"You don't feel like it, but you do it for him"

Australian study: Attitude toward marital rape has yet to catch up with law against it.

Published July 16, 2008 4:00PM (EDT)

Australian law says it's rape when there's no consent. Some married women raped by their husbands -- and the husbands themselves -- are not so sure, at least until they're informed by health workers that forced sex in marriage is not "just part of the compromise," it's a crime. That's according to two years of research among victims, community workers and police in Australia's state of Victoria, described in Tuesday's the Age. "The community doesn't recognize that partner rape exists," the study's author told the paper. Read the researchers' preliminary conclusions if you like, safe in the knowledge that no one here would ever think such a thing.


By Lynn Harris

Award-winning journalist Lynn Harris is author of the comic novel "Death by Chick Lit" and co-creator of BreakupGirl.net. She also writes for the New York Times, Glamour, and many others.

MORE FROM Lynn Harris


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Broadsheet Love And Sex