Further Reading
Eberwein, Robert.The War Film.New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004.
Jeffords, Susan.Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in
the Reagan Era. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 1994.
Jordan, Chris.Movies and the Reagan Presidency. West-
port, Conn.: Praeger, 2003.
Charles Gramlich
See also Action films; Cold War; Film in the United
States; Grenada invasion; Liberalism in U.S. politics;
Reagan, Ronald; Sequels; Vietnam Veterans Memo-
rial.
Rape
Definition Forced or coerced penetrative sex,
often accompanied by other undesired sexual
acts
American legal sanctions and social prohibitions against
this crime increased in strength within the United States
throughout the 1980’s.
Rape is not only a crime but also a challenging cul-
tural issue for Americans to discuss because it en-
compasses so many other socially charged topics,
including cultural and religious ideals concerning
individual rights in marriage or other relationships,
social norms regarding sexuality, and power dynam-
ics between men and women. In addition to the
topic of rape often being taboo for all of these rea-
sons, most rape victims feel tremendous shame and
guilt, which contributes to social stigma and secrecy
on this issue.
In cases of rape, adult men are usually the aggres-
sors, and the victims are predominantly women or
girls, although boys and some men are also targets.
Women often know their rapists. Ironically, one of
the rape myths is that women or children are most
at risk from strangers, which means that women
may be more fearful in public locations and less ap-
prehensive in private, with acquaintances or family
members, not recognizing that in these situations
they are at greater risk of sexual assault. (Child rape
in domestic contexts is usually classified as incest,
which is not covered here.) Typically, rape occurs
in seclusion, without witnesses, which creates chal-
lenges for victims who desire to protest their treat-
ment, either socially or in court, since there may
be little physical evidence of their lack of consent to
sexual contact or the ensuing ordeal.
Rape can have additional meanings depending
on its context. For example, genocidal rape occur-
ring in a war zone differs from date rape on a college
campus. During the 1980’s, there was increased un-
derstanding among rape crisis workers and research-
ers of the variation in responses among victims, de-
pending on cultural, religious, and other factors. In
fact, some rape victims did not define the events that
happened to them as rape, since the notion of indi-
vidual human rights is a culturally specific one. How-
ever, individual human rights have become more ac-
cepted worldwide since extensive codification by the
United Nations.
For all of these reasons, during the 1980’s the is-
sue of rape became increasingly a feminist concern.
Women were well organized and managed to make
significant headway in changing anachronistic state
laws, such as the marital exemption. In contrast,
many men and male organizations publicly pro-
moted the idea that rape within marriage was an ac-
ceptable activity for American men, despite increas-
ingly strong legal challenges to these attitudes.The American Legal Response During the 1980’s,
there was a major change in legal prohibitions against
rape. Prior to 1976, the American state statutes had
allowed a man to claim exemption from rape laws if
the victim was married to him. However, in 1977, the
tide began to turn, and Oregon became the first
state to abolish this exemption. By mid-1980, state
legislatures in Nebraska and New Jersey were follow-
ing suit, and by the end of the decade, only eight
states still permitted the marital rape exemption.
These legal changes were accompanied by con-
comitant shifts in public policing and the courts. Po-
lice paid greater attention to the rights of victims and
worked to eliminate some of the shame-provoking
practices of earlier officer conduct. The courts also
strove to provide a safer environment that was more
open to rape victims’ testimony and provided harsher
penalties to convicted rapists.
Many of these changes were fueled by the actions
of workers at rape crisis centers, which were available
to women in most American cities. Now in their sec-
ond decade, centers were often staffed by social
workers and psychologists, rather than by feminist
advocates with little professional training, as hadThe Eighties in America Rape 797