Sarah Weinman — Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime - with Molly O'Toole

In 1978, Greta Rideout was the first woman in United States history to accuse her husband of rape, at a time when the idea of "marital rape" seemed ludicrous to many Americans and was a crime in only four states. After a quick and conservative trial acquitted John Rideout and a defense lawyer lambasted that "maybe rape is the risk of being married," Greta was ridiculed and scorned from public life, while John went on to be a repeat offender. Thrust into the national spotlight, Greta and her story would become a national sensation, a symbol of a country's unrelenting and targeted hate toward women and a court system designed to fail them at every turn.A now little-remembered trial deserving of close, wide, and lasting attention, Sarah Weinman turns her signature intelligence and journalistic rigor to the enduring impact of this case. Oregon v. Rideout directly inspired feminist activists, who fought state by state for marital rape laws, a battle that was not won in all fifty until as recently as 1993. Mixing archival research and new reporting involving Greta, those who successfully pressed charges against John in later years, as well as the activists battling the courts in parallel, Without Consent embodies vociferous debates about gender, sexuality, and power, while highlighting the damaging and inherent misogyny of American culture then and still now.Sarah Weinman is the author of Scoundrel and The Real Lolita and, most recently, is the editor of Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning. She was a 2020 National Magazine Award finalist for reporting and a Calderwood Journalism Fellow at MacDowell, and her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Esquire, and New York magazine. Weinman is the Crime & Mystery columnist for the New York Times Book Review and lives in New York City.Weinman is in conversation with Molly O'Toole, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author from San Diego, California. She most recently worked as the Immigration and Security Reporter for The Los Angeles Times, in Washington, D.C. She is currently working on a nonfiction book, as well as an accompanying podcast, about migration from around the world, through Latin America, to the U.S. border. Crown Publishing, a Penguin Random House imprint, is set to publish “The Route” in 2026. https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063279889?ic_referral=wF8Efd5MKTlyUA7yL6jO7E3pactXIrcHPVbxQ1jesKkwMynqwJ6r1kiDI5lh2Ep7uW_nxHf-c4t0se3JM_FcLtPefV9wYAwoV_XSflL0yrtaN364dj1zq0lZ2d-QCAAPott6SXc