Why do men rape women? Conventional feminists have described rape in terms of unequal power. Power relations in societies are culture specific. They vary across societies as well as cultures. But what remains common across societies is that power is always exercised by the dominant individuals or groups in society upon the subjugated or at least the socially considered less powerful ones. Power relation thus manifests itself in the exercise of power of the dominant upon the subjugated. To quote Weber, power is the capacity of one to exercise will over the other despite opposition from the latter (Weber.1978). The understanding of power in terms of gender would then see anyone with power as masculine and the one upon who power is exercised as feminine. It is in the light of this complex relation of power between masculinity and femininity that the act of rape and the social factors contributing to it is to be understood.
Gender is a term attributed to the set of social behaviors attached to being man or woman. It has little to do with the biological construction of the body, that is, whether one is male or female. But the social construction of gender gives cultural meaning to maleness and femaleness. Thereby, a female child is reared to be a feminine woman and a male child is reared to be a masculine man. The idea of the masculine and the feminine is culturally constructed in such a manner that the masculine is understood as something which is supposed to be tough, brave and dominating, whereas the feminine, on the other hand, is understood as the one which is soft, fearful and submissive to the masculine. These cultural meanings are imposed on the child right from its biological birth. As the child grows up, it is socialized in a way which leads to the internalization of these cultural meanings. It is seen to be natural and ideal for men to control and for women to like this behavior and to be submissive to men’s needs. Women and men internalize these imposed stereotypes of male domination and female submission to such an extent that women are expected to want to be dominated by powerful men and like men’s aggressive sexual behavior. This creates a power imbalance between men and women. Thus, rape as a mechanism of exercising control over the less powerful can be understood to be the result of such imbalance of power.
The structure of our society is such that societal beliefs possess culture which provides women with less power and status. From the point of view of power, sexual violence against women can then be seen as the use and abuse of power by the perpetrators to intimidate, degrade and control others with less status. The fact that women and children are raped more often than men is a manifestation of lesser power and inferior status in society.
The social factors underlying the incidents of rape however seem to be more complex than the act of rape itself and a close analysis of these factors indicate that rape often becomes as much a way of asserting and establishing power as it is of perpetuating power. Sexual aggression here becomes a way to display masculinity. Rape is then not an integral part of male nature, but is the means by which men programmed for violence and control use sexual aggression to display masculinity (Sanday.2007).
Women also play an integral role in the assertion of heterosexual masculinity. Homosexuality, often conceived as similar to femininity, is feared of contaminating masculinity. Masculinity as a term thus is used to give a strictly heterosexual form to the sexuality of homophobic men. Hence, rape becomes a conscious mechanism to establish and reinforce heterosexuality as a superior form of masculinity as well as to reaffirm masculine subjectivity of insecure males.
However, the relation between gender, power and rape is not that simple. In modern industrial and capitalist societies, rape often becomes a concrete expression of a certain form of male anxiety. The transition period from gender inequality to increased gender equality, for instance the growing desire of women to get independent of men, the greater visibility of women in institutions of higher education, the movement of women into the paid labor force and traditionally male dominated occupations might threaten the male ego temporarily. Rape then becomes a way for men to express their hostility to women. More threatened male ego may mean more rape (Whaley.2001). Thus, in order to overcome this male anxiety, the modern socially and economically independent woman is tamed through her body, the only vulnerable thing in her liberated existence. Assertion of superiority and power is performed through the violation of body of the modern woman. This is different from rape of a socially and economically dependent woman. The latter can be seen as a situation of complete control over the weaker gender.
An important and terrifying aspect of rape is whether men raping women or men raping men, rape is an exercise of power on anyone who is conceived as feminine, hence vulnerable and subjugated. Perpetrators establish power in such a way that resistance becomes impossible. The most appropriate instance of such sexual violence would be prison rape which demonstrates how power relations take shape and are perpetuated in the prison on the basis of assault and rape of some prisoners by fellow powerful inmates. Prison rape implies an acting out of power roles within an all-male, authoritarian environment in which the younger, weaker inmate is forced to play the role that in the outer world is assigned to women (Brownmiller.1975). The category of victim who fall prey to the most brutal of prison gang-rapes is often the identified homosexual youths because of their feminine mannerism. The other category of inmate who is a favored or preferred victim for prison rape is the slight, sensitive young man, whatever be his sexual persuasion, who cannot or does not wish to fight (Brownmiller.1975). What can be derived from this is that the issue is about manhood. One who fails to defend his masculinity or manhood is made a ‘gal-boy’, a submissive male similar to a female and through rape a hierarchical relation of power is established between the perpetrator and the victim.
Hence, the relation between sexual violence and power is a complex one. As Sanday quotes Malinowski, ‘sexual behavior is rather a sociological and cultural force than a mere bodily relation of two individuals’ (Sanday.2007). Across cultures the dominant groups have made use of knowledge and power to dominate and manipulate the idea of female sexuality in a way that anything soft and submissive is seen as feminine and that power and femininity have to be fundamentally separate. Whereas the idea of masculinity in society is constructed and internalized in a manner that enables and ensures its perpetuation at most levels of the social strata. This construct has in many ways bestowed trauma equally on men and women, but the social stigma attached to the second classed status of women only magnifies the latter’s trauma.
Bibliography:
Brownmiller, Susan. 1975. Against our will: Men, women and rape, New York: Fawcett Columbine
Green, Jennifer L. 2004. ‘Uncovering Collective Rape: A Comparative Study of Political Sexual Violence’, International Journal of Sociology, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 97-116.
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society, University of California Press.
Whaley, B. R. 2001.‘The Paradoxical Relationship between Gender Inequality and Rape: Toward a Refined Theory’, Gender and Society, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 531-555.
Sanday, Peggy. 2007. Fraternity gang rape: Sex, brotherhood and privilege on Campus, New York and London: New York University Press.
