RAPE, RESISTANCE AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS OF SELF-DEFENCE

The legal and criminal justice systems proceed on the masculinist assumption that a woman's body communicates her lack ofconsent to sexual intercourse and that a woman will offer strongphysical resistance to sexual violence. Recent changes to the legal definition ofnon-consent as a positive and perfonnative act provide women with greaterprotection under the rape laws. Women are unlikely to be protected by the law, however, if their physical resistance to sexual assault results in death or serious injury. This paper argues that, to ensure that women subjected to sexual violence have full equality and justice before the law, all manifestations of women's resistances must be seen as acceptable and lawful acts ofselfdefence. Although feminists have been successful in reforming many aspects of rape laws (see, for example, Scutt 1990b, pp 469-75), women who have experienced sexual violence are still denied the full protection and support of the law. Women who have been raped are most likely to succeed in bringing their attacker to justice if they can prove conclusively that they did not consent to sexual intercourse. The criminal justice system expects, if not requires, that women prove that they offered strong, immediate and physical resistance to a sexual attack