Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T11:54:25.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ched Evans, rape myths and Medusa's gaze: a story of mirrors and windows

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2018

David Gurnham
David Gurnham*
Affiliation:
Professor of Criminal Law and Interdisciplinary Legal Studies at the School of Law, University of Southampton, UK
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper analyses the visualisation of rape and sexual assault in legal and scholarly language. It begins with a critique of the Court of Appeal ruling in R v. Evans (Chedwyn) and its forensic examination of the details of a female rape complainant's consensual sexual activity with other men. The case is analysed in light of a visual metaphor used by Ellison and Munro to describe the removal of popular misconceptions about rape. The paper contextualises that discussion with reference to the idea of the male gaze and its affirmation of a phallocentric cultural and social world in which the objectification of female difference is entrenched. The paper finally challenges that assessment, however, sketching an alternative approach to visual-critical scholarship that embraces interdisciplinarity and a literary sensibility to break (or at least to loosen) the association between the prurient eye of the male voyeur and the criminal justice gaze.

Keywords

visual criminologysexual offendingcriminal evidencethe gazelaw and literature
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 454 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, D et al. (2003) Perceptions of stranger and acquaintance rape: the role of benevolent and hostile sexism in victim blame and rape proclivity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84, 111–125.Google Scholar
Anderson, MJ (2010) Diminishing the legal impact of negative social attitudes toward acquaintance rape victims. New Criminal Law Review 13, 644–664.Google Scholar
Biber, K (2015) Open secrets, open justice. In Martin, G, Scott Bray, R and Kumar, M (eds), Secrecy, Law and Society. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 234–250.Google Scholar
Biber, K, Doyle, P and Rossmanith, K (2013) Perving at crime scenes. Griffith Law Review 22, 804–814.Google Scholar
Bowers, SR (1990) Medusa and the female gaze. NWSA Journal 2, 217–235.Google Scholar
Bowlby, R (2006) The cronos complex. In Zajko, V and Leonard, M (eds), Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought. Oxford: OUP, pp. 21–44.Google Scholar
Brown, M (2014) Visual criminology and carceral studies: counter-images in the carceral age. Theoretical Criminology 18, 176–197.Google Scholar
Brown, M and Carrabine, E (2017) Routledge Handbook of Visual Criminology. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burton, M (2013) How different are ‘false’ allegations of rape from false complaints of GBH? Criminal Law Review 3, 203.Google Scholar
Carline, A and Easteal, P (2014) Shades of Grey – Domestic and Sexual Violence against Women. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Carney, P (2010) Crime, punishment and the force of photographic spectacle. In Hayward, K and Presdee, M (eds), Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 17–35.Google Scholar
Carrabine, E (2014) Seeing things: violence, voyeurism and the camera. Theoretical Criminology 18, 134–158.Google Scholar
Carter, A (2016) The bloody chamber. In Frostrup, M and The Erotic Review (eds), Desire: 100 of Literature's Sexiest Stories. London: Head of Zeus.Google Scholar
Chapleau, K and Oswald, D (2013) Status, threat, and stereotypes: understanding the function of rape myth acceptance. Social Justice Research 26, 18–41.Google Scholar
Donne, J (1976) The Complete English Poems. London: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Dymock, A (2015) ‘Abject intimacies: sexual perversion in the criminal-legal imaginary’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Reading University School of Law.Google Scholar
Dymock, A (2016) Prurience, punishment and the image: reading ‘law-and-order pornography’. Theoretical Criminology 21, 209–224.Google Scholar
Ellison, L (2010) Commentary on R v A (No 2). In Hunter, R, McGlynn, C and Rackley, E (eds), Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice. Oxford: Hart Publishing, pp. 208–210.Google Scholar
Ellison, L and Munro, V (2009) Turning mirrors into windows? Assessing the impact of (mock) juror education in rape trials. British Journal of Criminology 49, 363–383.Google Scholar
Ellison, L and Munro, V (2013) Better the devil you know? ‘Real rape’ stereotypes and the relevance of a previous relationship in (mock) juror deliberations. International Journal of Evidence & Proof 14, 299–322.Google Scholar
Felman, S (1997) Forms of judicial blindness, or the evidence of what cannot be seen: traumatic narratives and legal repetitions in the O.J. Simpson case and in Tolstoy's ‘the Kreutzer Sonata’. Critical Inquiry 23, 738–788.Google Scholar
Finch, E and Munro, V (2007) Demon drink and the demonized woman: socio-sexual stereotypes and responsibility attribution in rape trials involving intoxicants. Social and Legal Studies 16, 591–614.Google Scholar
Foucault, M (1995) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A Sheridan. London: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Franiuk, R, Seefelt, JL and Vandello, JA (2008) Prevalence of rape myths in headlines and their effects on attitudes toward rape. Sex Roles 58, 790–801.Google Scholar
Freud, S (1900/1991) The Interpretation of Dreams. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Freud, S (1919/2003) The Uncanny. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Freud, S (1922/1953) Medusa's head. In Freud, S (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol XVIII: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works, trans. and ed. Stracey, J. London: The Hogarth Press, pp. 273–274.Google Scholar
