the feminist librarian reads

Genderbitch Lite: Now With More Rambling!: In case anyone missed what I eventually figured with birth rape...

genderbitch:

feministlibrarian:

genderbitch:

After talking with a bunch of people, I’m just referring to any bodily domain violation that the victim feels is grievous and traumatic enough to warrant the labeling, as rape.

So birth rape is in, so is all the varieties of sexual assault that don’t involve penetration, fondling could be marked…

Yeah, I see “birth rape” as a subcategory designation, similar to “date rape” or “acquaintance rape” or “spousal rape.”  It indicates the location/context of the violation while remaining consistent re: violation of bodily integrity in a sexualized way.

Definately subcategory designation but I wouldn’t even go so far as to say sexualized way. That’s narrowing it down in a way that cuts loose survivors and erases them.

good point, although historically “rape” has meant, at least in Western culture, sexual forms of violence. I’m all for considering the usefulness of broadening that definition, but I think communicating this effectively with a non-feminist-subculture audience may be difficult. Again, not saying it ain’t worth doing, but just that it’s an additional challenge considering the cultural connotations of the word that link it to sex/gender/sexuality-related forms of violence.

I also feel like some brainstorming about language other than “rape” that might be equally useful to describing physical violations is important … getting stuck on using “rape” as the most powerful term to describe violations of bodily integrity might invite us to loose sight of other options available to us as linguistic tools to describe physical violation.

(via punlich)