License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives

by David Finkelhor

Book Overview

Very important subject matter for women This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0029104017
• ISBN13: 9780029104019
• Release Date: September 1987
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

I cried.

I am a human liberationist and support women's liberation to become fully equal with men. I am well educated. I have read a fair amount of the literature about sexual assault. But this book still had a profound impact on me. This documentation of the pervasiveness of brutality toward wives and girlfriends brought it home to me as no other source has done before. It told me about something that I never thought had been as bad as this subperb accounting demonstrates. And also how far we still have to go to stop domestic violence, because it's still much more prevalent than anyone with a conscience can feel anything but very uneasy about. As a victim of vigorous punishment as a child, where I was driven to withdraw into a private world of books and daydreams, I can attest to the serious consequences violence can have on our ability to function as happy social human beings. This book provided yet another testament to the systematic consequences violence has had on our society. Our failures to speak out unequivocally against physical violence as a privilege of husbands and men of influence make me feel ashamed to hear the claim of our nation as being a place where there is liberty and justice and the right to the pursuit of happiness for all. But it also makes clear how our callous assent to the privileges of big daddy has resulted in domestic and foreign policy that ignores the plight of women, children, and other marginalized groups both racial and cultural and the need for our institutions, especially in the government, that are supposedly inspired by the Constitution and the traditions of freedom, to intervene to protect those who can't protect themselves. It doesn't do any good to be protected from attacks by strangers only to replace enemies from the outside with enemies inside our very homes and families. We have to do better.