Gallagher, L (1991) Medusa's Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Garber, M and Vickers, NJ (2003) The Medusa Reader. New York/London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gunby, C, Carline, A and Beynon, C (2010) Alcohol-related rape cases: barristers’ perspectives on the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and its impact on practice. Journal of Criminal Law 74, 579–600.Google Scholar
Gurnham, D (2009) Memory, Imagination, Justice: Intersections of Law and Literature. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Gurnham, D (2016 a) A critique of carceral feminist arguments on rape myths and sexual scripts. New Criminal Law Review 19, 141–170.Google Scholar
Gurnham, D (2016 b) Victim-blame as a symptom of rape myth acceptance? Another look at how young people in England understand sexual consent. Legal Studies 36, 258–278.Google Scholar
Halley, J (2008) Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hayward, K (2010) Opening the lens. In Hayward, K and Presdee, M (eds), Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1–16.Google Scholar
Hickman, SE and Muehlenhard, CL (1999) ‘By the semi-mystical appearance of a condom’: how young women and men communicate sexual consent in heterosexual situations. Journal of Sex Research 36, 258–272.Google Scholar
Khan, U (2014) Vicarious Kinks: S/M in the Socio-Legal Imaginary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Lacan, J (1994) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. A Sheridan and ed. Miller, JA. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Lacan, J (2006) Ecrits, trans. Fink, B. New York: Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Laplante, MN, Mccormick, M and Brannigan, GG (1980) Living the sexual script: college students’ views of influence in sexual encounters. Journal of Sex Research 16, 338–355.Google Scholar
Linnemann, T, Wall, T and Green, E (2014) The walking dead and killing state: zombification and the normalization of police violence. Theoretical Criminology 18, 506–527.Google Scholar
Lombroso, C and Ferrero, G (1895/1959) The Female Offender. London: Peter Owen Ltd.Google Scholar
Mackinnon, C (1983) Marxism, method and the state: toward feminist jurisprudence. Signs 8, 636–658.Google Scholar
Masters, NT et al. (2013) Sexual scripts among young heterosexually active men and women: continuity and change. Journal of Sex Research 50, 409–420.Google Scholar
Mathiesen, T (1997) The viewer society: Michel Foucault's ‘panopticon’ revisited. Theoretical Criminology 1, 215–234.Google Scholar
Mckeown, P (2016) Case comment: evidence: R v Evans (Chedwyn). Criminal Law Review 5, 406–411.Google Scholar
Mitchell, WJT (2002) Showing seeing: a critique of visual culture. Journal of Visual Culture 1, 165–181.Google Scholar
Moore, SEJ and Breeze, S (2012) Spaces of male fear: the sexual politics of being watched. British Journal of Criminology 52, 1172–1191.Google Scholar
Mulvey, L (1989) Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Ovid (2004) Metamorphoses, trans. Raeburn, D. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Pugliese, J (2002) ‘Super visum corporis’: visuality, race, narrativity and the body of forensic pathology. Law and Literature 14, 367–396.Google Scholar
Quinn, BA (2002) Sexual harassment and masculinity: the power and meaning of ‘girl watching’. Gender and Society 16, 386–402.Google Scholar
Rees, G (2012) Whose credibility is it anyway: professional authority and relevance in forensic nurse examinations of sexual assault. Review of European Studies 4, 110–120.Google Scholar
Russell, Y (2013) Thinking sexual difference through the law of rape. Law and Critique 24, 255–275.Google Scholar
Sakaluk, JK et al. (2014) Dominant heterosexual sexual scripts in emerging adulthood: conceptualization and measurement. Journal of Sex Research 51, 516–531.Google Scholar
Sartre, JP (2003) Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London: Routledge Classics.Google Scholar
Schept, J (2014) (Un)seeing like a prison: counter-visual ethnography of the carceral state. Theoretical Criminology 18, 198–223.Google Scholar
Silverman, DK (2016) Medusa: sexuality, power, mastery, and some psychoanalytic observations. Studies in Gender and Sexuality 17, 114–125.Google Scholar
Smith, GJD (2004) Behind the screens: examining constructions of deviance and informal practices among CCTV control room operators in the UK. Surveillance & Society 2, 376–395.Google Scholar
Sontag, S (1977) On Photography. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Stalcup, M and Hahn, C (2016) Cops, cameras, and the policing of ethics. Theoretical Criminology 20, 482–501.Google Scholar
Vanda, Z and Miriam, L (2006) Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Wacquant, L (2009) Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, S (2009) ‘A drunken consent is still consent’ – or is it? A critical analysis of the law on a drunken consent to sex following Bree. Journal of Criminal Law 73, 318–344.Google Scholar
Wright, L, Glasbeek, A and Van Der Meulen, E (2015) Securing the home: gender, CCTV and the hybridised space of apartment buildings. Theoretical Criminology 19, 95–111.Google Scholar
Young, A (1996) Imagining Crime. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Young, A (2005) Judging the Image: Art, Value, Law. New York/Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
Young, A (2009) The Scene of Violence: Cinema, Crime, Affect. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Young, A (2010) The scene of the crime: is there such a thing as ‘just looking’? In Hayward, K and Presdee, M (eds), Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 83–97.Google Scholar
Young, A (2014) From object to encounter: aesthetic politics and visual criminology. Theoretical Criminology 18, 159–175.Google Scholar