Without Consent: Sarah Weinman in conversation with Sarah Marshall
Tue, November 18 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm PST
716 SE Grand Ave
Portland,
OR
97214
Sarah Weinman, author of The Real Lolita, returns to Literary Arts with her latest release, Without Consent, a deep dive the historic case that defined marital rape and consent in America. This event will be in conversation with Sarah Marshall.
About the book:
From Sarah Weinman, author of Scoundrel and The Real Lolita, comes an eye-opening story about the first major spousal rape trial in America and urgent questions it raised about women’s rights that would reverberate for decades.
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
Sarah Weinman is the author of three books: Without Consent, forthcoming in 2025; Scoundrel, named a Best Book of 2022 by Time, Esquire, CBC, and NPR; and The Real Lolita, named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, BuzzFeed, The National Post, Literary Hub, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Vulture, and winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award in Nonfiction. She also edited Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning; Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit & Obsession, winner of the Anthony Award for Best Nonfiction/Critical Work; Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (Library of America); and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin).
Weinman writes the monthly Crime & Mystery column for the New York Times Book Review. A 2020 National Magazine Award finalist for Reporting and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, her work has also appeared most recently in The Atlantic, Esquire, New York, and Vanity Fair, while her fiction has been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and numerous anthologies. Weinman also writes (albeit more sporadically) the “Crime Lady” newsletter, covering crime fiction, true crime, and all points in between.
She lives in New York City.
Headshot credit: Nina Subin
Sarah Marshall
Sarah Marshall is a writer, podcaster, and media critic focused on setting straight our collective memory—or at least getting to the bottom of why we believe and in turn define ourselves by popular narrative and myth. Why is the maligned woman a staple of our news media? Why do we believe that serial killers are brilliant? How do we keep stumbling into all these moral panics? These are some of the questions that propel Sarah forward. She is the co-host of the popular modern history podcast You’re Wrong About, which has been highlighted in The New Yorker, The Guardian and Time Magazine. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, Buzzfeed and the true crime collection Unspeakable Acts.
