German #MeToo: Rape Cultures and Resistance, 1770–2020

• Published in: Feminist German Studies Vol. 39; no. 2; pp. 136 - 137
• Main Author: Gruber, Julia K
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Lincoln University of Nebraska Press 01.10.2023
• Subjects: Children; Culture; Domestic violence; Gender pay gap; Gender-based violence; Mythology; Nonfiction; Rape; Sex crimes; Sexuality; Europe; Germany
• ISSN: 2578-5206; 2578-5192
• DOI: 10.1353/fgs.2023.a917816

Of the 114,393 reported cases of partner violence in Germany in 2018,122 women were murdered by expartners; 75 percent of the 15,000 reported victims of child abuse were female; there were 9,000 cases of rape and sexual assault, and 400 victims of sexual trafficking. In the introduction to German #MeToo, editors Elisabeth Krimmer and Patricia Simpson present Germany as a place where sexual violence is considered "natural and inevitable," as a historically rape-prone society, "enabled and sustained" by its "social, political, cultural, and economic fabrics" (2). Krimmer and Simpson successfully set the stage for the individual chapters by deconstructing the most prevalent rape myths: the myth of "No means Yes"; the myth that rape is "only committed by male lowlifes"; the myth that rape is "a crime committed by males of other races and ethnicities"; the myth that rape is "the victim's fault"; and the related myths that "forced sex is not rape" and "it is not rape when the victim is unconscious" (4-8).