As the title suggests this book looks to clarify the tensions and contradictions in the lives of women and their experience of violence with the State which has an ambivalent relationship to rape.
One way this is achieved in the book is by studying the way Rape Crisis and other such organisations are supported and funded. A classic illustration of the confusion between the roles of big business and the State and women and rape, is (understandably?) the refusal of Rape Crisis in the States to accept funding from the Playboy organisation.
This book is also a history of the development of not only the awareness that change was needed but also the methods and process of that change.
Matthews examines this through the context of six organisations based in and around southern California. She looks at these changes from the perspectives of different groups and political positions.
She details how, like many radical movements, institutionalisation creeps up, at times almost imperceptibly until, as now, it is the principle share holder.
This book is easy to read, it is very clear and well researched. It is heavily anecdotal which makes it interesting and unlike some books of that nature it rarely loses the balance between comment and analysis.
Nigel Larcombe
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