This anthropological case study and analysis of certain group rituals of male bonding on college campuses focuses on the values, social expectations, and institutional practices that encourage male sexual aggression in the university setting, notably in the form of fraternity gang rape.
This study documents how gang rape occurs with regularity in fraternities, athletic dorms, and other exclusively male enclaves. The book begins with one incident at a fraternity that involved one woman having sex with five or six fraternity members after a party. Perspectives on what happened were obtained through interviews with the victim, the participants, onlookers, and university administrators. As background for understanding the incident, the analysis reconstructs daily life in the fraternity as it identifies the roles played by pornography, male bonding, degrading jokes, and ritual dances in shaping the fraternity's attitude toward women and sexuality. Two fraternity members detail the degrading fraternity initiation rituals they were compelled to undergo. The discussion also covers gang rape on other campuses in other fraternities. The evidence reveals a common pattern; the "brothers" target a vulnerable "party girl" who wants acceptance or is high on alcohol (sometimes her drinks have been deliberately spiked); she is taken to a room in the fraternity house where she may or may not agree to have sex with one man; she then generally passes out, and a "train" of men have sex with her. Such incidents of gang rape are rarely prosecuted or even labeled rape, reflecting an institutional attitude that grants men sexual privileges and accepts sexually aggressive behavior. The book's analysis concludes that the subculture of many male groups on college campuses conditions men to view women as objects to be used for confirmation of their masculinity and as vehicles for acceptance into the male fraternity. Women, on the other hand, are manipulated and conditioned to accept this role as a means of attaching themselves to men of power in the male community. 53-item bibliography