In her excerpt "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape", Susan Brownmiller begins by describing how the typical American rapist is simply an aggressive, hostile youth who chooses to commit violence acts upon women. There have been very few article on rape in psychology journals and even Freud barely mentioned the topic, in part due to the typical Freudians' unwillingness to make a moral judgment. Instead, Freudians seek to "understand" what they called "deviant sexual behavior" but never condemn an individual's actions. Freudian criminologists "defined the rapist as a victim of an uncontrollabel urge that wasinfantile in nature, the result of a thwarted natural impulse to have intercourse with his mother" (275). The rapist was viewed simply as an individual they could treat who was simply a sexually well-adjusted youth whose act of rape is simply just another act of plunder like robbing a store. Then in 1971, an Israeli sociologist named Amir published a study of rape in Philadelphia. The report was the first pragmatic, in-depth statistical study of the nature of rape and rapist. Amir was a student of Wolfgang, who was one of the first to admit that social injustice is one of the primary causes of the subculture of violence behind rape. Wolfgang focused on two primary variables: social class and violent crime. He ultimately came to the conclusion that those individuals who are in the lower class are much more likely to encounter sexual violence. Amir's Philadelphia study found that the average rapist "had no separate identifiable pathology aside from the individual quirks and personality disturbances that might characterize any single offender who commits any sort of crime" (279). The report showed that most of the rapists were lower class, 71% of the rapes were pre-meditated and 43% of the rapes were classified as group rape. Brownmiller ends her article with describing how a world without rape would be one in which women could live without fearing men but instead men who commit rape have changed the world forever.
In her article "Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color", Crenshaw specifically looks at how both race and gender play very important roles in studying violence against women. She presents the problem that comes with identity politics in which it "fails to transcend difference, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences". Her objective of the article is to explore both the role of race and gender in violence against women of color specifically and show that many of the experiences that black women have do not fith within the traditional boundaries of race of gender discrimination that is primarily focused on in political movements. She describes how intersectionality, or the interaction between racism and patriarchy, leads to the limits and struggles that women of color face. The economic issues including access to employment, housing and wealth confirms that class structures play a very essential role in defining and understanding the sexual violence experiences of women of color. She describes how "strategies based solely on the epxeriences of women who do not share the same class or race backgrounds will be of limited utility for those whose lives are shaped by a different set of obstacle". She also explains how counselors have a hard time helping women of color because it is so difficult to find not only contacts but also resources to help them get back on their feet. She also goes into detail about one woman who did not speak english well enough to be let into any of the shelters she tried to seek refuge in due to their strict standards about language requirements. She also discusses how the black community often tends to suppress issues of domestic violence in wanting to uphold their reputation in the community. Even many women of color agree with the very anti-feminist ideas regarding the necessity of a woman's allegiance and subservience to a man to the extent that they believe the woman should be physically punished if she disobeys her husband.
In "Don't Call Me Survivor", Emilie Morgan describes how she was first raped at the age of 13. This rape, however, lead to a downward spiral into numerous more rapes throughout her young adult life until she finally found people she could connect with and talk about her experiences. She ends the story by asking people to not yet call her a "survivor" because she still does not feel like one yet. The emotional and psychological consequences of rape live on much longer than one could even imagine. After her first experience being raped at the age of 13, she describes how she had no one there to support her through the difficult time. She was scolded by her parents and ostrasized by her friends and peers. She describes the next rape as even more traumatic since she was older and had a fuller understanding of the true consequences. Not only did she harbor the feelings of the rape being in part her fault, she also was once again treated like a cheap slut by anyone who knew. What I found most depressing and sad about Morgan's story is that she had no one to turn to. Why does our culture still not really blame men for the rape crimes they commit but instead blame the victim? Our patriarchal society has a long way to go before it can actually call men and women considered equal.
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