NCJ Number
75663
Journal
Women's Studies International Quarterly Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Dated: (1978) Pages: 27-38
Date Published
1978
Length
12 pages
Annotation
Rape is interpreted not as a deviant act but as an exaggeration of conventional sexual relations.
Abstract
Explanations of rape are not to be sought within the individual psyche of rapist or victim but within accepted sexual mores. Sexual behavior is governed by 'scripts' which provide a vocabulary of motives relevant to sexual situations and guides for action within them. The same scripts that motivate normal behavior also provide motives for the rapist. Moral prescriptions defining acceptable conduct contain escape clauses which permit behavior considered immoral to be justified under certain extenuating circumstances or neutralizations. The attributes of masculinity and femininity learned from the beginning of childhood and incorporated into expectations of sexual behavior normally provide the motivational and interactional basis of rape. Males are expected to establish dominance over women, and sexual conquest becomes an acceptable means of validating masculinity and demonstrating superiority over women. The 'urgency' of the male sex drive supplies the first technique of neutralization. Misconceptions about female sexuality foster the myth that sex is a means of forcing a woman into loving submission. Women are thus placed in the position of legitimate victims. Rape may also become a method of punishing women and putting them in their place, or even a means of taking revenge on other men, as in war situations. In this system, women's sexuality becomes a commodity to be bartered or in some cases, stolen. Rape also expresses the hostility that runs through human sexual scripts. Furthermore, male guilt about sexuality may be directed against women. Thus, sexual relationships are built around sexual inequalities, are scripted for actors whose roles are predefined as subordinate and superordinate, and involve the exercise of power which may be manifested in the sexual act itself. Rape is, then, an extreme expression of culturally accepted patterns, demonstrating and preserving male dominance. Footnotes and 23 references are furnished.