History is grounded in rape and male sexual violence against women. bell hooks details the systematic and horrific rapes of Black women by white slave owners. Danielle McGuire provides a compelling account of the shocking levels of rape and male sexual violence inflicted by white men on Black women as a central driver within the civil rights movement (and yet so notably written out of these histories). We see this history of violence contained in the myths that we tell about our society, and some recent contemporary fiction has rewritten these myths from the female perspective. That female perspective highlights how women's experiences were characterized by rape and male sexual violence upon women's bodies. What is notable is the ways in which assumptions about rape and male sexual violence against women have not only shaped legislation (written by and for predominantly white men) but how these understandings about rape are enshrined within culture.

Susan Brownmiller wrote: ‘from prehistoric times to the present … rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear’. Rape is a process not only of physical control, but a political means of enforcing a system of control over women through fear of physical control. The idea that rape is a legitimate mechanism of controlling women, it would seem, is part of our cultural discourse. Mediated ‘rape culture’ has served to normalize and legitimate male sexual violence towards a diversity of women. Building on the notions of symbolic violence (the disciplining and regulation of women's bodies) and epistemic violence (the silencing and marginalization of women's voices) I suggest that these forms of violence play a role in the continuation of the cultural normalization of male sexual violence towards and against women.

#MeToo has brought into sharp focus the consequences of this normalization. Women are reclaiming their agency as they refuse to be silenced about rape and sexual violence. Roxanne Gay and Sohaila Abdulali provide us with personalized accounts and reflections of the damage, the huge consequences and impact that rape has had on their lives.