume examines how cultural, legal, public health, and human rights policies and practices impact intimate partner violence. While legal and cultural conceptions of marital rape vary widely -- from criminal assault to wifely duty -- this volume offers evidence from different societies that forced sex undermines the physical and psychological well-being of the women who experience it, regardless of their cultural context.

Globally, the nature of marriage is changing and so are notions of individual choice, love, intimacy, and rigid gender roles. Marital Rape documents wide ranging and fluid understandings of sex, consent, and rape in marriage; such an array of perspectives demands an international and interdisciplinary approach to the study of sex and gender-based violence. This text brings together an international group of scholars from the fields of anthropology, sociology, criminology, law, public health, and human rights; their work points to the importance of understanding the lived experience of sexual violence for the design of effective and culturally sensitive public policy and practice.

Marital Rape

Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context

Edited by Kersti Yllö and M. Gabriela Torres

Interpersonal Violence

Table of Contents

Prologue: Understanding Marital Rape in Global Context
Kersti Yllö

Section I: Conceptualizing the Problem of Marital Rape

Chapter 1: Reconciling Cultural Difference in the Study of Marital Rape
M. Gabriela Torres

Chapter 2: An Overview of Marital Rape Research in the United States: Limitations and Implications for Cross-Cultural Research
Raquel Kennedy Bergen

Chapter 3: Cross-Cultural Studies of Gender-Based Violence: Holistic Approaches for Marital Rape Research
Jennifer R. Wies and Hillary J. Haldane

Section II: The Lived Experience of Rape in Marriage in a Cross-Cultural Context

Chapter 4: Modern Marriage, Masculinity, and Intimate Partner Violence in Nigeria
Daniel Jordan Smith

Chapter 5: Marital Sexual Violence, Structural Vulnerability, and Misplaced Responsibility in Northern Viet Nam
Lynn Kwiatkowski

Chapter 6: Normalizing Suffering, Robadas, Coercive Power, and Marital Unions Among Ladinas in Eastern Guatemala
Cecilia Menjívar

Chapter 7: Marital Rape and the Law: The Condition of Black Township Women in South Africa's Democracy
Judith L. Singleton

Chapter 8: Marital Sexual Violence in Turkey
Henrica A.F.M. (Henriette) Jansen, Ilknur Yüksel-Kaptanoglu, Filiz Kardam, and Banu Ergöçmen

Chapter 9: Rape and the Continuum of Sexual Abuse in Intimate Relationships: Interviews with US Women from Different Social Classes
James Ptacek

Chapter 10: Sexual Murder of Women Intimate Partners in Great Britain
Russell P. Dobash and R. Emerson Dobash

Section III: Public Health, Legal and Human Rights Approaches

Chapter 11: A Feminist Public Health Approach to Marital Rape
Jacquelyn Campbell, Bushra Sabri, Jocelyn Anderson, and Veronica Barcelona de Mendoza

Chapter 12: Marital Rape Laws Globally: Rationales and Snapshots Around the World
Michelle J. Anderson

Chapter 13: Human Rights Meets Intimate Partner Sexual Violence
Monica McWilliams and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Epilogue: Implications for Policy, Practice, and Future Research
M. Gabriela Torres and Kersti Yllö

Marital Rape

Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context

Edited by Kersti Yllö and M. Gabriela Torres

Interpersonal Violence

Author Information

Kersti Yllö, MA, PhD, is Professor of Sociology at Wheaton College (MA), where she held the Henrietta Jennings Chair for Outstanding Teaching, and was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Estonia. She has done research on domestic violence for nearly four decades and has published numerous articles and books including License to Rape: the Sexual Abuse of Wives (with David Finkelhor).

M. Gabriela Torres, MA, PhD, is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton College (MA), and is a specialist in the study of the violence and state formation. Her work focused on Guatemala has been published in numerous journals and edited collections and has been funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Contributors:

Jocelyn Anderson
Johns Hopkins University

Michelle J. Anderson
CUNY School of Law

Veronica Barcelona de Mendoza
Yale School of Nursing

Raquel Kennedy Bergen
St. Joseph's University

Jacquelyn Campbell
Johns Hopkins University

R. Emerson Dobash
University of Manchester

Russell Dobash
University of Manchester

Banu Ergöçmen
Hacettepe Üniversitesi

Hillary J. Haldane
Quinnipiac University

Henrica A.F.M. Jansen
United Nations Population Fund

Filiz Kardam
Çankaya University

Lynn Kwiatkowski
Colorado State University

Monica McWilliams
Ulster University

Cecilia Menjívar
University of Kansas

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
University of Minnesota Law School

James Ptacek
Suffolk University

Bushra Sabri
Johns Hopkins University

Judith L. Singleton
DePaul University

Daniel Jordan Smith
Brown University

M. Gabriela Torres
Wheaton College, MA

Jennifer R. Wies
Eastern Kentucky University

Kersti Yllö
Wheaton College, MA

Ilknur Yüksel-Kaptanoglu
Hacettepe Üniversitesi

Marital Rape

Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context

Edited by Kersti Yllö and M. Gabriela Torres

Interpersonal Violence

Reviews and Awards

"Marital Rape provides an insightful analysis of the laws, cultural norms, and social practices surrounding marital rape throughout the world. It makes clear that true sex equality requires sexual autonomy in marriage. This book will be a valuable resource for social scientists, lawyers, advocates, and government officials." --Jill Elaine Hasday, JD, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Centennial Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School; author of Family Law Reimagined

"Co-edited by two pioneering feminist scholars, Marital Rape helps fill a major gap in the social scientific literature on a topic that continues to receive selective inattention from the media and policymakers. More importantly, this path-breaking volume examines marital rape globally and is interdisciplinary in nature. The editors and contributors should be commended for enhancing our knowledge of one of the world's most compelling social problems." --Walter S. DeKeseredy, MA, PhD, Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, West Virginia University; co-author, Violence against Women in Pornography

"Even though rape within marriage is widespread, research on this phenomenon has been greatly neglected. Marital Rape makes a very important contribution by providing a sophisticated analysis of this form of sexual assault. Taking a comparative perspective, the authors argue that marital rape should be understood in the context of culturally specific ideas about kinship and marriage. The book joins perspectives from anthropology, sociology, human rights, public health, and law to develop an insightful analysis that seeks to reconcile respect for cultural difference with women's entitlement to a good life and human rights." --Sally Engle Merry, MA, PhD, Silver Professor, New York University Department of Anthropology; author of Human Rights and Gender Violence

"Marital Rape leverages the careful ethnographic work of anthropology to document wide ranging and fluid understandings of sex, consent and rape in marriage. Anthropologists in particular point to the importance of understanding the lived experience of sexual violence for the design of effective and culturally sensitive public policy and practice." --Anthropology News

Marital Rape

Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context

Edited by Kersti Yllö and M. Gabriela Torres

Interpersonal Violence

From Our Blog

Marital rape in a global context: from 17th century to today

Sexual violence in marriage has a history as long as the institution of marriage itself. But for millennia, marital rape ' like other forms of sexual assault ' was considered a private trouble not a public issue. Early rape laws defined the assault as a property crime against the husband or father whose wife or daughter was 'defiled.' Under this framework marital rape was an oxymoron since a wife was legally a husband's sexual property.

Posted on November 13, 2017

Read the blog post