Frats and Gangs:Masculinity and Sexual Violence

Last week in my Gender Politics and Protest class, we discussed the Steubenville rape case that has been in the media lately. As I was reading "Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself," I began to see some striking similarities between one of the stories from the article and the Steubenville case. The article told of men urinating on a girl and then raping her, which also happened to the victim in the Steubenville case. It is especially interesting that we find these same hyper masculine dominant behaviors surfacing in two masculine institutions that affect boys at two very different socioeconomic levels. On the one hand you have the type of street culture that Anderson described in our readings several weeks ago, and on the other hand you have the sports/fraternity culture that influences so many middle and upper class young men. Both street culture and sport/frat culture can be characterized as "cultures of violence." In both cases we see somewhat of a “total institution” which centers on violence, competition, hyper masculinity, power, cohesion, and hierarchy. These similarities are particularly striking in regards to gangs and fraternities, both of which are fictive kinship organizations with initiations generally involving violence and both employ strict hierarchies, in which respect is earned though violence and exclusion. More importantly, both of these groups are associated with sexual violence, specifically gang rape. This tendency to engage in communal sexual violence is closely tied to the way these organizations glorify the type of masculine dominance feminine degradation that allows women to be seen as sexual objects in the first place. I find the juxtaposition of these two organizations to be particularly interesting considering the history of fraternities as racially exclusive clubs, and their current function as avenues for the perpetuation of middle and upper-class privilege. When looked at though Anderson's lens gangs represent organized "oppositional culture" and appear to be nearly polar opposite of fraternities as bastions of the dominant culture. Even if we see gangs as serving a similar role as fraternities, in that they provide avenues for economic advancement for members, it is interesting that institutional hyper-masculinity seems to transcend both race and class lines. It is troubling that a form of masculinity which encourages sexual violence against women would be institutionalized in street and sports cultures and organizations such as gangs and fraternities, which when considered together, influence a huge section of the young male population.