Susan Brownmiller, an American writer, journalist, and feminist activist, in her most well-known book “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape” published in 1975, makes a controversial statement: “Rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” Brownmiller does not have an emotional approach towards women in this claim and explains her reasons for what she has stated.

This book was ahead of its time in addressing issues related to sexual assault and contrary to the common belief of that time that the victim was deserving of it, it argues how sexual assault is a crime and not a result of desire, but a result of power and violence.

In this book, Brown Miller examines the history of sexual violence against women and lists about twenty wars in which these acts were used as a military tactic, as a reward for their own soldiers, to boost their morale, or to intimidate and humiliate the enemy.

The author of this book has gone through a lot of pain and suffering to review and reconsider many testimonies about sexual assault, and has discussed and examined historical distortions and incorrect interpretations of women’s experiences of assault. He explains how assault has been used as a calculated weapon to humiliate and pressure women directly, and to see women as a possession of men. He describes a concept called “the ideology of assault”, especially when men collectively and as an organized violence commit assault.

In this work, she discusses the theory of sexual assault and female anxiety, stating that in her opinion, all women are victims of sexual assault, even those who have not been directly assaulted. She sees this assault as a part of a male-dominated system that instills fear and terror in all women and maintains it.

In this book, Brown Miller also talks about rape and states, “Women are taught to be victims of rape. Simply hearing the phrase ‘rape’ means being aware of the power dynamics between men and women. Girls – not boys – are the victims of rape. Rape is a horrific event that happens to women and the suggestion is that until we act with caution and care, this will continue to be our fate.”

In an interview and detailed report published on February 12, 2018 in The Guardian, Rachel Cooke writes about examining Susan Brownmiller’s book after about five decades, using the discussions sparked by the hashtag #metoo on social media as a pretext. She writes that Brownmiller’s book brought the issue of sexual assault out of the shadows in 1975. In this conversation, Brownmiller recalls the process of writing the book very clearly and mentions that she extracted a significant portion of the necessary material for the book from resources related to the two World Wars in the New York Public Library.

Sasha Cohen, a writer for Time magazine, considers Brown Miller’s book on October 7, 2015 to be a book that has changed our discourse on the issue of “rape”.

Unfortunately, this book has not been translated into Farsi yet; however, the English version of the book is available for purchase and reading on book buying websites such as Amazon for interested readers.

“سلام دنیا”

“Hello world”

Book Name: Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape

Author: Susan Brown Miller

Publication: Open Road Media

Publication date: 1975

Explanation: In the introduction of this book, we have also used the report of the session of the Women’s Social Issues Study Circle entitled “Analysis and Investigation of the Dimensions of Women’s Security against Violence” which was published on the website of the Iranian Sociologists Association in October 2016.