Vol. 9 No. 9 (September 1999) pp. 392-394.

DATE RAPE AND CONSENT by Mark Cowling. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1998. 154 pp. ISBN 1-85972-509-0.

Reviewed by Michelle Donaldson Deardorff, Department of Political Science, Millikin University.

Professor Mark Cowling's book DATE RAPE AND CONSENT is a multi-layered examination of the issue of date rape in the Great Britain and Wales; the variety of theses in this work is both its greatest contribution and its primary limitation. Cowling notes that while the issue of rape and especially date rape (which he
defines as rape within a current or past romantic relationship, thus encompassing spousal rape) has been extensively researched and discussed in Canada and the United States, it has had little academic or popular debate in Great Britain outside of the headlines. Cowling has thus undertaken several large jobs in this
very brief book: defining and developing the concept of consent, especially in the context of a romantic relationship; attempting to explain the discrepancy between conviction rates and victim surveys in Great Britain; and, ascertaining the reforms necessary to address the large number of unreported rapes. In this process, Cowling also provides a very credible and sweeping analysis of the literature, predominately from the United States, on date rape and asks how it would apply in Great Britain.

After introducing the topic and its significance, Cowling examines the current law in England and Wales regarding rape, most specifically the current ambiguities in definitions and legal implementation of rape law. He also spends time exploring the linchpin of rape law, the absence of consent for sexual activity. Professor Cowling concludes that rape needs to be treated as a moral issue and not a legal category because "the core of the crime [is] a denial of sexual self-determination, and its seriousness as being determined by the series of evil consequences. In debating whether or not particular acts should be considered as rape it is comparison with these features which should be the main focus" (p. 32). The author then transitions to the definitions of consent and how the legal definition of consent determines the scope of activity encompassed within the definition of date rape. "If consent is drawn more narrowly, for example, so that 'the utmost resistance' is required. . . then most . . . examples of date rape . . . are defined out of existence. Conversely, if various acts such as digital penetration are assimilated to rape, and an expansive view is taken about alcohol so that sex with an inebriated woman is viewed as rape, then the scope of rape becomes much wider" (p. 81). Cowling begins examining date rape as a continuum from what would generally be conceived as consensual sex (if you don't have sex with me I won't smile for the next two hours) to what would be clearly defined as rape (I will use this knife on you if you don't have sex). The difficult point for Cowling, and he argues the difficult point for all of us, is how men and women determine

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the points within this continuum where consensual sex becomes rape (e.g., alcohol, age, economic pressure, past abuse, or future abuse).

Chapter three provides a review of the American literature of date rape and, most specifically looks at victim surveys in both the United States and Great Britain and questions how there could be such discrepancies between victims' self-reports and the actual criminal filings in police stations. Much of his analysis in this section seemed to be very self-evident, providing obvious critiques of the limitations of victim surveys. For example, Cowling spends a good deal of time noting the unreliability of memory-based surveys (e.g., page 62) a true albeit obvious limitation of this type of survey research. However, in his synthesis of the literature he is able to adequately support his thesis that the notion of consent seems to be a primary issue in the determination of date rape statistics. This section of his research is useful in its comprehensive compilation of data, but less useful as an analytical tool.

Cowling then begins asking how consent may be defined and applies the concepts of political consent to the notion of sexual consent; it is this part of his work that I found the most interesting and innovative, specifically his wrestling with a philosophical definition of consent. Cowling is very clear that he is less interested in legal definitions of consent than with current understandings by both men and women. He argues that a male perspective on rape is very necessary because "a definition
of rape which stands any chance of becoming law or acting as a guide to ethical behaviour must also be capable of being understood by most men" (80). Using the interesting approach of applying R. E. Flathman's (1972) definition of consent to the notion of sexual consent, he is able to begin developing a clearer understanding of both the legal problems within the notion of consent and what he perceives to be the real implications. The first aspect of sexual consent he considers is the problem of knowing what you are consenting to, the second is intending to consent, the third is the communication of consent. While he carefully looks at the various implications of these aspects of both political and sexual consent, Professor Cowling finds that "A theme which is repeated several times in the above analysis of consent is that better communication would be helpful. It is plainly not a way of avoiding rape altogether. In some of the more extreme cases of rape part of the motivation for the rapist is the knowledge that the woman is not consenting" (p. 97). He then begins one of the most insightful analyses I have seen of the Antioch College Sexual Offense Policy. The book is worth reading for this chapter alone.

Chapter five then asks how the concept of consent plays out over the background of a patriarchal system, recognizing that the last aspect of Flathman's model is that there must be a background of free choice. More explicitly, Professor Cowling asks, echoing the questions but not the conclusions of such scholars as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, can consent even exist in a patriarchal system. His primary focus is to ask "how much do various aspects of patriarchy allow men to sexually coerce women? And which of these forms of sexual coercion should be considered as rape?" (p. 109). After briefly examining the various theories juxtaposing sexual consent and patriarchy, Cowling answers this question by applying Sylvia Walby's (1990) six patriarchal social structures (the household mode of

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production, paid work, the state, male violence, sexuality and cultural institution) and asking whether in inequities in these areas (redefined by Cowling as age and basic mental capacity, authority relationships, economic status, domestic status, the law and its enforcement, physical strength, cultural norms and intoxication) prevents real consent between sexual partners. He concludes by noting that "The argument of this chapter is thus that to say our society is patriarchal and has an average slope against women is not very helpful in deciding whether the apparent sexual consent is actually false. It is necessary instead to look at a series of areas and see where the man and woman in question stand in relation to each of them" (p. 126). During these various sections he also addresses the idea of whether and how women are able to rape men.Cowling, finally, connects the previous chapters by reiterating a notion of rape as being a continuum as opposed to a dichotomy.
This is a range "between pressurised sex, coerced sex and rape, not because the dividing line between legitimate pressure and illegitimate coercion is unclear, and because the degree of coercion implied by the background situation varies by a long series of small degrees" (pp. 129-130). This book provides interesting life and philosophical substance to much of the debate regarding the definitions of consent and understanding of date rape. The book provides a substantially lesser contribution to the legal and public policy debate around these issues.

REFERENCES

Flathman, Richard.E. 1972. POLITICAL OBLIGATION. London: Croom
Helm.

Walby, Sylvia. 1990. THEORISING PATRIARCHY. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.