We argue that stereotypes associated with concepts like he-said–she-said, conspiracy theory, sexual harassment, and those expressed by paradigmatic slurs provide “normative inference tickets”: conceptual permissions to automatic, largely unreflective normative conclusions. These “mental shortcuts” are underwritten by associated stereotypes. Because stereotypes admit of exceptions, normative inference tickets are highly flexible and productive, but also liable to create serious epistemic and moral harms. Epistemically, many are unreliable, yielding false beliefs which resist counterexample; morally, many perpetuate bigotry and oppression. Still, some normative inference tickets, like some activated by sexual harassment, constitute genuine moral and hermeneutical advances. For example, our framework helps explain Miranda Fricker's notion of “hermeneutical lacunae”: what early victims of “sexual harassment” – as well as their harassers – lacked before the term was coined was a communal normative inference ticket – one that could take us, collectively, from “this is happening” to “this is wrong.”

There is an undeniable tendency to dismiss women's sexual assault allegations out of hand. However, this tendency is not monolithic – allegations that black men have raped white women are often met with deadly seriousness. I argue that contemporary rape culture is characterized by the interplay between rape myths that minimize rape, and myths that catastrophize rape. Together, these two sets of rape myths distort the epistemic resources that people use when assessing rape allegations. These distortions result in the unjust exoneration of people we cannot conceive of as monstrous, while making it too easy to believe that some marginalized people could be rapists. I also argue that rape myths enable a novel kind of epistemic injustice. This injustice concerns how our assessments of trustworthiness and our assessments of plausibility interact. I argue that rape myths can result in runaway credibility deflations that can explain both why people fail to believe most women, and also why people may unjustly believe false allegations that white women have been raped by black men.

Bangladesh is experiencing an epidemic of child rape. Discrimination based on patriarchal philosophies, inadequate rape laws, inadequate policies to address child rape, a conservative criminal justice system, and a conventional judicial environment has culminated in injustice for victims. Laws exist that require severe punishments; however, child rape has not been satisfactorily prevented. Societal norms, stigma, political pressure, money, power, and the critical process of the justice system make it extraordinarily difficult for victims to receive justice. This article describes the reasons why men rape children, including offenders’ psychological conditions and the advantages that men have over the weaker in the criminal justice system, enjoying impunity. While attempting to understand the reasons broadly, statistical data show that the reporting of such crimes has been increasing, but this does not genuinely represent the actual number of crimes committed. The article focuses on social phenomena associated with child rape culture and identifies reasons why crimes are not reported. An in-depth discussion of inappropriate laws for child rape and of the loopholes in these laws demonstrates the hardship that victims face in their fight for justice. Finally, social and legal recommendations for the prevention of child rape are highlighted.

Sexualized naked protest using young and attractive women's bodies have long featured in the repertoire of protest tools for interventions in public space. Antirape feminist groups and nonhuman-animal rights activist groups, in particular, have mobilized these bodies to attract attention to their causes. Contemporary debates have suggested that these sorts of protest are objectionable, and that they are entwined with contemporary rape culture. This article complicates these accounts by considering what happens when the naked body is presented as a grotesquery in the service of these apparently emancipatory politics.

Analyzing two instances of naked protest as case studies, this article examines what happens to naked protest when the bodies protesting are “ugly” or are rendered so. The analysis suggests that naked protest featuring bodies that are “ugly” harbors the possibility of mobilizing a transgressive politics beyond contemporary rape culture. This article has implications for better understanding how to mobilize protest in a way that is transgressive and bold without further enshrining rape culture as the normative background against which it takes place.