Loss of Control

This week in class, we were able to deconstruct some of the more “radical” feminist discourses concerning the relationship between sexual assault and gendered power dynamics. While we worked through Mackinnon’s Rape: On Coercion and Consent, we questioned whether it was inherently possible for consent to exist at all within the heterosexual context. After all, if consent stands on the foundation of equality between two or more parties, how can it exist at the intersection of a social framework that hinges on male domination and a legal framework that prioritizes/relies on the male perspective? Mackinnon states that “the crime of rape is defined and adjudicated from the male standpoint, presuming that forced sex is sex and that consent to a man is feely given by a woman” (180). Evidently, this reinforces the disproportionate distribution of power but also perpetuates/prolongs the loss of control after sexual assault itself. 

Mackinnon's description of this “measuring consent from the socially reasonable, meaning objective mans, point of view” (181), demonstrates the legal system’s ironic regard for male agreement/approval as necessary to labeling something as “real rape”. In this context, through the eyes of the justice system, a woman’s own lived experience is not her own. She is stripped of her authority and control over her own experience and, consequently, how it is labelled, dealt with and defined. The legitimization of the survivor’s assault rests in the hands of the perpetrator, in the “meaning of the act to the assailant” (180) or rather the meaning of the act as claimed by the perpetrator, something that is out of the survivor’s control.

I thought that this was particularly interesting because I believe that in popular discourse surrounding consent today, the concept of having the right to control our own bodies (and what happens to our bodies) through individual choice seems to be vital. Furthermore, when discussing the healing process, emphasis on re-establishing a sense of control is key as supporters are strongly urged not to tell survivors what “the right thing to do” is or to do anything that would take away the survivor’s agency. Therefore, we can see a huge discrepancy in the approach taken by sexual assault centres (for example)  and the legal system in this context, both of which are supposed to have survivors’ best interest at the centre of their structures.