This essay will examine Susan Estrich and Lois Pineau's discussion of rape. Both contribute insights into our society's negligence when it comes to protection and justice for women. Estrich provides insight into the legal system on how it determines rape. We will see that the law is structured to continue to oppress women and leave them unprotected. Pineau continues the conversation about placing responsibility on the victim to prove the crime. It narrows its focus to rape and raises an objection to the model of consent that shapes the attitudes of our culture and the law of our country. Pineau proposes a communicative model of sex. Starting from this proposal, I will conclude my essay with an objection to his model and finally defend his model against this objection. As Estrich demonstrates, rape law has major flaws. The law highlights traditions and attitudes surrounding women and sex. Condones the idea that sex contains male aggression and female passivity. The law uses three different criteria to label a sexual act as rape: mens rea, force and consent. Estrich believes these characteristics demonstrate sexist attitudes within the law. Our legal system abandons mens rea, which is Latin for “guilt of the mind.” It is the offender's ability to understand force and lack of consent. A woman must demonstrate resistance. The man can run away by declaring that he did not realize that the woman was not consenting. Then, the court turns to the woman to see if she has provided adequate evidence that she did not consent to sex. Turning your back on the defendant and looking at the actions of the victim makes the legal system seem rather sexist. Aside from the obvious that this leads the woman to ruminate on the terrible details of the...... middle of paper......soil that protects men and expects too much of women. It is the only case in which the victim must prove that he has done enough. When a person breaks in through the window and steals the TV, the victim does not have to meticulously prove that they actually locked all the windows and doors. The justice system assumes that they are honest citizens and that the evidence of their testimony, lack of TV and fingerprints are sufficient evidence. Our attitudes toward women suggest not only a lack of reform in our legal system, but also our overall problem with how we view women and their bodies. Our society simply does not consider women's bodies to be private property. Women have lost bodily autonomy, if they ever had it. It's a sad, sad world when people can sue companies for a hair in their food, but a woman can't see justice when she's raped.