Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (92 page)

BOOK: Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape
13.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

My book was written inside the library in a very special place called the Frederick Lewis Allen Room, where I was given a desk for my type writer and a shelf for my books. I was also given the companionship of a score of writers who became my own private seminar in how to get the job done. The interrelationship of my Allen Room friends and me is too complex to detail; suffice it to say that each of us struggled together, respectful of one another's progress, in a supportive environment dedi cated to hard work and accomplishment, a writer's Utopia or close
to
it.
Early on it became apparent that money, or lack of money, was a

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I
407

problem that had to be faced. Eden Lipson, John J. Simon and Nancy Milford were among those whose advice I solicited and followed. Grants from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and the Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation supported me for two full years. Richard H. Nolte, Jane Hartwig and Victor Rabinowitz deserve special thanks for rooting for me with few questions asked, and a debt of gratitude is owed all the good people who wrote those enthusiastic letters of recommendation.

To sustain a relationship with me over the long haul, all friends had to become involved with my sole obsession, "the book." That they did attests more to their character than to the rewards of listening to my one subject of conversation. Four people bore the major brunt, and each contributed so much input that I am at a loss to adequately define their roles. Alison Owings, in Washington and New York, had an unerring way of always being a half step ahead of wherever I happened to be in a chapter; her perceptions were uncanny, her contributions were always on target. Florence Rush patiently worked out many philosophic and tech nical problems in animated, late-night discussions that only two people who shared the same specific interest could have. Jan Goodman loyally read the work in progress whenever I thrust it at her, and used her in cisive legal mind to tell me forthrightly what should be cut and what was unclear. She argued intrepidly when argument was necessary and boosted me in a hundred ways when I needed concrete aid. It was the lot of Kevin Cooney to live with the book as he lived with me: research gathering, stylistic impasses, failures of nerve-all mine-dominated our life and Kevin bore them with an even-handed stoicism that extended itself to the three-o'clock-in-the-morning tremors when everything seemed too diffuse and complicated to ever get done.
It
seems clear to me now, as I write this, that with the support I got from those close and dear to me, of course the work got done.

SOURCE NOTES

  1. THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF RAPE: AN INTRODUCTION

    ( 11)
    rapists as degenerate, imbecilic men: Richard von Kraff t-Ebing,
    Psy
    cliopathia Sexualis
    (1886), trans. from the Latin by Harry
    E.
    We deck, New York: Putnam, 1965, p. 435.

    (12 )

    ( 12)

    Bebel on rape: August Bebel, Women Under Socialism (1883) , trans. from the German by Daniel DeLeon, New York: Labor News

    Press, 1904, p. 27. See also p. 29, 56-58.

    "masculine ideology of rape ': Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolu tion (1945 ), trans. from the German by Theodore P. Wolfe, New York: Farrar, Straus, 1969, p. 27.

    Goodall on chimpanzees: Jane van Lawick-Goodall, In the
    Shadow

    of
    Man, New York: Dell, 1972, pp, 193-194.

    "The male monkey": Leonard Williams,
    M an
    and
    M onkey,
    London: Deutsch, 1967, p. 157. See also pp. 80, 88.

  2. IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE LAW

Forcible seizure perfectly acceptable: William Blackstone, Commen taries
on
the
Laws of England ,
10th ed., London, 1787, Vol. IV, p. 208.

terror of being "rapt": Amy Kelly, Eleanor
of Aquitaine and the

Four
Kings,
New York: Random House Vintage ed., 1959, p. 4.

Bride capture, Tasadays: John Noble Wilford, "Stone-Age Tribe in Philippines Is Imperiled,"
New York
Times,
Oct. 17, 1971.

Bride capture, Sicily: Peter Kayser, "Situationer-Women," Reuter, Rome, Aug. 7, 1973: "In Sicily another sex ritual was recently acted out when a shepherd, Guiseppe Ilardo, 30, kidnapped i8-year-old Anna Puccia, raped her and then fled hoping she would marry him to clear her name. Following the traditional Sicilian scenario, he then

(17)

(18)

( 19)

(19)

( 20)

( 20 )

( 21)

( 22 )

( 22 )

( 23 )

( 23)

( 24)

( 24 )

( 24)

( 24)

( 24)

( 25)

( 25 )

( 25)

( 25 )

( 26)

( 26)

( 26)

( 27)

( 27)

( 27)

( 28)

SOURCE NOTES
I
409

asked for the girl's hand through some friends but Anna refused, clear ing the way for police to arrest Ilardo and jail him on rape charges. Her action went strongly against all tradition . . ."

"Those whom we marry": Robert A. LeVine, "Gusii Sex Offenses: A Study in Social Control," American
Anthropologist,
Vol.
6i
( Dec. 1959), p. 966.

Code
of
Hammurabi: Chilperic Edwards, The Hammurabi Code,

London: Watts, 1921, pp. 27-3i. "let him first cast a stone": John
8:
7.

Hebrew social order: Deuteronomy 22: 13-29.

lex talionis, Assyrians: Louis M. Epstein, Sex Laws and Customs in Judaism, New York: Bloch Pub. Co., i948, p. 180.

Dinah: Genesis 34.

Levite, Benjamites and the daughters of Shiloh: Judges 19-21. Potiphar's wife: Genesis 39.

a staple in many cultures, etc.: H.
R.
Hays, The Dangerous Sex

(1964) , New York: Pocket books, 1972, p. 109. "she herself became a litigant": Epstein, p. 188.

Under Talmudic interpretation: Epstein, pp. 183-19i.
I
am also indebted to Epstein for his interpretation of Biblical legislation, pp. 179-182, and
for
his brilliant concept of "theft of virginity," which I have shamelessly appropriated.

Maimonides on monetary compensation: Epstein, p. 188 n.

Footnote, Maimonides' sex manual: Moses Maimonides, "On Sexual Intercourse,"
M edical Historical Studies of Medieval
/ewish Medical Works, Brooklyn: Rambash Pub. Co., 1961, Vol.
1.

Before the Norman Conquest: Blackstone, IV p. 211.

"the lands passing": G. G. Coulton, Medieval Panorama, Cambridge, Eng.: The University Press, 1938, pp. 48-49.

"trading in marriages": Ibid.

Henry VII rules heiress-stealing a felony: Blackstone, IV, p. 208.

rule of King Athelstan: Samuel
E.
Thorne, trans. and ed., Bracton on the Laws
and
Customs of England, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard, 1968, Vol.
II,
p. 418.

accept her ravisher in marriage:
Ibid.

Punishment reduced by William the Conqueror: Blackstone, IV,

p.
211.

"woman's . . . inability to fight": Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I ( 1895), Cambridge, Eng.: The University Press, 1968, Vol. I,
p.
485.

"Let him lose his eyes": Bracton,
II,
pp. 414-415.

only suits a woman could bring: Bracton,
II,
p.
419. "She must go at once": Bracton,
II,
p. 415.

"that he had her as his concubine": Bracton,
II,
pp. 416-417. "a common person": Bracton,
II,
p. 417.

"As a rule": Sidney Painter, A History of
the
Middle Ages, New York: Knopf, 1960, p. 120.

savage wife beating, etc.: Ibid.

;us primae
noctis:
For an interesting discussion, see August Behel, Woman Under Socialism (1883), trans. from the German by Daniel DeLeon, New York: Labor News Press, 1904, pp. 56-58.

(28)

Other books

The Chain of Chance by Stanislaw Lem
The Dark One: Dark Knight by Kathryn le Veque
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba
The Shut Mouth Society by James D. Best
The Cold Cold Sea by Linda Huber
Nine Days by Fred Hiatt