The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Intersections of race and gender in sexual assault trials
Abstract
This essay traces the development of intersectionality theory within the field of language and gender in relation to research on the language of rape trials. In early work on the topic, I used Judith Butler’s notion of the ‘rigid regulatory frame’ to understand the cultural intelligibility of certain kinds of rape victims in the legal system and the unintelligibility of others. But the inequities that complainants often experience in rape trials are not merely the result of sexism; rather, it is sexism and racism which together interact to disadvantage complainants and protect white male perpetrators, who occupy a privileged position within these contexts vis-à-vis men of colour. In line with recent work in the field, I end with an analysis of a rape case that demonstrates the necessity of attending to nonhegemonic masculinities and intersectionality.
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“Following calls for sociocultural linguistic research which considers the intersection of race with gender and sexuality (Ehrlich, 2021;Hall, 2021;Lane, 2019;Lanehart, 2021;miles-hercules, 2022), the data selected for analysis here come from four moments during the interviews when race was explicitly mentioned, chosen because of the contrasting social locations held by the participants.”
From ‘You're not supposed to be gay, you're black’: Analysing race and LGBTQ+ youth identity through an intersectional lens (2025) · cites this paper as Ehrlich, 2021
Citations
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Cited by
Jones, L. (2025) · Journal of Sociolinguistics · doi:10.1111/josl.12676 · Cited by 5
Metadata
- Authors
- Ehrlich, S.
- Affiliations
- York University (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Ehrlich, Susan
- ORCID
- Ehrlich, Susan
- Venue
- Gender and Language
- Published
- 2021-10-06
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 430-438
- ISSN
- 1747-6321 (ISSN-L)
- 1747-633X
- OpenAlex
- W3201848122
- Cited by
- 5
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 1.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Gender and Language (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender and Feminist Studies
- Keywords
- intersectionality, sexual assault trials, rape trials, race, gender, racism, sexism, rape victims, complainants, Judith Butler, legal language
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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