and Dominelli 2001: 6). Like many other feminists, Cowburn and Dominelli see the
media and politician’s focus on stranger danger as the result, not of feminist activism
surrounding sexual assault, but as a means of reaffirming hegemonic constructions of the
male protector of women and children (often from the black male sexual aggressor) and a
vigilantism towards the stranger pedophile through which hegemonic masculinity may be
acted out. Ultimately, many feminists argue, concern about intrafamilial child abuse does
not receive the same attention as stranger assault because of the politically dangerous
nature of challenging the ideology of the patriarchal family and hegemonic masculinity.
Corrigan argues:
Megan’s Law is a viable project precisely because it so successfully adapts progressive,
feminist rhetoric and tactics to ends that further coercive state power…At the same time
that many feminist concepts and political strategies have been co-opted by proponents of
Megan’s Law, the substance of those feminist reforms is clearly under attack. Megan’s
Law revives the stereotype of the sexual predator after two decades of the increasingly
successful prosecution of “normal” men for crimes that in many cases simply did not
exist before the mid-1970s….Megan’s Law draws its power from the conflation of rape
with mental illness, the fear of the predatory stranger, the psychic and physical stigma of
rape, the privileging of some victims over others, and the power to treat offenders
unequally. (Corrigan 2006)
Thus, scholars who attempt to associate contemporary media and political attention to
sexual assault with feminist activism surrounding rape and child sexual abuse have
problematically ignored the volume of complaints among feminist activists and
academics with regard to how the problem of sexual assault is framed and dealt with. It
is also unclear that a general victims’ rights movement may be identified as the source of
sexual predator laws. The question remains, however, as to why sexual predator rhetoric
and legislation gained prominence during the past three decades. Most scholars agree
that the concern over sexual assault provided a valuable symbolic platform through which
law and order politicians could win votes. But was this concern a genuinely democratic
Convention