This chapter considers why rape is a moral and legal wrong. It confronts and rejects the suggestion that rape is wrong because of the bad experience of being raped. It also confronts and rejects the suggestion that rape is wrong because it infringes the ownership rights of the raped person over her own body. The failure of these accounts are used to develop and defend the view that rape is wrong as the sheer use of another human being, as a denial of the status of subject and its substitution with the status of object. A two-stage view is developed according to which rape shares its objectifying aspect with prostitution, pornographic depiction, etc., but differs from these other activities in the way in which it relates to the rights of the person who is objectified. Some of the implications of this view for the law are explored at the end of the chapter.
Keywords: criminal law, harm, self-ownership, objectification,