UN equal under the law is common for women

[undergroundpanther]

Sexual Violence Against Women and a Woman's Right to Self-Defense:
The Case of Aileen Carol Wuornos
BY PHYLLIS CHESLER, Ph.D.
Id. at 558-59.

In 1978, Elizabeth Schneider, who was Wanrow's lawyer in the successful appeal to the Washington Supreme Court, and Susan Jordan, her coauthor, commented on the Wanrow case, noting that the

circumstances under which women are forced to defend themselves entirely different from those which cause men to commit homicides, the woman's state of mind is different as well. Presenting the individual woman's perspective in the trial means educating the judge and jury about the incidence and severity of the problems of rape, wife-assault, and child abuse and molestation.
Schneider & Jordan, "Representation of Women Who Defend Themselves in Response to Physical or Sexual Assault," 4 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 149, 156 (1978).

Since the Wanrow decision, many women have alleged rape/self-defense; few have been believed. (See, e.g., Thomus v. State, 578 S.W.2d 691 (Tex. Crim. App. 1979); Commonwealth v. Lamrini, 467 N.E.2d 95 (Mass 1984); Commonwealth v. Carbone, 574 A.2d 584 (Pa. 1990.) An increasing number of articles on feminist jurisprudence have also tried to clarify, further, the circumstances under which a reasonable woman can argue rape/battery/self-defense. See Schneider & Jordan, supra; Fabricant, "Homicide in Response to a Threat of Rape: A Theoretical Examination of the Rule of Justification," 11 Golden Gate U. L. Rev. 945 (1981); Kates & Engberg, "Deadly Force Self-Defense Against Rape," 15 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 873 (1982); Reece, "Women's Defenses to Criminal Homicide and the Right to Effective Assistance of Counsel: The Need for Relocation of Difference," 1 UCLAWomen's L. J. 1101 (1991); Cahn, "The Looseness of Legal Language: The Reasonable Woman Standard in Theory and in Practice," 77 Cornell L. Rev. 1398 (1992).

Burning questions remain.

_Does a woman have the right to kill to prevent herself from being raped?_

In the past, courts have refused to impose the death penalty on rape or to hold that forcible sex constitutes "great bodily harm" to trigger penalty enhancement--despite the fact that the consequences of rape are often life-long and extremely debilitating. If a woman only has the right to use whatever force, short of homicide, necessary to prevent rape, how can she know exactly how much or how little force to employ in order to make her escape? How does a woman know that a rapist will stop at rape? Does a woman have the same right to "heat-of-passion" and rage to protect her bodily integrity and "honor"that a man does9 Does a man's Fourteenth Amendment right to use deadly force to prevent burglary or other invasions of the home and castle cover a woman's right to prevent any unwanted invasion of her body?

From about 1967 on, in addition to fighting for women's right to abortion and to equal pay for equal work, grass-roots feminists focused on the sexual objectification of women and on issues of sexual violence toward women, such as stranger-rape and sexual harassment on the job and on the street. Only after a decade were feminist activists able to expand their focus to include marital rape, date rape, domestic battery, and incest. During the 1980s it became clear to feminists working in the area that most prostituted women were also incest victims, that many battered wives were treated as if they were their husband's or boyfriend's prostitutes, that both wife-batterers and serial killers of women were addicted to pornography, and that all women, whether prostitutes (die so-called "bad girls") or non-prostitutes (the so-called "good-girls"), who dared to kin in self-defense were treated as if they were prostitutes, i.e., demon terrorists from hell, who deserved no mercy.

As yet, no radical feminist equivalent to the Center for Constitutional Rights or the Southern Poverty Law Center exists, nor does even one graduate, medical, or law school program committed to centralizing, summarizing, and updating the. relevant research and to training expert witnesses in this area. The media decides which cases the nation will follow, not feminists, who are without the necessary institutional resources.
http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/publications/sexual_violence.html