While state legislatures have enacted laws that remove men's licence to rape women with whom they share marital or established relationships, our understanding of whether this resulted in effectively changing the social, cultural and legal response to sexual violence by male intimate partners is surprisingly limited. Reports from Australian women, and research findings overall, suggest few inroads have been made in identifying the scope of male partner sexual violence or in considering how to prevent it.

While a reluctance to respond to male partner sexual violence is shown to exist within the practice and enforcement of law, it is also reflected in our failure to acknowledge the difficulties women face in naming their experience of rape, by a range of services marginalising their responses to rape, and through our neglecting to identify the particular health effects, and emotional impact of rape. It is this notion of reluctance that structures this issues paper by Melanie Heenan.