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nd legal circles” [14] .

Lorraine Kelly and Jill Radford, both radical feminists, claim that the law’s distinction between rape and sex is problematic since it “suggests that a clear distinction can be drawn between violence and non-violence and thereby between abusive and ‘normal’ men” (Hinchliffe, 2000:61) [15] .

Feminists such as Professor Sue Lees [16] argue that “the law should promote ‘communicative’ sex - and that it should penalise the non-communicative sex”. She argues that “calling rape violence fails to address the coercive nature of some male sexual behaviour” (1997:96) [17] .

Garvey comments that feminist legal theorists claim that cultural prejudices regarding female sexual behaviour and norms of femininity distort the sense of rape prosecutions. As Ellis in 1948 described “men and women’s delights of sex in very different way; whereas men ‘delight in domination’, women ‘delight in roughness, violence and pain” (2005:19) [18] .

Although Berrington and Jones have commented that feminists argue such notion’s perpetrates the culture of violence as ‘normal’, which contributes to the notion of sexual assault as being normalised” (2002:311) [19]

Sue Lees comments that the much-reported experience of rape victims is that it is they, rather than the accused, who are on trial. As she states “women that give evidence in court describe the process as being ‘as traumatic as the rape itself” (2002:ix) [20] .

Celia Wells comments that “both the process by which R. v R came to be considered by the House of Lords (a concerted strategy by prosecutors) and the outcome of the case, could be seen as evidence of the success of feminist arguments” (2004:93) [21] .

The actus reus of rape originally defined within the Sexual Offences Act 1956 was ‘unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman’. The 1976 amendment of the act was incorporated as an extenuation to this definition the term ‘without her consent’. Therefore in R. v R [22] the husband claimed that he was not guilty of raping his wife although she did not consent to sexual intercourse the act within itself was not unlawful under the working definition of the SOA 1976 amendment Act.

Prior to the judgement of R v R a husband could not be convicted of raping his wife as he had marital immunity in the words of Sir Matthew Hale 1736 [23] .

Westmarland comments that rape within marriage became illegal within common law [24] and statute [25] ; as a result of over 100 years of feminist campaigning on relation to the law’s gender bias, when the word ‘unlawful’ [26] was removed from the definition of the actus reus of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 as amended 1976 [27] by virtue of the criminal Justice and Public order Act (2004:6) [28] .

In the feminist critical writings on the law on rape, the problem of consent in relation to mens rea has been central. This problem has several dimensions, but there are two important points to concentrate on here, part of the definition of rape is sex with one of the parties withholding consent.

It was ruled in R. v Olugboja (1982), a case in which two women were terrorised into submission, that consent was no defence to rape. This was a clarification of the law that meant in effect that it was actual consent under duress of threats that was no defence, that submission did not imply consent and that the prose本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。