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One Florida woman began chattering about the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Apparently stunned—or perhaps just bored—by her tales of the book, the assailant left without raping her.
Despite the risk, the signs are that more and more women are inclined to fight back. In her book, The Politics of Rape, Diana Russell, a Mills College sociologist, gives a dramatic example of their growing pugnacity: three women—angry at a man who boasted that he had committed rape—sought him out, punched him in the genitals and beat him up. "I'd like to see more women hit back or hit first," said one of the women. "I think women should learn how to use guns, and I think they should carry them in the streets. And if they are harassed, they should pull them out, and if that doesn't work and a man continues to harass them, then they should shoot him."
Brownmiller, too, insists that it is time for women to fight back. But she is less interested in individual action than in defining the issue politically and forcing society to act. "My purpose in this book has been to give rape its history," she writes. "Now we must deny it a future."