Violence Against Women: Rape

The article by Susan Brownmiller, “Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape,” the author concludes that rape is “is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.  She saw rape as an exercise in power that perpetuates male domination of women” (p. 272). The she goes on see how other great thinkers, authors, etc define rape and to her surprise there were hardly any information or articles written on rape in psychology journals. In the 1950’s a school of criminology was founded which was pro-Freudian and even those Freudian criminologists were reluctant to tackle the rape issue head on. They defined Rape s an an “uncontrollable urge…a ‘neurotic overreaction’ that stemmed from his ‘feelings of inadequacy’…he was ‘a sexual psychopath’” (p. 276). Many of these Freudian criminologists saw rape as a mental disease in withhold their patriarchal mentality by empathizing with the rapists by saying that due to having this disease, they suffer more than the victims.  Then came Marvin Wolfgang who gets credit for his theory of the “subculture of violence.” This theory led him to the “Wolfgang Theory” in which he studies 2 variables: social class and violent crime. He comes to the conclusion that those in lower socioeconomic classes in which the majority may be people of color are the ones with high rates of crime, thus “Wolfgang would be the first to say that social injustice is one of the root causes of the subculture of violence” (p. 278). One of Wolfgang’s students, Menachem Amir, further researches his mentor’s subject and narrow’s his search by concentrating on statistic numbers in Philadelphia in which he finds that 90% of the rapists in that state belonged to the lower occupational scale “in descending order from skilled workers to unemployed” (p. 279). He also researched the gang rape phenomenon in which planning and coordination was a major factor in that type of rape and in which sexual humiliation of the victim was higher than in individual rapes. The conclusion of the author’s argument is that the rape is the perpetuation of male domination over women by force. What I saw that was lacking in this article was the rape that occurs with women upon men which also happens in today’s society, but goes unreported. This is another type of rape that has not been researched thoroughly and is lacking information.

In the article, “Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” by Kimberle Crenshaw brings awareness to many aspects that affect women of color specifically. The author presents intersectionality as a way of framing the interactions of race and gender when it comes to violence against women of color. She uses intersectionality as a way to show the interaction of racism and patriarchy. The author focuses on the limits and struggles that women of color face for example women who are illegal and are faced with the constant threats by their husbands of deportation which the men use as a tool to continue oppressing the women. Thus the cycle of domestic violence continues because these women do not have the resources to find out information outside the home and also language becomes a huge barrier. The author also explains how counselor find it harder to help women of color who have been battered because then many have to spend hours locating resources and contacts to meet the housing and other immediate needs of these women. Then there is the issue of whether domestic violence is stereotypes as a minority problem, thus the author delves into to identify the gender dynamics in the black community and the way the household functions as a whole. The issue of black-on-black violence comes to the surface and other important issue within the community come to play which further accentuate the violence among everyone not only women.

“Don’t Call Me a Survivor” by Emilie Morgan is about a young woman who was raped at the age of thirteen and was repeatedly raped and even gang raped as she got older. She went passed through much physical as well as mental abuse when she entered the rehab center in which she underwent more humiliation. It was not until her last rape that she was able to seek a support group of women that had undergone similar situations in which her healing process.