Susan Brownmiller, the feminist author, journalist and activist whose book, “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape,” helped define the modern view of rape, debunking it as an act of passion and reframing it as a crime of power and violence, died on May 24 in the Bronx. She was 90.

The book, published in 1975, was translated into a dozen languages and ranked by the New York Public Library as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.

The ascendant women’s movement was already opening the public’s eyes about sexual violence. Anti-rape groups had started to form in the early 1970s. Women were becoming empowered to take control of their bodies and their sexuality. Rape-crisis centers were opened, self-defense classes gained new popularity, and several states rewrote their laws to make it easier to prosecute rapists.

She devoted her life to writing and taught at Pace University into her ‘80s. She wrote scores of magazine articles and half a dozen books, plus some works of fiction.