Conceptual analysis and ontological relativity at work: the case of “rape”

This paper examines the concept of rape through the lenses of epistemic injustice, social ontology, and conceptual engineering, arguing that entrenched rape myths and historically privileged meaningmaking render the operative concept of rape systematically distorted. The authors propose diagnosing these distortions via conceptual and ontological analysis and outline an ameliorative agenda that (a) revises both manifest (legal) and operative (everyday) concepts and (b) enriches the surrounding conceptual vocabulary to better capture the diversity of experiences of sexual harm. The paper positions this framework as a novel bridge between recent meta-ontological work and feminist philosophy on hermeneutical injustice, aiming to guide future theoretical and practical improvements.