Radical Feminist Analysis

In the early 1970s, Radical feminists (RF) began to explore how gender and sexuality affect the context of crime and victimisation, particularly rape and other forms of sexual violence. They highlighted that legal discourse follows a patriarchal, phallocentric culture and structure that prioritizes masculinity and maintains power distributions favoured towards men. Heterosexuality is assumed thus rape is only seen as legitimate when it involves male penetration and female sexual pleasure is assumed to be non-existent. Consequently, men’s “uncontrollable” sexual urges can only be gratified by women, whether they give consent or not is irrelevant (Smart, 1990). Such “malestream” narratives about crime were taken as objective truths because powerful …show more content…
However Black women (BW) were often absent from organized feminist movements and created alternative groups. Their lack of engagement was blamed on a lack of feminist consciousness however this was far from the truth (Hill Collins, 1990). RF was highly classist and racist, marginalising and ignoring some of the most globally vulnerable groups - women of colour (WOC) and Trans women because of its sole emphasis on gender and patriarchy as the main root of inequality and social dominance of women by men. Other interlinking oppressions such as race, class, sexuality, age, & religion were ignored when relating to criminal victimization, especially in the examination of rape. Reforms influenced by RF mainly benefit white, cis women leaving a vast amount of issues neglected by the law and CJS. This has had life-threatening consequences on the physical and mental well-being of WOC as they are severely mistreated and undermined by the police, courts and prisons. Their perpetrators are less likely to be persecuted because they are hypersexualized and do not fit into the racialised stereotypes of the ideal rape victim constructed by popular culture and the media- the middle-class white women (Emerson,