sees herself as a woman. Many women who consider themselves sexually attractive to men are often upset by sexual harassment precisely because they feel they are being punished for appearing and behaving exactly the way men would insult them for were they
not
sexually attractive. In fact, many women, lesbian and heterosexual alike, report sexual harassment based on sexual slurs and epithets that let them know that they are not measuring up to their male coworkers' definitions of sexual desirability. Older women have complained that they have been harassed out of their jobs to make way for younger women whose youth
and
gender make them more accessible and desirable sexual objects. If heterosexuality is socially constructed on the foundations of male dominance and female submission, as radical feminists claim, then
sexual
harassment is an ideal venue for women's exploitation and abuse. As Catharine MacKinnon asserts, "[G]ender distributes power as it divides labor, enforcing that division by sexual means." Indeed, the sexual harassment of women who work in the sex industry has been dismissed by some courts, who regard it as "a rational consequence of such employment."
113
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Feminists like Susan Brownmiller have argued that rape should be understood as a violent attempt to humiliate, degrade, or defile women, not to alleviate men's over-sexed nature or quell their sexual fears or anxieties. Such a thesis is consistent with the tradition that rape is the seizing of another man's property as his own, such that a woman's value to her original possessor is severely diminished. If a woman is identified either by herself or by her culture in terms of her sexuality, then a rapist's violation of a woman's sexuality is a violation of her
self
, a diminution of her
self
to that of exploitable and expendable object. Kathryn Larsen remarks, "Rape is a death of sorts. It slowly chokes the spirit and drains one's sense of self."
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Furthermore, in a culture whose sexual double standard can demean women merely for being sexual, rape stands out as just one more way to sexualize women and thus demean them. For this reason, some feminists remark that rape degrades women in a way that mugging does not, even though both are attacks on the body. On the other hand, women are given the implicit message that we deserve no better than rape by men who normalize rape as heterosexual sex and by legal institutions who question women's accounts of sex by force. As in the case of sexual harassment, the dialectical message of rape is that a woman is an innately inferior creature whose sexuality is deserving of violation and abuse, as well as an active subject whose sexuality is a means of devaluing her.
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Women of color are multiply dehumanized by race and by gender, and often by class: white men often regard women of color as already inferior in virtue of their race or poverty so that their gender makes them even more vulnerable to the myth that women want, need, and deserve to be raped. Black feminists point out that the exploitation of female black slaves by white masters involved sexual appropriation as much as economic exploitation. Indeed, when women are perceived as having no claim to our own bodies, the myth that a promiscuous woman never has sex against her will gains force and legitimacy.
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Some feminists claim that a feminine socialization that encourages kindness, compassion, patience, and acceptance and emphasizes connectedness in human relations may make women more susceptible to rape, particularly acquaintance rape. Many women do not want to hurt their dates' feelings or appear rude or unfeminine
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