This Article cautions feminists to weigh carefully any purported benefits of reform against the considerable philosophical and practical costs of criminalization strategies before considering making further investments of time, resources, and intellect in rape reform. After decades of using criminal law as the primary vehicle to address sexualized violence, the time is ripe for feminists to reassess continued involvement in rape reform. However, reforms that target the difficulties of date rape prosecutions and seek to counter gender norms, such as rape shield and affirmative consent laws, are controversial, sporadically-implemented, and empirically unsuccessful. Sexual assault laws that adopt prevailing views of criminality and victimhood, such as predator laws, enjoy great popularity. In the rape context, this effort has produced mixed results. In apparent lock-step with the movement of the American penal system, feminists have advocated a host of reforms to strengthen state power to punish gender-based crimes. Over the past several years, feminism has been increasingly associated with crime control and the incarceration of men.
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