Response to 11/18 readings

The chapter from Susan Brownmiller’s book was somewhat, well more like REALLY, frightening.  It is true that the media publicizes rapists to be psychopaths.  But that is so far from the truth.  In thinking back to the Colgate climate survey, a huge percentage of girls (I forget the actual percent) have been sexually assaulted.  That’s on Colgate’s campus where the average male is smart, wealthy, and unmarried.  If these guys are capable of sexual assault, then who isn’t?  That honestly is an extremely scary realization. 

Rape also works to keep women from being free, powerful, and from feeling safe.  It’s another bar in the ‘birdcage,’ keeping in double binds and in fear.  It is great that women have been uniting to speak out against rape.  However, as Crenshaw notes, identity politics can ignore issues of color or class.  Furthermore, (a fact that really scared me) is that immigrant women can remain vulnerable to sexual assault because they do not have access to waivers.  This issue among many others that Crenshaw addresses have to also be brought to light.  Rape has to be spoken about AS WELL AS these issues.

Rape is about power more than it is about sex.  As Brownmiller notes, most rapes also had some form of sexual humiliation.  Thus, the act becomes a way to show male domination over women.  As Emilie Morgan remarks in “Don’t Call Me a Survivor’, “I am not sure which was harder: being gang-raped, or having the sudden realization that this is what it means to be a woman” (Morgan 36).  Sexual objectification and violence harness women’s sexuality and ultimately keep women from being threats to male dominance and sexuality.  Rape (it is scary to say) becomes a way of uniting women because all women are influenced and affected by it whether or not they have been victims.  We all know there is always that chance BECAUSE we are women.  Men do not live in the same fear.  Fear of rape does not exist for them unless maybe they are in prison.  I remember in 9^th grade, in health class, I asked my health teacher if women were capable of raping men.  She just started laughing, thinking I was trying to be funny.  I was naïve and honestly wasn’t sure.  Turns out, it is a huge joke in society.  Men being raped by women is something that does not happen (maybe cannot happen? Who knows).  But women being raped by men is a huge problem.  Thus, rape becomes a female problem.  However, on the flip side, men raping other men is not advertised or discussed unless when prison is concerned.  I wonder if that is a major problem that is just ignored because society tends to overlook homosexual issues or problems.  I obviously know that male-female rape is a huge issue but is male-male? 

In order to learn a little bit more, I did some searches online and came up with some pretty interesting stats.  Most people believe that men who rape other men are always gay.  In fact, most of these men are heterosexual.  Women can rape men although out of all rapes, a female raping a man is only 2%.  Something that I found REALLY interesting was that more male rapes occur every day in prison alone than there are rapes of all females in the USA.  This should get more publicity!