In a previous post I made a glib reference to fraternities as likely sites for rape to occur. While I agree with brinkmanship’s criticism that I tarred all fraternities with a single brush, I will also say that the stereotype of them as places conducive to acquaintance rape isn’t unfounded. It has a pretty firm basis in reality.
That’s not to say all frats are the same. They’re not. Some are vastly safer than others. And even in the higher-risk houses, there are lots of great young men, most of who wouldn’t dream of violating a partner’s consent. I’ve had many wonderful students – both men and women – who were involved in the Greek system. My brother and sister each had good experiences with it, too.
That said, certain cultural and social practices in fraternities make it easier for rape to occur. Way back in the late 1980s, Patricia Yancey Martin and Robert A. Hummer outlined some of the reasons for this in their much-anthologized article, “Fraternities and Rape on Campus.” They noted that norms of masculinity, expressed in a desire for members who could drink heavily and withstand hazing, tended to exclude men might hold more critical views. They observed that practices of brotherhood, including loyalty and secrecy, sometimes trumped allegiance to ethics and the law. The commodification of women, seen too often as sexual prey, can lay the groundwork for trying to extract sex from women instead of viewing sex as a mutual pursuit of pleasure.
Martin and Hummer got the big picture right, and I don’t think all that much has changed in the past two decades. But I also know that when I was in college, I felt a different vibe coming from some houses and some guys. The Alpha Delts, for instance, were more into getting stoned than drinking heavily. I don’t remember ever hearing of anything untoward happening there. My students, too, know very well that some frats are dicier than others.
So how can you assess the risk in a given house? Well, I’m gonna go all academic again and cite another widely anthologized study, this time from A. Ayres Boswell and Joan Z. Spade, “Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why Are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women?” (pdf) They list a host of factors that distinguish higher-risk from lower-risk atmospheres. Their study goes for bars, too, so it’s very broadly useful, though generally speaking most bars fall into the lower risk-category. In high-risk settings, you’ll find:
- Highly skewed gender ratios at parties
- Less respectful behavior toward women (rating them, dropping trou)
- Conversations based on flirtation, with meaningful one-on-one talks a rarity
- Open hostility on the part of men, and also more aggressive behavior from women such as pushing and name-calling
- Heavier drinking and less dancing
- Higher noise levels
- Bragging about sexual exploits the next morning
- Distinctions between girlfriends, who are respected, and faceless conquests, who are seen as objectified
- Cleaner women’s bathrooms!
The high-risk houses tended to have larger membership, more varsity athletes, more disciplinary incidents (including property damage and harm to persons), and lower participation in rape awareness programs.
Obviously, one ought to trust one’s own observations and instincts more than a list of characteristics. Still, I think Boswell and Spade provide a useful starting point for assessing risk.
Saying that fraternities are often sites of elevated risk isn’t equivalent to calling all fraternity members rapists. Far from it. Recent research shows that most acquaintance rape is committed by a very small number of repeat offenders. While this research doesn’t look at Greek life (as far as I know), it seems highly likely that those few extremely rotten apples seek out environments that provide some cover for them. Fraternities do this, however unwittingly. At the same time, getting rid of the Greek system wouldn’t solve much, either, because – as Boswell and Spade note – the high-risk party environment would likely move into private houses. I don’t have a pat answer, but I know that any solution has to involve education and changing attitudes, not just in frats but in the dorms, too. Education probably won’t deter the most predatory rapists, but it sure could make it harder for them to find cover.
Note: Both of the articles I cite can be read in pieces through Google Books, but I couldn’t find the full text for Martin and Hummer.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
A couple of thoughts in response to this post:
First, I strongly disagree with your characterization of the Boswell and Spade article. Boswell and Spade state that they identified “high risk” and “low risk” houses by asking 40 female students to idenify houses they considered to “be high risk, or to have more sexually aggressive members and higher incidence of rape”. Thus, their study identified PERCEIVED risk, which might or might not correlate with ACTUAL risk. (I suspect that it does not correlate very well, for reasons explained below.) Thus, I would argue that your statement, “They list a host of factors that distinguish higher-risk from lower-risk atmospheres.” is a mischaracterization. The environments identified as high risk are not necessarily high risk. Nothing in the study established ACTUAL risk.
Boswell and Spade state that one in four college women say they were raped or experienced an attempted rape. I would argue that this statistic suggests that college women are not good judges of ACTUAL risk. (Alternatively, it could also argue that college women over-report rape for cultural reasons, such as an expectation that they will play a “gatekeeper” role in withholding sex.) Assuming that the reporting of rape/attempted rape is accurate, this suggests to me that there is a fairly large chasm between ACTUAL risk and PERCEIVED risk, which causes the college women to enter into situations that are more risky than the women have judged them to be. Further, it seems reasonably likely that the “small number of repeat offenders” you describe above is actually arbitraging this difference between actual risk and perceived risk in order to commit rape repeatedly.
This could, oddly enough, be good news of sorts. College women are not alone in being bad judges of risk and probability. (If bankers were as good at judging risk as they think they are, we would never have had a financial crisis in late 2008.) However, when someone understands the sorts of often very intuitive errors she is making about risk and/or probability, then she can make a conscious decision to guard against those types of errors. Perhaps some efforts at rape prevention ought to focus on indentifying the spread between actual risk and perceived risk and thus cutting down on opportunities for what I’ll call “rape arbitrage.”
