Male rape is a feminist issue
Publication Date
December 9, 2025
Creator
Abstract
This thesis is concerned with identifying postfeminist techniques, transformations and rationalities as interpellated through Foucault’s notion of governmentality, and feminist works on patriarchy, gender and neoliberalism. In this instance, oriented to tracing and problematising discursive regularities around the construct of ‘male rape’ and its entanglement with populist feminism’s anti-feminism, across corresponding domains of knowledge/power.
This thesis argues that the lines between pro-feminism, anti-feminism, and postfeminism are slippery, porous, contradictory and insubstantial. Situating ‘male rape’ within this discursive and political terrain is not quite as straightforward as has previously been asserted. Whilst the primary focus of this thesis is ‘male rape’ and feminism, fundamentally, what is really at stake here is neoliberalism, and the reproduction of gendered binaries, gendered inequalities and gendered norms that underlie its innately Patriarchal form. That feminism has become entangled in this process is already accepted by those adopting the stance and focus of a postfeminist analyst, that male rape plays a role in backlash is likewise already accepted, but that these two things might be intimately connected remains a stubborn lacuna.
This thesis suggests a space and significance for the male victim of rape squarely within the feminist project, whilst steadfastly contributing to it. Male victimity at the margins, must be fully centred in order to disrupt present circulations of Patriarchal power. As such, this work is in the spirit of feminism for everybody (hooks, 2014), and indeed, every body.
Item Type
ethesis
Thesis Type
PhD
Supervisors
Subjects (LC)
Associated Schools / Departments
School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies
eprints ID
80788
UoN Repository URI
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