The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.
Judith Lewis HermanRead
... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the societal standards of defining rape, which often prioritize male perspectives over women's experiences.
Judith Lewis Herman's quote critically examines how societal norms and legal definitions of rape are influenced by men's perspectives, often dismissing women's lived experiences of violation. It suggests that the threshold for what constitutes rape is skewed, as it focuses more on acceptable levels of coercion rather than recognizing the full extent of women's violations, thereby questioning the justice and moral implications of such standards.
Themes
RapeConsentViolenceGenderSocietyCoercion
In practice
Example use cases
During a seminar on gender-based violence, this quote could be used to illustrate the flaws in current legal definitions of rape.
More from Judith Lewis Herman
All quotes →The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men. It therefore provides strong guarantees for the rights of the accused but essentially no guarantees for the rights of the victim. If one set out by design to devise a system for provoking intrusive post-traumatic symptoms, one could not do better than a court of law.
Judith Lewis HermanRead
Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.
Judith Lewis HermanRead
Similar quotes
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
Edmund BurkeRead
Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
Rene DescartesRead
Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. "What inference," asked the latter, "might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works?" Haldane replied: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."
John B. S. HaldaneRead
People hurried past, the others of the street, endless anonymous, twenty-one lives per second, race-walking in their faces and pigments, sprays of fleetest being.
Don DelilloRead
...that melancholy which we feel when we cease to obey orders which, from one day to another, keep the future hidden, and realise that we have at last begun to live in real earnest, as a grown-up person, the life, the only life that any of us has at his disposal.
Marcel ProustRead
Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.
Terry PratchettRead