Challenging Narratives of the Anti-Rape Movement’s Decline

Abstract

A recent trend in scholarship characterizes the anti-rape movement as founded with radical goals and achieving success at reforming rape laws, but then declining because of co-optation by the state. This article challenges narratives of decline in light of the history of the anti-rape movement and current anti-rape activism. By focusing their critique on criminal justice and therapeutic approaches to sexual violence, and failing to account for the diversity of the anti-rape movement, advocates for narratives of decline ignore parts of the movement that challenge the state and other parts that use broader cultural and community-based strategies to end rape.