Feminized language of rape became standard in suburban open-space advocacy rhetoric

Evidence

Occasionally, the rhetoric of open-space advocacy was even more intimate. In the Senate hearing on the open-space provision of the Housing Act of 1961, the executive director of the American Society of Landscape Architects tentatively spoke of the destruction of the countryside as a “rape.” By the mid-1960s, the word had become common in public debate about the fate of open space, as articles and book chapters decried “the rape of the land” and “the rape of the countryside.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 565

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth tracing how the gendered ‘rape of the land’ trope moved from preservation campaigns into mainstream environmentalist discourse via suburban advocacy.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Aerial photographs of bulldozed subdivisions became a core visual argument for open-space activists — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 572; Open-space activism fused three distinct arguments with separate constituencies — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 508; Suburban open-space campaigns shaped environmentalist rhetoric and organizing — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 541 (+1 more)