Sexual Assault Awareness Month Nonfiction Reading List
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Sign up todayAsking for It
The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture—and What We Can Do about It
Narrator
Erin Bennett
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Length
8 hours 55 minutes
Language
English
Every seven minutes, someone in America commits a rape. And whether that’s a football star, beloved celebrity, elected official, member of the clergy, or just an average Joe (or Joanna), there’s probably a community eager to make excuses for that person.
In Asking for It, Kate Harding combines in-depth research with an in-your-face voice to make the case that twenty-first-century America supports rapists more effectively than it supports victims. Drawing on real-world examples of what feminists call “rape culture”—from politicos’ revealing gaffes to institutional failures in higher education and the military—Harding offers ideas and suggestions for how we, as a society, can take sexual violence much more seriously without compromising the rights of the accused.
Kate Harding has been writing popular feminist rants for Internet audiences since 2007, most notably at Jezebel, at Salon’s Broadsheet blog, and at her own body-acceptance blog, Shapely Prose. She’s also the coauthor of Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere, a major contributor to The Book of Jezebel, and an essayist who’s been published in several anthologies, including Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World without Rape. Kate recently started a new Tumblr blog, Don’t Get Raped (victimblaming.tumblr.com), which uses news items about sexual assault to catalog the many situations women—and men and children—have to avoid to fully protect themselves against the threat of rape. She lives in Minnesota.
Erin Bennett is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and a stage actress who played Carlie Roberts in the BBC radio drama Torchwood: Submission. She can be heard on several video games. Regional theater appearances include the Intiman, Pasadena Playhouse, Arizona Theatre Company, A Noise Within, Laguna Playhouse, and the Getty Villa. She trained at Boston University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Reviews
“Be prepared to yell at the universe while listening to this one…It’s a necessary book for every human right now. It’s one of the first feminist audiobooks that got me hooked on taking in my feminism through my ears.”
“Informative and informal, the book is a smart, impassioned, and well-researched agenda for a strictly no-nonsense understanding of rape culture.”
“Harding skillfully breaks down the factors that have converged to create the United States’ rape culture. Asking For It mixes statistics and research with true stories that show our flawed collective attitude toward sexual assault, resulting in a book that will leave you both outraged and inspired to make change happen.”
“[Harding] has an amazing capacity for transforming her outrage into clear, considered arguments.”
"[A]n unflinching and nuanced map of a culture in crisis; Harding’s singular voice makes it a page-turner. It’s required reading for anyone who wants to know why there’s so much fuss about rape culture these days, as well as for everyone who wants to do something about it.”
“Asking for It is a must-read for anyone who cares about ending sexual violence. Kate Harding takes on politicians, the media, and commonly held myths in a way that’s accessible for antiviolence experts and novices alike. This is a timely and brilliant book that will put a much-needed dent in rape culture.”
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