Volume 3 issue 1 May 2015
Gendered Archetypes and Veils of Objectivity: Identifying Possibilities and Manifestations of Normative Influences in Swedish Rape Proceedings
Mikael Silfors
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After drawing a discursive theorisation of norms in legal practice, this article outlines the shared linguistic manifestations of extra-legal gendered norms in Swedish criminal proceedings on rape. Spaces for interpretation and reframing created behind images of flawless positivist objective procedural conduct are targeted for analysis, identifying regularities in the decisive factors of the verdicts, including what is attributed and dispossessed of meaning. Two discursive orders of rape are found to constitute judges’ perceptions of what the act of rape entails, separated by the existence of preceding relationships between the parties. The orders constitute adjudication processes in response to archetypes of how the events of the crime as well as the criminal proceedings usually take place, based in traditional conceptions of women’s bodies and sexuality. Injured parties are thus understood as responsible for being exposed to what took place during the event, while suspects’ responsibilities are non-existent as long as they can claim ignorance.
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