‘Her Protests Were Unavailing’: Australian Legal Understandings of Rape, Consent and Sexuality in the ‘Roaring Twenties’
Journal of Australian Studies n.64 (2000) 14-33
Posted: 4 Jun 2013
Date Written: 2000
Abstract
In 1922, Joseph McAuliffe was accused of raping Mollie Meadows in Bunbury, Australia. The court struggled to make sense of conflicting testimonies, gendered expectations, and changing ideas of consent and sexuality during the “roaring twenties”. Meadows testified she was forcibly raped, but McAuliffe testified that sex was implicitly promised to him. Once intercourse began, he said he “could not stop” - a belief shared in society and the medical field. The defence portrayed Meadows' flirty behaviour the night before the incident as justifying the accused's belief that intercourse was “promised” the next day. The jury convicted McAulliffe. McAuliffe appealed and argued that Mollie Meadows had irrevocably consented to sex by her suggestive behaviour. The appeal was allowed, and McAuliffe was acquitted on retrial. Despite more liberalized sexual practices that were ushered into Australian society during the ‘twenties, Australian courts would not accommodate the changes in women's sexual behavior.The case made clear that a woman who failed to act “innocently” had no right to then refuse or revoke consent to sex. The result was to restrict women's freedom to experiment with their sexuality, but to valorize men’s coercive sexual behaviours.
Keywords: sexuality, roaring twenties, Australia, legal, law, Australian, rape, sexual, sex, assault, crime, criminal, history, historical, biography, biographical, consent, implied, sexuality, feminist, feminism, Backhouse, liberal, gender, trial, appeal
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