Second, in discussing the Martin and Hummer article, you say “Way back in the late 1980s,” which is right. Although you state, “I don’t think all that much has changed in the past two decades,” I disagree. How much things have changed was recently brought home for me when I watched the movie Sixteen Candles recently. Jake, our romantic hero, declares his interest in Sam, a slightly off-beat girl, by stating, “I have Caroline passed out in the bed upstairs. I could violate her ten different ways.” Oh, but he doesn’t want to because he’s such a nice guy. In fact, he’s such a nice guy that he sends the unconscious Caroline off with The Geek character in his father’s car and encourages The Geek to take advantage of the situation. In the 1980s, this scene didn’t strike me as odd. Caroline, the evil prom queen, had been Jake’s girlfriend, and so Jake had some sort of perpetual sexual easement to enjoy her, whether she was capable of consent at the time or not. Similarly, The Geek had Jake’s blessing for engaging in sex with Caroline. Now, that sort of thing is obviously rape. Because things have changed a lot since the 1980s.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post, which I do appreciate, even though I seem rather disagreeable today.
You are correct in stating that Boswell and Spade are working with perceptions and basing their analysis on whether a “rape culture” exists. I take your point that it would be far preferable to use statistics about the incidence of rape in each house. Trouble is, those stats don’t exist, and if they did, they’d be mightily flawed due to the vagaries of reporting. Not to mention that the university would only cough up that sort of data upon threat of a lawsuit!
Given the constraints, it’s not going to be possible to do a multivariate analysis based on a solid data set. I think using perceptions is a reasonable proxy. I base this judgment also on the hundreds of students with whom I’ve discussed the article, which resonates pretty strongly with their own observations. (And I don’t think they’re just saying this to please the teacher, because by then it’s week 8 of the quarter and they’ve seen that they can speak their mind as long as they don’t suck up to me.)
We may have to agree to disagree on this to some extent – especially since I will be fairly absent from this blog for a few days, starting tomorrow afternoon. (Big bad grading crunch time!) But I did want to lay out my thinking.
I agree completely that the cultural acceptance of scenes like that one in 16 Candles has fallen dramatically. My comment re: Martin and Hummer was in regard to the practices of brotherhood and the like. We see their persistence when it comes to hazing, too. I almost disgressed on that in the post but decided to stay more focused. The larger point is that fraternities need to moderate such practices, and I think they ought to be strongly encouraged to do so. Loyalty is great; blind loyalty, not so much. Drinking is a lovely way to wind down; binge drinking is a great shortcut to the ER. So the issue is really broader than just rape.
As for college women’s perceptions: Well, if all the likely rapists had to wear a scarlet R, we’d be all set! There’s a gap between assessing an environment – where I think student are pretty accurate – and assessing individuals, where they often are blinkered by trust, friendship, and other basically good factors, as well as alcohol. None of this is meant to blame the victims of excuse the rapists. My main point is that women can be critical of a frat or any other organization, yet they – we – often can’t see danger that’s right in front of our noses. So that’s also why the utility of Boswell and Spade’s analysis is limited. It will not help my long-ago student who was raped by the very same male friend she’d trusted to walk her home safely!
What would the result of abolishing campus sports teams, especially football be? I personally believe it would eliminate a lot of risk, since men who play sports tend to be less respectful of women. Football and rugby players also risk brain damage, which also further endangers women.
Just out of curiousity, would getting rid of certain male college sports teams increase or decrease risk on campus?
I don’t know if getting rid of the “high-status” men’s sports would make a real difference. Certainly some such teams foster a culture of masculine sexual entitlement. But again I don’t want to overgeneralize.
The brain damage issue is generally a long-term one, and my understanding (based solely on news reports, including a long feature on NPR a few months ago) is that the men’s cognition suffers. They may suffer ministrokes. I don’t see a connection to impulse control, and unless there’s a catastrophic injury, any such consequences would come many years down the line.
I’d expect it would be more fruitful to look at the connection between PTSD and sexual violence among war veterans. Even there, the numbers may be small overall, because we hear about a small number of awful events. There may, however, be less dramatic effects as well, or abuse that’s covered up as domestic abuse often is. I really don’t know, but the longer we’re at war, the more important it would be to clarify any such relation – for the returning vets’ sake, as well as their partners’.
I favor downplaying intercollegiate athletics, because they are a serious drain on the budget in times when colleges are firing instructional personnel due to lack of resources. That seems bass-ackwards. I’d like to see my school drop down a few divisions. But that’s also a whole separate issue.
No idea. However, it feels like something that would work, so it probably doesn’t matter whether it actually would or not. (Same reason the old myth about a spike in domestic violence on Superbowl Sunday is still going strong, despite the fact that it’s not only demonstrably false, but we know where it came from and it appears to be basically made up. It just feels too true not to be. IIRC, there are actual increases at Christmas and Thanksgiving, but they don’t get the same attention.)
Sungold: I know that I’d watch myself around any vets, and I definitely wouldn’t want to establish a relationship with someone who was in a war zone. From what I’ve seen in my hometown- the football players are the ones most likely to rape, and the Baseketball stars either cheat on tests or get into accidents. Anecdotes are not data, but it does seem likely that brain damage leads to increased incidents of violence.
Makomk: Probably because no one wants to point out that both Christmas and Thanksgiving elevate familial stress. Interestingly enough both those holidays have a pretty bloody history.