Rough sex? Understandings of rape in Finnish police reports
This paper presents a discourse analysis of Finnish rape reports written by the police. It explores gendered understandings of sexual violence in the description of the cases. These understandings often remain hidden, especially in the cultural ethos of gender neutrality characteristic to Finnish so...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic/Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2001
|
| In: |
Journal of Scandinavian studies in criminology and crime prevention
Year: 2001, Volume: 2, Issue: 1, Pages: 15-30 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Availability in Tübingen: | Present in Tübingen. IFK: In: Z 181 |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | This paper presents a discourse analysis of Finnish rape reports written by the police. It explores gendered understandings of sexual violence in the description of the cases. These understandings often remain hidden, especially in the cultural ethos of gender neutrality characteristic to Finnish society. The data consists of 448 rape cases reported to the police during year 1998. The discourses found were (1) the resistance discourse, which emphasizes the rape victim's attempts to resist the perpertrator's attempts to rape her, (2) the submission discourse, which provides reasons why the victim was unable to prevent the rape, (3) the minimizing discourse, which portrays the victim as more or less explicitly responsible for what happened, (4) the rape as physical force discourse which stresses the physically violent nature of rape and finally (5) rape as sexuality discourse which emphasized the sexual features of rape by describing either the aggresive nature of male sexuality or the course as events as a serious violation of the victim's sexual integrity. The cultural and legal foundations of the discourses are discussed in the paper |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1404-3858 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/140438501317205529 |