Published in 2015
272 pages
Kate Harding co-authored The Book of Jezebel and Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body and founded what was for a time the internet’s most popular body acceptance blog, Shapely Prose. She has contributed to numerous online publications, including Salon, Jezebel, The Guardian, and the L.A. Times, and published essays in the anthologies Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009), Feed Me: Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight and Body Image, and Madonna and Me: Women Writers on the Queen of Pop.
A graduate of the University of Toronto and the MFA in writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Kate is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the low-residency creative writing program at Bath Spa University. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two dogs.
What is this book about?
Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest. Congressman Todd Akin’s “legitimate” gaffe. The alleged rape crew of Steubenville, Ohio. Sexual violence has been so prominent in recent years that the feminist term “rape culture” has finally entered the mainstream. But what, exactly, is it? And how do we change it?
In Asking for It, Kate Harding answers those questions in the same blunt, bullshit-free voice that’s made her a powerhouse feminist blogger. Combining in-depth research with practical knowledge, Asking for It makes the case that twenty-first century America—where it’s estimated that out of every 100 rapes only 5 result in felony convictions—supports rapists more effectively than victims. Harding offers ideas and suggestions for addressing how we as a culture can take rape much more seriously without compromising the rights of the accused.
