Power, Sexual Violence and Mystification

This chapter is concerned with the influence and legacy of Steven Box and specifically, his chapter Rape and sexual assaults on females. Box’s chapter represented a challenge, not only to dominant discourses on sexual violence defined by the state, media and liberal academics, but also, to radical criminologies. Through centralising the gendered nature of sexual violence and addressing it as a strategy of social control, Box was able to uncover the processes of mystification which work to deny women’s experiences of sexual violence, excuse the men who perpetrate it, and highlight the insidious role of the criminal justice system, and the media, in mystifying this violence. We take Box’s analysis of these processes of mystification as a starting point to highlight both the enduring importance of his work, and the developments we have witnessed since, with a particular focus on sexual violence at the level of discourse. We seek to contest the dominant lens through which sexual violence is understood, at institutional, discursive and subjective levels, by drawing upon dominant conceptualisations of masculinity, femininity and consent which obscure the nature, extent and effects of men’s violence against women and girls. As such, we argue that these processes of mystification play a part in maintaining and reproducing the gendered social order and that we, therefore, must continue to challenge and deconstruct them as Box advocated.