Our Lives At Stake

Statistics indicate that violence against women is on the increase—across all class and color lines. It is not clear, however, whether the statistics reflect an actual increase in the number of incidents of violence or an increase in the reporting of such incidents. Some people think that the rise may even reflect the ongoing clarification of what constitutes an act of violence.

One example of this kind of clarification is a crime that is sometimes referred to as "soft rape." Clearly a misnomer, the term is used to describe a woman being coerced or forced into having sex with a man with whom she has a relationship. While this kind of male aggression has been considered normal and even expected in the past, women increasingly are reporting such experiences to rape crisis centers, and those occurrences are reflected appropriately in the statistics.

While sexual violence may in fact be increasing, it is also true that such violence is being brought to public attention as never before. Thanks to the women's movement, what was once considered "private violence" is becoming a matter of public knowledge and concern.

At the same time, psychological testing and research are revealing that what were once considered the psychotic thoughts and behavior of a handful of deeply disturbed men are the attitudes and actions of many men who are considered normal by all other criteria. In one study of thousands of men conducted by Neil Malamuth of the University of California at Los Angeles and Edward Donnerstein of the University of Wisconsin, only one-third of the men said there was no possibility that they would be violent toward women. Sixty-six percent were found to have what the researchers called a "conquest mentality" toward women that might result in violence.

According to a recent Washington Post article, John Briere, a psychologist from the University of Manitoba, "has found that attitudes found among men that were once thought to signify the thinking of rapists were held in some degree by many men."

The high incidence of rape in our society has led many women, including Susan Brownmiller in her book Against Our Will, to conclude that sexual violence is an unavoidable human reality.

Alongside the statistical information and reports of the increase in sexual violence, however, are a number of sociological and anthropological studies that contradict that conclusion. One of the most informative and hopeful of these comes from University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday, and is published in the Fall 1981 Journal of Social Issues.

Sanday is one of the first researchers to ever study the phenomenon of rape within cultures. Using reliable cross-cultural information, she found material relevant to the study of rape in 95 cultures. Of the 95 studied, 47 percent were virtually rape-free, 17 percent were rape-prone (displaying a high incidence of rape), and the remaining 36 percent indicated some incidence of rape.

Her research suggests that the incidence of rape in a society depends on the status of women, the values that govern relationships, and the attitudes and behaviors taught to children. She concludes that rape is not a biological drive within men, but stems from a conditioned response taught within social environments.

Sanday's findings indicate that in societies with little or no rape, women are respected and influential in all areas of life—public and private. The religions in those cultures emphasize the importance of women and include female deities, and women take an active role in religious life and ritual. The people tend to live together in cooperative structures, with both women and men involved in decision making. Fertility, nurturance, and children are regarded highly within these cultures, and little distinction is made between men's and women's work.

On the other hand, Sanday's research indicates that in societies that have a high incidence of rape, women take little or no part in decision making or religious rituals, and men have private political and religious gatherings that exclude women. Men tend to stay aloof from child rearing in these cultures and demean what is considered women's work. Boys and girls are segregated early on into different forms of play; boys are encouraged to be tough, competitive, and aggressive.

Among the groups with a high incidence of rape, a belief in a male supreme being as the source of life is usually found. And sexual conquest is a ritualized part of courtship and marriage.

Sanday points out that we have to be careful about locating the blame for rape with men alone. She maintains that everyone in rape-prone societies conspires to perpetuate the violence by living out prescribed masculine and feminine roles and modeling that behavior for children. In these cultures, men are expected to attack and women are expected to submit. Her study clearly allows the conclusion that rape is not inherent in men's nature, but results from how men understand their maleness, from the image they have of that nature.

It is not difficult to identify which category, rape-free or rape-prone, mainstream American culture falls into. Sanday's study did reveal societies where rape is more common than in ours, but women in the United States are several hundred times more likely to be raped than women in certain other cultures.

Sanday's research makes clear that work against sexual violence must include some basic cultural redefinition of what it means to be men and women, especially as we transfer that information to our children. Speaking out against the violence does precious little as long as we accept the roles, structures, and symbol systems that perpetuate dominance/submission relationships between men and women.

In proposing a cultural critique of the United States, one has to acknowledge the complex issues created by the intersection and interplay of racism, sexism, and economic status. It is perhaps obvious to say that racism and sexism combine to make the position of women of color more precarious than that of white women. It is perhaps also obvious that poor women, who have fewer resources and means of protection, are the most frequently victimized. And single women, often with children, are in the position of struggling to survive in a man's world. Those are the circumstances for many single women who now work in traditionally male blue-collar jobs, where they are unwanted and outnumbered.

Certainly one of the factors that helps create a violent society is the acceptance of violence as a fact of life. While many of us grow more concerned about violence, the evidence and general acceptance of that violence is increasing within popular, mainstream culture.

