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Rhetorically Reconfiguring Victimhood and Agency: The Violence Against Women Act's Civil Rights Clause
- Rhetoric & Public Affairs
- Michigan State University Press
- Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2003
- pp. 97-125
- 10.1353/rap.2003.0035
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Abstract
In this article I examine the rhetorical dimensions of feminist lawmaking on rape and battering, as instantiated in Violence Against Women Act, and ask why this controversial act, and in particular its civil rights remedy, resulted in ambiguous gains. Current popular and legal interpretations of "agency" (labeled the "reasonable man" standard) and of "victimhood" leave battered women in a double bind.
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