Susan Brownmiller, Who Reshaped Views About Rape, Dies at 90

[IwantToRetire]

Her book “Against Our Will” argued that rape was a crime of power and violence, not passion; it led to laws that made it easier to prosecute rapists.

“Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times ... ”

Rape “is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” (Italics hers.)

Ms. Brownmiller became a vociferous opponent of the multi-billion-dollar pornography industry. She believed strongly that its dehumanization of women was a major contributor to sexual violence.

Part of quite a long obituary at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/books/susan-brownmiller-dead.html

Can be read in full at https://archive.is/ph3t7

Wow thanks for sharing. What a powerhouse! Yet another woman who’s pivotal work has changed the world we live in. I didn’t realise that rape wasn’t seen as a crime until the 70s in USA - no wonder the rest of the world is so slow to catch on to the tool of oppression by which all men keep all women under threat or however she put it, given that:
While she had never been raped herself, Ms. Brownmiller realized that she had been profoundly affected by the threat of it simply by being a woman.
All her anti porn campaigning in the late 70s too - she must’ve been reeling at the state of the world today. She split the feminism movement of the time with her campaign but she was ultimately right. Interesting parallel for today.
A shame she strayed at age 80 into victim blaming- overall contribution to the world though was 5

A shame she strayed at age 80 into victim blaming- overall contribution to the world though was 5

It wasn't so much victim blaming but a misjudged sense that the politics she had helped create would surely have made women more aware.

Although as we all know any woman who speaks out against men's dominant power is ridiculed or side lined, and the young women of whatever time it is, sadly pay more attention to what the male establishment is saying rather than the women who have gone before.

Not quite the same, and dont want to derail this thread, as all those women today who are pro trans, pro "sex work".

Sad to say but if "Against Our Will" was newly published today I bet that the overall reaction would be negative by men and many women as being extremist.

Each new young generation of women will be more likely influenced by the male view of the world than a feminist one.

RIP Susan 💐

This was the "victim blaming" interview. Read and judge for yourself. I feel that older feminists had a much more realistic idea of what men are like and how precarious women's rights and safety are compared to university activists from privileged backgrounds. A lot of women from non-western backgrounds and from poorer parts of the world would find resonance in her caution. A minority of western feminists reeling from the Trans id onslaught may be less likely to condemn her for her "outdated" views. Afterall all dinosaurs like Germaine Greer were 100% right. In many ways at 80, she was still braver than many in expressing such harsh truths. She didn't give a fuck about upsetting cooler, younger feminists.

https://www.thecut.com/2015/09/what-todays-rape-activists-dont-get.html

Rip Ms Brownmiller.

Susan Brownmiller provoked criticism because of the position she took on the [in]famous case of a 14 year-old African American child, Emmett Till, who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for whistling at a White woman. She appeared to say that what Till did by whistling at a woman - White or not - was on a spectrum of sexual aggression that included sexual assault.

Whether Emmett Till's whistling was a childish mistake, misplaced bravado, or deliberate sexism, it certainly wasn't a physical assault. Nonetheless he was horribly killed by a racist mob, and her take on the incident, which read a lot like victim-blaming, was widely criticised.

The fact that the Emmett Tell lynching was one of the iconic cases in the civil rights struggle, and the fact that the accusations made against Till were withdrawn later, even by the woman he allegedly 'insulted', makes Brownmiller's take on it difficult to defend.

To be honest I haven't followed what she said about the Emmett Till case in later life, she may have revised her interpretation of it.

Whether Emmett Till's whistling was a childish mistake, misplaced bravado, or deliberate sexism, it certainly wasn't a physical assault. Nonetheless he was horribly killed by a racist mob, and her take on the incident, which read a lot like victim-blaming, was widely criticised.

I thought the original criticism was from Angela Davis who objected to the idea that Black men were as bad a White men in relation to treatment of women.

