Saints, Sluts and Sexual Assault: Rethinking the Relationship between Sex, Race and Gender
| Date | 01 March 2003 |
| Author | Anne Cossins |
| Published date | 01 March 2003 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390301200104 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
SAINTS, SLUTS AND SEXUAL
ASSAULT: RETHINKING THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SEX,
RACE AND GENDER
ANNE COSSINS
University of New South Wales, Australia
ABSTRACT
This article considers how legal cultures construct different female subjectivities,
using an Australian case study that documented the differential treatment of Abori-
ginal and non-Aboriginal complainants within sexual assault trials. In particular, the
article analyses the cultural significance of the concepts of sex and race within the
sexual assault trial by comparing and contrasting the analytic utility of the sexed
bodies approach and the concept of gender for understanding different women’s
experiences. It argues that neither of these approaches adequately describes the
experiences of black and indigenous women and, instead, presents the concept of
convergence for explaining the interactions of sex and race and revealing the unique
vulnerabilities of black and indigenous women within legal cultures.
INTRODUCTION
SEXUAL VIOLENCE against Aboriginal women is a serious problem in
Australian Aboriginal communities, although there is also a long history
of sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women by white colonizers and
employers (Goodall, 1990; Andrews, 1997). There is, however, only limited
information about the incidence of sexual assault upon Aboriginal women
either by members of their own communities or by non-Aboriginal men.1
Anecdotal evidence suggests that a culture of silence surrounds the sexual
abuse suffered by Aboriginal women within their own communities leading
to a significant under-reporting of the crime (Greer, 1992; Paxman and
Corbett, 1994; NSW Department for Women, 1996: 93–5; Andrews, 1997;
Jobson, 2002). For example, Greer (1992) has observed that, because of the
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200303) 12:1 Copyright © 2003
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
www.sagepublications.com
Vol. 12(1), 77–103; 030845
40P 04 Cossins (JS/D) 20/1/03 11:07 am Page 77
incidence of Aboriginal men dying in custody in Australia, ‘[m]any
communities are torn apart by the secrecy that is inherent in [the attitude that
the alleged offender will suffer the next death in custody. This attitude] . . .
protects offenders and allows the cycle of sexual violence to continue’ (Greer,
1992: 193). However, a lack of culturally appropriate services, community
isolation and police attitudes towards Aboriginal people also contribute to
Aboriginal women’s reluctance to report their experiences of sexual assault
(Greer, 1992; Stubbs and Tolmie, 1995; Lawrie, 2002). Not surprisingly then,
when Aboriginal women report sexual assault, they are likely to face unique
difficulties within the criminal justice system. Although feminists and crim-
inologists have largely analysed the criminal justice system in terms of its
oppression of women generally speaking, irrespective of their racial or ethnic
backgrounds, its response to Australian Aboriginal women as sexual assault
complainants challenges the idea of a unitary or universal ‘women’s experi-
ence’.
In recent years, if one of the pressing problems for sociologists was ‘how
are we to conceptualise relations among men, especially when class and
ethnic and generational relations are included?’ (Jefferson, 1994: 15), then a
similar pressing problem has existed in relation to describing women’s
experiences as victims of crime as a result of racial, ethnic, religious, age and
class diversity, and in describing how legal cultures create different
categories of Woman according to these factors. In recognizing that women
are subject to multiple inequalities and are ‘located in a matrix of multiple
social relations’ (Daly, 1997: 35), the task of this article is to conceive of a
way of understanding the intersection between inequalities that divide men
and women (sex and its cultural significance) and inequalities that cut across
the sex divide (such as race), in order to understand how legal cultures
conceptualize relations between different women and how different ‘types’
of women are constructed according to a range of cultural factors other than
sex. Is any one woman a ‘sexed’ body before she is a ‘raced’ or ‘classed’
body? Or do we need to avoid an ‘additive’ methodology that prioritizes
one type of social disadvantage above others and then adds the rest, as
critical race feminists have argued? More than a decade ago, critical race
feminists recognized that race carries with it unique cultural meanings that
create cultural divisions between women in ways that are analogous to the
way that sex creates cultural divisions between men and women (Williams,
1987; Harris, 1990; Matsuda, 1990; Crenshaw, 1991; Razack, 1991). In
particular, how sex and race intersect and how legal cultures construct
different female subjectivities is the difficult challenge to be faced in relation
to recognizing different women’s experiences within the criminal justice
system and in thinking about appropriate reforms. The aim of this article,
therefore, is to analyse the cultural significance of race within the sexual
assault trial by comparing and contrasting the analytic utility of sex (the
‘sexed bodies approach’2), race, and gender for understanding the differen-
tial treatment of black and indigenous sexual assault complainants, using an
Australian case study.
78 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 12(1)
40P 04 Cossins (JS/D) 20/1/03 11:07 am Page 78
To continue reading
Request your trial