Disgrace rape culture rhetoric in the New South Africa

With recent cases, such as those in New Delhi and Steubenville, Ohio making international headlines, rape and rape culture are the focus of a worldwide debate on how much women's rights movements have succeeded in diminishing sexual violence against women. Part of the debate centres on the definition of rape, where a rhetoric of 'legitimate' rape has been adopted by parties associated with patriarchal power. This article argues that such rhetoric performatively constitutes and thereby perpetuates rape culture, not only in the 'third' world but in modern Western states and, that the preservation of the rhetoric of rape culture does not merely perpetuate sexual violence against women, but also the perceived ownership of women's bodies, compulsory heterosexuality and the continuation of binary genders. Using J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace (2000), I contend that rape itself is a constitutional force in shaping women's lives and their identities.