Rape Culture and Spiritual Violence examines sexual violence against women, how religion and society contribute to a rape culture, and the extreme suffering endured by rape victims as a result. Using the testimony of women who have experienced both rape and the consequences of rape culture—from a range of religious, cultural, ethnic, and social contexts—the book explores both the suffering and healing of rape victims from World War II to today. Among the issues considered are victim invisibility, the inability to express pain, and the tendency to assume shame and self-blame. The study examines the role of society in shaping and reinforcing these responses, contributing to traumas that can lead to spiritual death. The book also explores possibilities for multiple spiritual resurrections within the practice of daily life, encouraging both individual healing and social change.

This volume explores the multiple intersections between rape culture, gender violence, and religion. Each chapter considers the ways that religious texts, theologies, and traditions engage with contemporary cultural discourses of gender, sexuality, gender violence, and rape culture. Particularly, they interrogate the multifaceted roles that religious texts and teachings can have in challenging, confirming, querying, or redefining socio-cultural understandings of rape culture and gender violence. Unique to this volume, authors explore the topic from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, theology, biblical studies, gender and queer studies, politics, modern history, art history, linguistics, religious studies, and English literature. Together, these interdisciplinary approaches resist the tendency to oversimplify the complexity of the connections between religion, gender violence, and rape culture; rather, the volume offers readers a multi-vocal and multi-perspectival view of this crucial subject, inviting readers to think deeply about it in light of the global crisis of gender violence.

In this fascinating book, Caroline Blyth takes a close look at Bibles marketed to teen girls and asks how these might perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes that lie at the heart of rape culture. The author considers the devotionals, commentaries, and advice sections placed throughout these Bibles, which offer teen girl readers life advice on topics such as friendships, body image, and how to navigate romantic relationships. Within these discussions, there is a strong emphasis on modesty, purity, and sexual passivity as markers of young women’s ‘godliness’. Yet, as the author argues, these gendered ideals are prescribed to readers using rape-supportive discourses and the tactics of coercive control. Moreover, the placement of these various editorial inserts within the pages of sacred scripture gives them considerable power to reinforce deeply harmful ideologies about gender, sexuality, and sexual violence. Given the seeming popularity of these Bibles among Christian teen girls, the need to dismantle their damaging rhetoric is especially urgent. This book will be of particular interest to those studying the Bible, religion, gender, and theology, as well as the general reader.

Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence: An Intersectional Guide is a collection of essays from survivors, scholars, activists, spiritual leaders, and social justice practitioners that offers numerous intersectional and culturally competent options for women, men, and non-binary conforming adults to create their own safe healing conditions and establish pathways for recovery. These chapters provide a wide range of survival stories that raise awareness of the issues involved in healing after sexual assault and also provide inspiration for reforming negative societal issues and patterns. In a classroom setting, these chapters deliver both the culturally grounded knowledge and the skillsets necessary for recovery. This is a vital guide for students and practitioners in counseling, social work, theology, and gender studies.

Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements stages a critical engagement between religious texts and the problem of sexual violence. Rape and other forms of sexual violence are widespread on college and university campuses; they also occur in sacred texts and religious traditions. The volume addresses these difficult intersections as they play out in texts, traditions, and university contexts. The volumegathers contributions from religious studies scholars to engage these questions from a variety of institutional contexts and to offer a constructive assessment of religious texts and traditions.

“Violence is nurturance turned backwards,” writes Nora Samaran. In Turn This World Inside Out, she presents Nurturance Culture as the opposite of rape culture and suggests how alternative models of care and accountability—different from “call-outs,” which are often rooted in the politics of shame and guilt—can move toward inverting cultures of dominance and systems of oppression. When communities are able to recognize and speak up about systemic violence, center the needs of those harmed, and hold a circle of belonging that humanizes everyone, they create a revolutionary foundation of nurturance that can begin to repair the harms inflicted by patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Emerging out of insights in Gender Studies, Race Theory, and Psychology, and influenced by contemporary social movements, Turn This World Inside Out speaks to some of the most pressing issues of our time.

A bold, honest and unflinching look at the way we talk and think about rape Thanks to Title IX cases, #MeToo, and #Times Up, the issue of rape seems to be constantly in the news. But our thinking on the subject has a long history, one that cultural critic Mithu Sanyal elegantly reconstructs. She narrates a history spanning from Lucretia—whose legendary rape and suicide was said to be the downfall of the last Roman king—to second-wave feminism, Tarzan, and Roman Polanski. Sanyal demonstrates that the way we understand rape is remarkably (and alarmingly) consistent across the ages, even though the world has changed beyond recognition. It is high time for a new and informed debate about sexual violence, sexual boundaries, and consent. Mithu Sanyal shows that our comprehension of rape is closely connected to our understanding of sex, sexuality, and gender. Why is it that we expect victims to be irreparably damaged? When we think of rapists, why do we think of strangers rather than uncles, husbands, priests, or boyfriends? And in the era of #MeToo, what should “justice” look like? Rape: From Lucretia to #MeToo examines the role of race and the recurrent image of the black rapist, the omission of male victims, and what we mean when we talk about “rape culture.” Sanyal takes on every received opinion we have about rape, arguing with liberals, conservatives, and feminists alike.