TY - SER AU - High, Anna TI - The "classical" conception of rape and its partial reform in Aotearoa New Zealand PY - 2022/// PB - New Zealand Law Foundation, KW - ATTITUDES KW - CONSENT KW - CRIMINAL JUSTICE KW - HISTORY KW - LAW REFORM KW - RAPE KW - RAPE MYTH KW - SEXUAL VIOLENCE KW - NEW ZEALAND N1 - New Zealand Law Review, 2022, 2022(2): 173-208 N2 - This article traces the broad contours, tensions and complexities of rape law origins and reform in Aotearoa New Zealand. Historical reform debates and controversies in New Zealand illustrate how "classical rape: the rape that is a gender type of offence and ... involves particular conduct" constructed the victim as a valourised resistor and the perpetrator as a blatant disregarder of non-consent. This supported a certain male-imagined sexual logic: that sex is presumptively consensual, and consent can reasonably be attributed to an unwilling person. In 1986, sweeping rape law reforms sought to challenge this logic by reimagining the categories of "victim" and "rapist". As a result of reform, the gap between law's stated abhorrence for and practical sanction of rape has theoretically narrowed. However, certain "classical rape" assumptions — about sex, consent, victims and rapists — have endured in post-reform appellate case law, suggesting that further doctrinal reform will be needed to undo long-standing, embedded beliefs about rights of access to female (and other) bodies. (Author's abstract). Record #8115 UR - https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/lrf/nzlr/2022/00002022/00000002/art00002 ER -