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Stopping Rape: Successful Survival Strategies
Stopping Rape is a study of how assaulted women avoided rape or were unable to avoid it. Publicizing this information may enable other women to avoid rape by using the strategies of women who successfully avoided rape, suggest the authors, long-time feminist sociologist Pauline Bart and researcher and and battered women's movement worker Patricia O'Brien. The material is presented as a study with charts and graphs, but it is clearly written, not just for social scientists. The women's stories are painful, but the emphasis on how to devise a strategy of dealing with a rapist keeps them from being just a collection of horrors.
Bart and O'Brien interviewed 94 Chicago area women who responded to their ads or heard about the study through word-of-mouth. Eighty-seven percent of the respondents are white, 15 percent are Black and two percent are Hispanics. Most (71 percent) were raped by strangers.
A surprisingly large number of the women -- 51 -- avoided rape. The book compares the strategies these women used with strategies used by women who did not avoid rape. The respondents themselves decided whether to describe themselves as rape avoiders or raped. Their definitions of rape might not be the same as many feminists' definitions, however. Virtually all of the women felt they had avoided rape if they avoided penetration by a penis or fellatio -- and did not define penetration by fingers or other objects or forced cunnilingus as rape. The number of successful rape avoiders would be smaller if there was a broader definition of rape.
But unquestionably the book shows both what strategies help avoid rape and what strategies enabled the women assaulted to avoid doing some things they did not want to do even if they were not able to avoid rape. For example, one women was able to persuade the rapist to withdraw before ejaculation because she did not want to become pregnant. Several women were able to reject a second or third forcible assault (from the same man, in the same incident) or were able to prevent a friend who was with them from being raped also.
This study, and a few others...