Davis and Greene

Posted: Wed, Apr 22, 2026

Recap

The property theory of rape: Rape is a property offense committed by one man against another man.

The second-wave feminist response: Rape is a form of male domination over women; it is a [sexual vs. violent] offense committed by men as a gender against woman as a gender.

  • The biological version (Brownmiller/Olds): The penis is to blame.
  • The political version (MacKinnon/Wittig): Heterosexuality (as a political institution) is to blame.

Davis’s intervention: Rape is as much of a mechanism of heterosexist patriarchy as it is a mechanism of racism and capitalism; these systems of domination are all intertwined.

Greene’s intervention: Also, transmisogyny and state violence/social control.

Rape as a mechanism of racism

  • As experienced by Black men: The need to justify the heinousness of post–Civil War lynching ⇒ the myth of the animal-like Black rapist, which focuses on the “barbarousness” of “ravishing” white womanhood ⇒ the presumption of guilt + the white woman’s tear.
  • As experienced by Black women:
    • Under slavery: Rape was used as a tool of domination by white slavemasters—a reminder, a weapon of terror; the capacity of white slavemasters to rape without impunity was also an expression of their “property rights.”
    • Post emancipation: The myth of Black men’s animal-like sexuality ⇒ a myth of Black women’s promiscuity ⇒ white men’s access to Black women’s sexualized bodies.

Rape as a mechanism of capitalism

  • For bourgeois/capitalist men: Near impunity to rape; sexual access to those working for you is an expression of one’s social standing (and the social conditions of work are set up to facilitate this); sexual and economic exploitation is of a piece.
    • One exception is that the likelihood of consequences significantly increases when the rape targets someone of the same social standing.
  • The proletarian/working men: Some impunity to rape; rape provides otherwise dominated men an opportunity to dominate—“a bribe, an illusory compensation for powerlessness” (p. 29).
    • For the white male proletariat in particular: the (hetero)sexism and racism work together to generate a feeling of “racial affinity—or even solidarity—with the bosses he should have been challenging” such that “white workers’ hostilities toward their employers could be defused” (p. 27).

Rape as a mechanism of state violence & social control

With rare exceptions, trans women are incarcerated in men’s facilities, where most experience sexual and physical assault.

Trans women, as women, provide heterosexual sex—a scarce, prohibited, and valuable good in men’s prisons.

  • Note that a biological analysis of rape can’t explain any of this.
    • Ding: “trans women’s bodies are not only biologically but socially female—meaning, sexually available by dominant social definition and systematically violated in our everyday life.”
  • Protection is gained by commitment to monogamous heterosexual relationships with men.
    • Greene: The mechanism here is not that a hypermasculine man will physically defend a feminine woman against assailants; rather, trans women get to become members of racialized and often gang-based social networks as the woman of a respected man.
    • ~property theory of rape.

Guards use their power to pressure trans women to “find a man” as soon as possible.

  • The intention is not primarily to protect trans women, but to maintain order and exert control.
    • Guards will lock trans women with known predators as a threat or punishment.
    • Guards will also break up couples through transfers.
    • Guards will penalize women who fight back by raising their security scores.
    • Guards sexually abuse the women themselves.
  • Greene: “The radical constraint of prisoners’ mobility and the power of guards to control and violate prisoners’ bodies” is an inherent feature of prison as a system of control.
  • The heterosexual morality operative within prison walls penalizes women who have multiple partners and who do not choose partners carefully.

Trans women actively navigate and resist this social reality, rather than merely accept and receive it.

  • Waiting to “pair up”: Good reputation ⇒ social standing ⇒ options of partners.
  • Strategically selecting partners: “status, resources, and likelihood of commitment.”
  • Using sex as barter “to achieve necessary ends (safety, material sustenance) while simultaneously enjoying the pleasure of the means.”
  • Building mutual-aid networks & passing on community knowledge.
  • For the few women with the means, using money to gain control and isolation.

Trans women’s relationship with sex and partnerships is complicated.

  • “A social world that incorporated trans women into heterosexuality was a marvel to many trans women of color.”
  • “But these relationships could also feel like a degrading necessity.”

What to do? Greene:

  • No reform will be enough to address the source of the problem: the prison system is designed to demobilize, dispossess, and dehumanize.
  • In the meantime, expand choices under oppression—administrative, material, and otherwise.