Karen Dubinsky relies on criminal case files, a revealing but largely untapped source for social historians, to retell individual stories of sexual danger-crimes such as rape, abortion, seduction, murder, and infanticide. Her research supports many feminist analyses of sexual violence: that crimes are expressions of power, that courts are prejudiced by the victim's background, and that most assaults occur within the victims' homes and communities.
Dubinsky distinguishes herself from most feminist scholars, however, by refusing to view women solely as victims and sex as a tool of oppression. She finds that these women actively sought and took pleasure in sexuality, but they distinguished between wanted and unwanted sexual encounters and attempted to punish coercive sex despite obstacles in the court system and the community.
Confronting a number of key theoretical and historiographic controversies, including recent debates over sexuality in feminist theory and politics, she challenges current thinking on the history of women, gender, and sexuality.
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