Real rape.

• Author: Barrett, Paul M.

Real Rape.

Susan Estrich. Harvard University Press, $15.95. The strange man held an ice pick to Susan Estrich's throat. "Push over, shut up, or I'll kill you,' he said. She obeyed. After he raped her, he drove away in her car, never to be caught.

Thirteen years later, Estrich's fear and anger still linger. Her memory of being violated animates her teaching of sex discrimination at Harvard Law School (where I was her student) and, now, a provocative book. In Real Rape, Estrich focuses not on violent attacks by strangers but on what she calls "simple rape': a man the victim knows--a date, ex-boyfriend, or estranged husband--bullies or tricks her into sex against her will, without brandishing weapons or breaking bones. Simple rape, Estrich argues, is still real rape and deserves punishment.

Few people question the wisdom of locking up men who leap from the bushes with ice picks. But most men, and many women, assume that a little psychological, and even physical, arm-twisting is a legitimate part of the mating game. Estrich disagrees. Forced sex wounds its victim, even if she knows the man and unwittingly has put herself in a vulnerable position. That goes for the cheerleader who gets drunk at a fraternity party and the woman whose date simply won't take "no' for an answer after she invites him up for coffee. A woman ought not to have to risk injury by attacking her attacker, she adds.

Estrich acknowledges that recent legal changes have favored rape victims. "Shield' laws prevent defense attorneys from introducing irrelevant evidence of a victim's past sexual conduct. Courts and legislatures have eased rules that a victim must notify police immediately after being attacked and that her testimony must be corroborated. The demand that women demonstrate "utmost' (read: superhuman) resistance in the case of simple rape has become, in most instances, a requirement of "reasonable' resistance.

Despite these adjustments, Estrich contends that courts continue to distrust women who claim they were raped under any but the most harrowing circumstances. Victorian notions that respectable ladies would prefer to die than have their virtue sullied intertwine with pseudo-Freudian truisms about women's "unconscious desire' to be forcefully dominated. Estrich skillfully dissects the case law to reveal how such dubious and contradictory assumptions go unchallenged in court. More important, these assumptions--filtered through the actions of trial judges, lawyers...