Unwanted intimacy violent sexual transfers in British and American societies 1870s to 1970s

Abstract

Perpetrators of unwanted sexual intimacies assault our histories. Their violence is historically specific and, as such, alters form through time. This article examines the sexual abuser as interpreted in the past. Whether understood as an inheritance from the evolutionary past, evidence of a pathological faultline, or proof of a perverse situational adaptation, the great clash between different forms of truth or competing visions of what it means to be human exposes crucial shifts in the accommodation of sexual violence within British and American societies between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Keywords:

• rape
• sexual violence
• science
• criminology
• war
• psychopath

Notes

1 This phrase has been borrowed from Ann J. Cahill's remarkable book, Rethinking Rape (2001: 13). She used it to refer to the body of the rape victim, but I wish to apply it to the body of the male perpetrator.

2 See, for example, Hartley (1920: 97 – 98).

3 See ‘Rape, Murder, and Suicide’ (1835: 3).

4 See Report (1805: 7).

5 See ‘A Novel Test of Sexual Intercourse’ (1877: 565).

6 See ‘Treatment of Sex Offenders’ (1954: 981).

7 See my forthcoming book, Rape: A Cultural History (2007).

8 Arthur E. ‘Gene’ Woodley, Jr. interviewed in Terry (1985: 251).

9 For a statement of this in the context of the war in the former Yugoslavia, see Mezey (1994: 583 – 84).

10 For example, see Blackman, giving an example of two British soldiers in Germany after the war.

11 Unnamed colonel, quoted from Pym (1917: 29 – 30).

12 See my forthcoming book, Rape: A Cultural History (2007).

13 See Culbertson (1995: 179). She is referring to victims of sexual violence.