Ched Evans, rape myths and Medusa's gaze: a story of mirrors and windows
Ched Evans, rape myths and Medusa's gaze: a story of mirrors and windows
This paper analyses the visualisation of rape and sexual assault in legal and scholarly language. It begins with a critique of the Court of Appeal ruling in R v. Evans (Chedwyn) and its forensic examination of the details of a female rape complainant's consensual sexual activity with other men. The case is analysed in light of a visual metaphor used by Ellison and Munro to describe the removal of popular misconceptions about rape. The paper contextualises that discussion with reference to the idea of the male gaze and its affirmation of a phallocentric cultural and social world in which the objectification of female difference is entrenched. The paper finally challenges that assessment, however, sketching an alternative approach to visual-critical scholarship that embraces interdisciplinarity and a literary sensibility to break (or at least to loosen) the association between the prurient eye of the male voyeur and the criminal justice gaze.
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Gurnham, David
f63e1a54-5924-4fd0-a3f5-521311cee101
Gurnham, David
f63e1a54-5924-4fd0-a3f5-521311cee101
Gurnham, David
(2018)
Ched Evans, rape myths and Medusa's gaze: a story of mirrors and windows.
International Journal of Law in Context, .
(doi:10.1017/S1744552318000010).
Abstract
This paper analyses the visualisation of rape and sexual assault in legal and scholarly language. It begins with a critique of the Court of Appeal ruling in R v. Evans (Chedwyn) and its forensic examination of the details of a female rape complainant's consensual sexual activity with other men. The case is analysed in light of a visual metaphor used by Ellison and Munro to describe the removal of popular misconceptions about rape. The paper contextualises that discussion with reference to the idea of the male gaze and its affirmation of a phallocentric cultural and social world in which the objectification of female difference is entrenched. The paper finally challenges that assessment, however, sketching an alternative approach to visual-critical scholarship that embraces interdisciplinarity and a literary sensibility to break (or at least to loosen) the association between the prurient eye of the male voyeur and the criminal justice gaze.
Text
Gurnham_Evans_IJLC_Revised_submission
- Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 10 February 2018
e-pub ahead of print date: 16 May 2018
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Local EPrints ID: 417951
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/417951
ISSN: 1744-5523
PURE UUID: 55b4c8f7-e60e-43c1-9b55-9ae024c64509
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Date deposited: 19 Feb 2018 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 06:12
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