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CHAPTER THREE 52 LISTENING TO RAPE CARE ADVOCATES Everybody can talk theoretically about what should be happening , when really it’s so out of touch from what’s actually happening that it does more of a disservice to us at . . . the ground-level than it helps us. (Michigan, small city) This study draws on interviews with staff (“advocates”) at local RCCs in six states to understand the effects of policy innovations in the legal and medical response to sexual assault. In chapter 4 I discuss some of the statistical analyses of rape law reforms passed in the 1970s. These instrumental outcomes—whether reforms alter reporting rates, affect convictions, or change sentencing—are clearly a critical measure of policy reform. I wanted to add to those quantitative studies a richer analysis of the political , legal, and cultural conditions against which rape law reforms have, and continue to, play out by focusing on how RCCs experience and negotiate law “on the terrain of the state” (Reinelt 1995). The socio-legal perspective I bring highlights how law itself functions as a constitutive element in—and not just an arena for—struggles between feminist activists and the state over defining sexual violence. The two central components of the research design—the use of qualitative methods to investigate the experiences of local actors—are deeply influenced by my identification as a feminist scholar working within the field of socio-legal studies. Socio-legal and feminist literatures share political commitments to highlighting the voices of those most directly affected by legal and political change, illuminating how lived experiences can serve as valuable sources of knowledge to challenge, expand, and transform intellectual frameworks.1 By employing a large-scale qualitative study of rape care workers, I draw on the traditional strengths of qualitative research in providing “thick description” (Geertz 1973) while scaling up the scope of the study to uncover broader patterns of legal impact than would otherwise be possible from a single case. This work is also informed by scholars within political science who have called for a renewed commitment to social science research that engages and informs policy debates, despite significant contestation over the forms of or methods associated with such research (Flyvbjerg 2001; Schram and Caterino 2006). Given what I argue are serious misunderstandings of rape care work in much of the academic literature, and its almost complete absence from literature on law and social movements,2 I hope that this study not only 53 Listening to Rape Care Advocates provides a rich picture of the continuing problems with the systems response to rape, but also that it suggests new kinds of questions which could be explored through quantitative analysis. As Helena Silverstein’s (2007) book Girls on the Stand so amply illustrates, informal resistance to implementing legal change may be difficult to identify when there are few formal acts to count for the purposes of quantitative analysis. Like the judges in her study who harass, berate, or evangelize minors seeking to avoid parental consent for an abortion yet ultimately grant the judicial bypass sought, the kinds of professionals involved in legal and medical responses to rape are often high-status professionals with significant discretion about how to treat rape victims. They may engage in abusive, even illegal practices that are largely hidden from view, so that minimal compliance may obscure significant resistance. Without a more nuanced picture of how law reforms have played out in local communities, important questions appropriate for quantitative inquiry may go unrecognized and ignored. I begin with a brief introduction to what I study in this book: the county -based and statewide organizations that make up the contemporary anti-rape movement. I then describe the study design and explain why I chose a comparative case study approach focusing on advocates at local RCCs. First, a brief note on terminology. Despite a small but significant (and, I would argue, significantly undercounted) number of male victims of sexual abuse, especially children, I generally use the pronoun “she” when referring to rape victims throughout the book. I do not mean to slight or erase these male victims, but rather to acknowledge that the vast majority of victims who report in the immediate aftermath of a sexual assault are female. Two of the medical interventions I explore, SANE programs and emergency contraception , are generally applicable only to adolescent and adult female victims . (Post-assault examinations on children of both sexes are usually a different , specialized process distinct from the SANE exam discussed here...

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