The three readings this week dealt
with violence against women, with a particular emphasis on rape. Beginning with Susan Brownmiller’s
chapter, she addresses the fact that no one has really ever looked at rape from
a psychological point of view seriously.
However, the ones who have ever considered rape have misconstrued the
facts. She looks at several
psychologists who have worked with or studied rapists, and then investigated
what their reasoning were and did their best to come up with a label or group to
put them all into for future studies.
As a result, the general population believes that rape and other
aggressive crimes are confined to lower social classes, and that many rapists
have mental issues that drive them.
In fact, many believe that everyone who commits rape is a psychotic
individual, and that they are simply crazy and cannot interact with people on a
normal level. However, to the
contrary, “the typical American perpetrator of forcible rape is little more
than an aggressive, hostile, youth who chooses to do violence to women” (FOT,
p.274). Correcting these
assumptions is essential to Brownmiller, because it will allow everyone to
recognize that abusive relationships occur everywhere and that rape is not
confined to certain groups or people, as many believe. The studies also look at things such as
whether rapes were planned or spontaneous, and the percentages of rapes that
are group rapes, where the balance of power between men and a woman are
extremely skewed. She arrives at
the idea that many commit rape to perpetuate “male domination over women by
force” and that it’s a part of our society that we need to fix. Brownmiller closes with the idea that
not all men are rapists, but the few that are ruin it for everyone, because all
women are paranoid because of the few who do commit rape.
The
Crenshaw article looks at intersectionality and the trends of violence against
women of color specifically. In
many cases, according to Crenshaw, women of color get the worst of both worlds
because they are discriminated against for being of color as well as
women. The intersection of those
two labels leaves many individuals in a particularly bad spot, as they have to
worry about more than others. She
gives the example of a women and a son with limited English who are forced to
leave their home because her husband made serious death threats against both of
them. However, the duo has a lot
of trouble finding a shelter that will take care of them because usually
shelters either just look after women, or they have other exclusivity
rules. In this case, the fact that
she was not fluent in English was a large factor working against her, and it
took a lot of work to find her a place to stay. In the meantime, they were forced to live on the streets for
multiple nights, during which she was mugged twice, further adding to her
anxieties. Crenshaw argues that
the exclusivity rules that these shelters have need to be addressed, because it
leaves women in very compromising positions where they can't help themselves. The article outlines a lot of issues
that concern mostly black women, but also other women of color. There is also a lot of emphasis on the
idea that social classes are the driving factor for a lot of the violence. Although that is the general idea
throughout the population, the fact remains that violence occurs in all levels
of society, not just towards the bottom.
The
final piece was a personal account from Emilie Morgan, who had a series of
terrible events happen to her throughout her life. She was raped on three separate occasions, beginning at the
age of 13, when she didn’t even realize the real implications of what
happened. She was later raped in
high school, in an occasion when she told a consensual partner to stop, but he
continued. She was never sure if
she perhaps should have been more forceful, and never reported the crime. The final event was a gang rape that continued
for over six hours. The circumstances
of each of these were awful, but her details about the gang rape are
particularly terrible. Every
night, she is revisited by her memories of the rapes, and she is still
attempting to heal, although it is a very long process. She celebrates the idea of a “Take Back
the Night” march she attended in college, as it allowed her to begin the
healing process and get her message out to help spread awareness.
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