.... the book was also rightly critiqued by scholars like bell hooks and Angela Davis for its blindspots regarding race. While acknowledging Against Our Will as a “pioneering scholarly contribution to the contemporary literature of rape,” Davis condemned it as a text “pervaded with racist ideas.” In a passage on Emmett Till, the Black teenager lynched in 1955 for whistling at a white woman in a Mississippi grocery store, Brownmiller described the boy’s whistle as a “deliberate insult just short of physical assault,” suggesting that black and white men alike see women as the white man’s property. Davis noted that in Brownmiller’s rendering, Till comes off looking “almost as guilty as his white racist murderers.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/susan-brownmiller-obituary

Surely the racism is the response of those who accepted the allegations again Emmett Till, because had he been white it is inlikely he would have been kidnapped, tortured and murdered?

I think we are still grappling with how to talk or write about male violence against women, when race is an element. ie who is able to say what, or how to say it.

I read Against Our Will as a 16 year old when it first came out in paperback, and it was formative of my feminism.

And re. her issues around race: in the book, she notes that black men (in the US context) are as capable of objectifying and assaulting women as any other men. I can see how this could be distorted, particularly with the kind of myths about black men which circulated from the end of the Civil War onwards, but her point was about all men, regardless of ethnicity.

I also read Against Our Will and it was formative for me too. I completely accept that men of all ethnicities objectify and assault women.

But the Emmett Till case was a strange example to use: he was a child, not a man; it later turned out that he possibly didn't even whistle at the white women, let alone do anything else to her; he was brutally murdered and his body mutilated; everybody lied in court; and the men who lynched him walked free.

There were surely many other cases of Black men, not children, actually attacking women, not maybe whistling at them, that Brownmiller could have quoted.

Choosing the lynching of Emmett Till - a case which was iconic to the Civil Rights movement - to illustrate that men of any ethnicity are potential rapists, was bound to cause offence.

Yeah, sounds pretty victim-blamey to me, to be honest.

It's not really clear what she means by repeating women "can't" drink as much as men. Does she mean physically, literally cannot drink as much without being incapacitated, or (as it sounds) saying "can't" when she means "shouldn't"?

Also "They are more important than the college kids". No, no victim is "more important" than another, and college students (in the US) aren't "kids", that's very patronising.

It also doesn't make sense - she essentially says women who get drunk/go home with strange men/wear short skirts etc. don't deserve sympathy because they don't take sufficient precautions to protect themselves, but then say that the rape of women in college doesn't really matter because poor women/women of colour/young girls (who presumably don't do any of the things she is blaming college women for doing) are at far higher risk of getting raped. So how can women be blamed for their own rape for doing something when they (in her view) are less likely to get raped than the women not doing it!

It's equally victim-blaming towards victims of DV "I take a hard line with victims of domestic violence, too. They feel that we should respect their opinions and beliefs because they are survivors. If they can’t get out because they don’t want to reduce their living circumstances....then I am supposed to respect that. But I don’t."
'Reduce their living circumstances' makes it sound as though they accept being punched in the face in exchange for a nice holiday or getting their nails done. Rather than it being impossible to feed and house yourself and multiple kids on one salary (particularly in the US with fewer social security benefits).

It is "victim blaming" - but I think she was coming from the position that she and other 70s feminists had pointed out that much as theoretically women and men should be equal, when it comes to real life they aren't.

Its down to should women restrict how they live because men cant be trusted.

Look at all the advice still given out today about women not getting drunk whilst out, covering their drinks so they dont get spiked, dont get into a taxi on your own, dont walk home alone, check for cameras in toilets, and on, and on.

So it is as much about younger women not acknowledging what earlier feminists have said.

Not that women cant be equal, but that men's behaviours means we aren't.

Of course, might have been better to ask why men hadn't (and still haven't) changed their behaviour.

But look how many comments there are on FWR about how terrible it is that younger feminists are listening to the MRAs behind the TRAs and ignoring all the older and wiser feminists!

The revolutionary thing that Ms Brownmiller said - and it's the thing that makes her still a radical feminist, is that she pointed out that rape is a tool exerted by some men, but that ALL men benefit from it, because rape keeps ALL women in a hostage state, to a greater or lesser degree.

What she pointed out was that rape was structural.

That hasn't changed, and it's as confronting today as it was in 1975 when I read her book.