Foucault, Rape, and the Construction of the Feminine Body.

In 1977, Michel Foucault suggested that legal approaches to rape define it as merely an act of violence, not of sexuality, and therefore not distinct from other types of assaults. I argue that rape can not be considered merely an act of violence because it is instrumental in the construction of the distinctly feminine body. Insofar as the threat of rape is ineluctably, although not determinately, associated with the development of feminine bodily comportment, rape itself holds a host of bodily and sexually specific meanings.

The theoretical possibilities and pitfalls which the work of Michel Foucault presents for feminist theory are well documented (if not exhausted), and indeed on their own constitute a significant dialogue within the field of scholarship. That dialogue for the most part takes up Foucault's major philosophical tenets, especially those concerning the production and expression of power, and applies them to feminist problems, often resulting in crucial new insights. However, in one case, it was a specific claim made by Foucault which caused an immediate, and sustained, tremor in feminist intellectual circles. I refer, of course, to his stated support for the decriminalization of rape as defined as a sexual crime.

One can always produce the theoretical discourse that amounts to saying: in any case, sexuality can in no circumstances be the object of punishment. And when one punishes rape one should be punishing physical violence and nothing but that. And to say that it is nothing more than an act of aggression: that there is no difference, in principle, between sticking one's fist into someone's face or one's penis into their sex.... [T]here are problems [if we are to say that rape is more serious than a punch in the face], because what we're saying amounts to this: sexuality as such, in the body, has a preponderant place, the sexual organ isn't like a hand, hair, or a nose. It therefore has to be protected, surrounded, invested in any case with legislation that isn't that pertaining to the rest of the body.... It isn't a matter of sexuality, it's the physical violence that would be punished, without bringing in the fact that sexuality was involved. (Foucault 1988, 200--202)

Foucault's comments were made during a 1977 roundtable discussion concerning, among other matters, his work in Discipline and Punish (1979), and were inspired by questions posed to him by a French commission concerned with the reform of the penal code (1988, 200). At first glance, it would appear that Foucault's suggestion was remarkably in keeping with the current feminist wisdom, which sought to define rape solely as a violent crime. It is perhaps surprising, then, that both the women who were present at the discussion and subsequent feminist thinkers responded vehemently, and negatively, to his position. The similarities between Foucault's suggestion, namely, that rape be redefined merely as another type of assault without any sexual specificity, and Susan Brownmiller's call for a "gender-free, non-activity-specific" law (1975, 378) are striking. Yet the differences between the philosophical motivations compelling the proposals are significant. Whereas feminist thinkers such as Brownmiller were seeking to purge rape of its sexual content in order to render moot the legal question of victim (i.e., female) culpability, Foucault viewed the desexualization of rape as a liberating blow against the disciplining discourse which constructed sexuality as a means of social and political power.

Even so, one could still expect Foucault's position to be largely in agreement with feminist theories which also located sexuality as one means by which a patriarchal culture maintained control over women. If this is so, it is perhaps surprising that his comments produced such an immediate and sustained response in feminist intellectual circles. It is important to note at this juncture that Foucault's comments were relatively spontaneous and not fully developed; nevertheless, they at least appear to be generally consistent with his larger ethical concern with desexualization, and therefore cannot be dismissed out of hand. The gauntlet was immediately taken up by Monique Plaza (1981), and later most directly by Winifred Woodhull (1988) and Vikki Bell (1991), although several other feminist works on Foucault (including Biddy Martin [1988]) have mentioned the problem in passing. Most recently, Laura Hengehold (1994) has attempted a new analysis by locating the crime of rape in the overall system of hysterizatio n of women which Foucault himself posited. While her argument succeeds in doing just that, it and other feminist theories seem unable to answer the question posed by Foucault: why should an assault with a penis be treated any differently in the legal world than an assault with any other body part?

Even this particular posing of this question leads us to a distinction which will prove crucial to our questioning. Foucault here is considering rape as something which is done by a penis, while legally, rape can be accomplished by a variety of tools. Because Foucault's implied definition is centered around the male physiology, it does not include a consideration of the multiple ways in which a woman can be violated sexually; is the "rape" of which Foucault speaks necessarily a vaginal entering? To redefine rape not as something a man does, but something which a woman experiences, shifts the discussion in important ways. This provisional re-defining of the act of rape also has its problems, for women are not the only beings who can be raped; this empirical fact does not, however, place the act of rape outside of the realm of sexual dynamics. While men are capable of being raped, they are not subjected to the pervasive threat of rape which faces women in the present culture. Nor are they raped at the horrifyi ng (if controversial) numbers that women are. The fact that men can be, but are not often, raped, emphasizes the extent to which rape enforces a systematic (i.e., consistent, although not necessarily conscious), sexualized control of women. Thus Monique Plaza writes, "Rape is an oppressive act exercised by a (social) man against a (social) woman, which can be carried out by the introduction of a bottle held by a man into the anus of a woman; in this case rape is not sexual, or rather it is not genital. It is very sexual in the sense that it is frequently a sexual activity, but above all in the sense that it opposes men and women: it is social sexing which underlies rape" (1981, 29; emphasis in the original). Thus a crucial aspect of the shame of man-on-man rape is the implicit womanizing which occurs upon the victim, who is placed in the role of the sexually submissive and helpless. He is, at that moment, a "social woman."

These preliminary remarks already gesture to the substance of this discussion. At this early stage, then, let us return to the question as formulated by Foucault: how is an assault with a penis different than an assault with a fist? The answer to this question, I will argue, is dependent not only upon the bodily phenomenon of rape, as Foucault seems to assume, but also on the social production of the feminine body. Woodhull points to this necessity when she claims, "If we are seriously to come to terms with rape, we must explain how the vagina becomes coded--and experienced--as a place of emptiness and vulnerability, the penis as a weapon, and intercourse as violation, rather than naturalize these processes through references to 'basic' physiology" (1988, 171). However, Woodhull here has neglected to consider seriously enough Foucault's concern with the oversexualization of certain body parts to the neglect of others, an historical process which he documents in his first volume of The History of Sexuality (1 990). We must remember that it is precisely upon the basis of the social construction of the sexual body, a construction which not only privileges the genitals but also sexuality in general as a primary seat of identity, and the consequent ethical imperative of desexualization, that Foucault reaches his unnerving conclusion.