Accounting for Rape

Accounting for Rape presents an original perspective on the subject of rape and sexual violence.

The authors scrutinize existing social psychological experimental research on rape, in particular rape perception research, which, they argue, fails to analyse the subtlety and political significance of rape supportive reasoning and the forms that it takes, thus also underestimating the extent of rape supportive reasoning. The authors provide a critical interrogation of dominant theories and methodologies, and thought-provoking analyses of conversational data, exploring everyday accounting practices in relation to reports of both female and male rape.

They synthesize discursive psychology and a feminist standpoint to explore precisely how rape and rape victimhood are defined in ways that reflect the social, political and cultural conditions of society. They show how the gender and sexual orientation of alleged victims and perpetrators is crucial to social participants when making sense of a rape report and in apportioning blame and sympathy. They also examine how arguments that are critical of alleged victims are built in ways that are 'face saving' for the participants in the conversations, and how victim-blaming arguments are presented as 'common sense'.

Crucial to this is the way in which rape supportive talk is underpinned by a range of deeply ingrained cultural sense-making resources that construct and legitimate hegemonic forms of heterosexual identities and gender relations and neo-liberal notions of ideal citizenship. Finally, the authors demonstrate the potential of the application for their approach in both professional and academic contexts to promote attitude change.

The book will be of great interest to those studying social and clinical psychology, cultural studies, sociology, women's studies and communication studies.