The effects of the media and advertising—the images that impact us every day—are difficult to determine. However, recent findings of the American Psychological Association (APA) warn that repeated exposure to scenes of violence against women in movies and on television creates a callousness toward women—in both male and female viewers.

One study found that one-third of the men in a random population sample experienced violence against women in films as sexually stimulating, even though the films contained little or no explicit sexual behavior. And a report on commercial films in 1982 and '83 revealed a marked increase in films that depict violent acts against women, with one in 20 such films in 1982, compared to one in eight in 1983. The report also showed that the most frequent victims of violence in films are young women.

The APA has concluded that the effects of viewing such films are greatest on those whose sexual outlooks are still in formation, that is, children and adolescents. It will be a number of years before we know the full impact of "slasher movies" on young people in our society, but they are undoubtedly being affected in an unhealthy way.

As pornography becomes increasingly accepted in this country (adult book stores outnumber McDonald's restaurants in the United States), it is also becoming more explicitly violent in nature. An article in the Journal of Psychiatry noted an increase in portrayals of violence toward women on the covers of sexually explicit magazines. These magazines are visible and available in airports and bus terminals, convenience stores and drug stores all over the country.

The cause-and-effect cycle of pornography and sexual violence is difficult to prove. It is, however, just as difficult to dismiss the frightening parallels between the January 1982 issue of Hustler magazine's fantasy pool table gang rape, and the real life pool table gang rape in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in March of that year.

The New Bedford rape and the resulting trial became the focus of national attention in the months that followed. It is hard to imagine that the publishers of Penthouse were unaware of it when they released the February 1984 issue of their magazine. The issue, and the billboard of it used for advertising, showed a close-up of a woman lying on a game table, eyes closed, with poker chips on her throat and chest.

Anti-pornography groups, such as Boston's Women Against Pornography, study and teach about the influence of hard-core pornography on popular media and culture. They demonstrate in slide-show lectures how the physical positioning of men and women in advertising mirrors the poses in pornographic magazines. Men are usually above women in a position of dominance, and often aggression. Women are usually vulnerable and often in a prone position.

The subtle messages in advertising seem intentionally to reinforce a distinct imbalance of power in the relationships between men and women. At times they are even less subtle, as in a four-page fashion advertisement that features a man and woman in a luxury resort setting. In every photograph the woman is wearing not only beautiful clothing, but also bruises on different areas of her face and body.

From as early as the 19th-century suffragist movement, feminist organizers and political strategists have made the connection between violence against women and military violence. The increase in violence against women in our culture and the increased acceptance of violence in popular culture seem to parallel the environment of growing national militarism and preparations for war.

The desensitizing that young men in the military undergo is laden with misogynist overtones, and drill sergeants routinely play on insecurities concerning masculine identity. Recruits who exhibit weakness or express feelings are labeled "girls."

Italian fascist Filippo Marinetti illustrates the ideological connection between military violence and violence against women: "We are out to glorify war, the only health-giver of the world, militarism, patriotism, ideas that kill, contempt for women."

Peggy Reeves Sanday makes a strikingly similar connection in her study on the incidence of rape in various cultures. The cultures with little or no rape also contained little or no violence in general. These groups tended to live in relative harmony with nature and other groups. Their economies were stable, and they perceived few threats to their survival.

The rape-prone cultures in Sanday's study, however, were typically warring cultures. The belief systems in those societies glorified masculine violence. Men learned to regard physical strength as the fullest expression of masculinity. From early childhood on, males in those cultures were aware of the possibility of someday fighting for the survival of the group.

It would seem that these societies believe their survival depends on men being reconciled to fighting and dying in times of war. The psychic numbing necessary for such an eventuality begins in boyhood and carries with it the image of men as near bestial creatures. The slang word macho is Spanish for male of an animal species.

Such conditioning also requires that women be viewed as "the weaker sex," possessions in need of protection. It is not surprising that the learned aggression is also directed at the women within these societies.

In his book Sexual Suicide, George Gilder suggests that the increase in violence against women is a result of the last two decades of women's struggle for equality. Gilder believes that men have to have some area of superiority over women to balance out their emotional and aesthetic inferiority. In the classic response of blaming the victim, he warns that if we do not allow men to be economically and socially superior, women can expect to be raped and abused by frustrated men.

What Gilder does not seem to be aware of is that the structures of patriarchy are inherently unbalanced. And while the imbalance is maintained, the threat of force is always present. But an alternative to viewing our relationships as struggles for power exists. That alternative is the hope that the relationships between men and women can be informed by love. It is the possibility of mutuality and the profound discovery that we are alike in our common humanity.

A great deal of work remains to be done. We are more bound by our culture than we might like to think. The work of creating a healthier culture is both difficult and necessary. As with all matters of justice, not only are our very lives at stake, but also our faithfulness to God's promise for a redeemed humanity. The day of redemption is always at hand.