Rethinking the Victim

Some books must bide their time to summon a readership, and this is one. Rethinking the Victim is the first book to examine gender and violence in Australian literature, and it makes a powerful claim: that literary texts by Australian women writers bring a unique understanding to this social problem. In this moment, when insidious intimate violence is recognized as a social justice issue, and a humanitarian issue, Brewster and Kossew’s study is a reminder that the feminist campaigns on issues of gendered violence that now call us to account so powerfully have a long history, and feminist activism on domestic violence surged before, in the 1970s. The time for this book is now, as Australian women take to the streets in a national “March 4 Justice” to hold leaders accountable on issues of sexual assault, and demand to be heard. In 2021 the Australian of the Year is Grace Tame, a survivor of sexual violence who demands social change, and she has inspired other women to speak out and demand to be heard. Indigenous women bear witness as survivors of institutional abuse and neglect. This national call to account resonates with the surge of the MeToo movement elsewhere: there are comparisons with the impact of an historical rape claim on the Kavanaugh hearings in the USA, and in Britain women take to the streets protesting against violence against women in response to the murder of Sarah Everard. Data on sexual violence globally presented in NGO reports, for example, present extensive evidence of gendered violence

Criminal justice · Criminology · Domestic violence · Economic Justice · Indigenous · Neglect · Poison control · Political science · Sexual violence · Sociology · Suicide prevention · Witness · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Intimate Partner and Family Violence · Psychology · Gender Studies · Law