Group Sexual Assaults and Masculinity: Mainstream Media Keeps Missing It

The recent case of a 15-year-old girl who was allegedly gang raped by a group of boys in Richmond, CA has garnered quite a bit of recent press, understandably so. One of the attendant issues being discussed is that there were a number of bystanders who did not participate physically in the assault, but were complicit by cheering on or simply by observing but not intervening in any way to stop the group assault.

One of the things I've noticed among the expert discourse on National Public Radio is discussion of bystander apathy, noting the classic and tragic 1964 homicide of Kitty Genovese who was killed as bystanders diffused their personal responsibility to do anything, including calling the authorities. What has not been discussed is how a violent and misogynistic masculinity plays into these types of male-driven assaults.

In fact, it took a caller on this podcast (go to about 26 minutes into the podcast) to point this out. But even then, the expert panelist responds to the caller by swaying away from the gendered nature of this alleged crime, focusing instead on her personal interests of bystanders "freezing" while watching abusive behavior.

Within the literature on masculinity, a number of scholars have theorized group assaults of males on females and males on other males, specifically noting how these group assaults are a male-based bonding mechanism, enacted as a form of violent participatory theater for the perpetrators. Michael Messner and Jeff Benedict (see Public Heroes, Private Felons) have written a great deal on this issue as it relates to male athletes.

From Messner's Taking the Field: Women, Men and Sports:

...the dynamic underlying gang rapes is a statement of group-based male power, expressed through a dual process of misogynist denigration of women and erotic bonding among men, and this process has its roots in the erotic bonding of the misogynist joking culture of athletic teams. (p. 40).

However, this violent, misogynistic dynamic is not limited to the sporting world. In multiple arenas where heterosexual males form bachelor societies (e.g., fraternities, military units, prisons, sports teams), extreme forms of gendered violence are more likely to develop. Karen Franklin's excellent article titled "Enacting Masculinity: Antigay Violence and Group Rape
as Participatory Theater," published in Sexuality Research & Social Policy speaks to this phenomenon. Her article dissects the case of a 2003 Long Island, New York high school football team (graphic language):

According to a subsequent Grand Jury investigation report (Pingel, 2004), the assaults began on the first night of camp, when one of the young victims was taped to his bed. The boy was then forced to go to an adjoining cabin and put powder and gel in the hair of another underclassman. The next day, two assailants held down a boy while a third assailant sodomized him with a broomstick. This was done in front of other players, who laughed and joked about it. The broomstick assault was repeated the day after that. This time, the assailants applied duct tape to the victim’s pubic area, buttocks, legs, and eyebrows, inflicting severe pain by pulling off the hair on these parts of his body. Again, other players witnessed the assault. (p. 30).

To understand these public and gendered assaults inflicted upon females and males, Franklin offers the following explanation:

Participants in antigay assaults and group rapes usually recall feeling positive emotions at the time. During the assault, there is a drug-like high produced by the excitement and danger. Afterwards, there is a feeling of closeness and camaraderie, a sense of bonding produced by communal transgression. But there may also be an enormous, collective sigh of relief, in that they have survived this public test with their masculinity intact.

In other words, underneath the experienced veneer of camaraderie and warmth is a desperate struggle to achieve dominance, maintain status, or even to get through the ordeal with one’s masculinity intact. This competition for status or survival is not directly acknowledged. Rather, it is camouflaged by the ostensible goal of debasing a weaker, more feminine outsider.

There is more to Franklin's thesis than what is provided above (the entire article is worth a close read). However, in applying Messner's and Franklin's theoretical approach to the Richmond, CA case, if we can assume (1) all the alleged perpetrators were male and (2) all or most of the bystanders were male, then the collective assault was made possible by objectifying the victim so that she became an object used to help the boys/men bond.

In other words, the mainstream media is once again missing it. Although diffused responsibility is present in the Richmond, CA case and similar cases, that analysis alone is markedly incomplete. These examples of sexualized violence speak to the ongoing crisis in masculinity that permeates our world. As long as males build a sense of hegemonic masculinity through the debasement of women and other males, we will continue to have these types of sexual assaults perpetrated in the form of mass war crimes, small group and individualized assaults.

Additional NPR coverage:

• City Mobilizes In Response To Rape At School
• Number Of Arrests Growing In Calif. Gang Rape
  

How Women are Framed in Sports: Yankee babes vs. Phillies babes

It is always interesting to see how the media integrates women, if at all, into major sporting events. This year's World Series pits the New York Yankees against the Philadelphia Phillies. With the series about to commence, The New York Post has a photo-story up titled "Yankees babes vs. Phillies babes," showing 12 photos of Yankee or Philly players with their "babes" (i.e., wives, fiances, or girlfriends). A few examples from their gallery:

(Caption: "Phillies outfielder Jayson Werth and his wife Julia Werth.")

[Caption: "Yankees' designated hitter Hidecki Matsuit (misspelled) holds up a drawing he did of his bride" (note the contemporary visual of Matsui, a Japanese national and "his" picture bride).]

(Caption: "Karen Burnett, wife to Yankees pitcher AJ, hangs out with Amber Sabathia, Kate Hudson and Michelle Damon.")

[Caption: "Stephenie LaGrossa, fiancee to Phillies' pticher (misspelled) Kyle Kendrick."]

As is common in sports media, women in this photo-story are framed as appendages to the more central male athletes. This may seem obvious to the average sports fan since the athletes are the celebrities and therefore merit being the photo-story's central focus. The point, however, is that society still affords males this particular institution of male privilege where women are consistently marginalized.

How often are there stories where female athletes are shown with their male boyfriends, fiances, or husbands? One may argue those stories of women with their "male appendages" do not exist because there are simply fewer female athletes. But that's part of the gender disparity, part of the male privilege in sport and society.

Furthermore, women are relegated symbolically to figures whose worth lies in their sexuality and/or readiness to support their men. When women in this photo-story are shown by themselves (ostensibly centered), they are still cast on the margins of the sporting world, sitting in the stands and/or flaunting their sexuality. As is "par for the course" in the sporting world, we see again how women are valued.

The Old Boys Club: Sports, Social Networking, and Politics at the Highest Level

The New York Times has a great story up illustrating how different components of hegemonic masculinity can fuse together and further male privilege at the highest political level possible: "Man's World at White House?: No Harm, No Foul, Aides Say."

The story explains how President Obama is engaging in activities historically considered male-appropriate that in effect still exclude contemporary female aids from further political exposure and the casual, but highly important fields where social networking matters immensely.

The most obvious activity noted is pick-up basketball. Sports, of course, have been a long standing site where males from multiple status levels can temporarily erase the occupational hierarchy and bond over traditionally masculine conversation/competition, thereby providing a friendly social network for lower-level males who hope to move up the working ranks. Perhaps not surprisingly, the story notes that there can be a general ambiance in the Obama Administration that is male-centered:

“There is a sense that Obama has a certain jocular familiarity with the men that he doesn’t have with the women,” said Tracy Sefl, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign who speaks regularly to some female aides in the administration.

In interviews, five women who work in the White House or advised officials there described the culture with more of a collective eye-roll than any real sense of grievance or discomfort. One junior aide, who like the other women spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about appearing publicly critical, said that the “sports-fan thing at the White House” could become “annoying” and that her relative indifference to athletics could be mildly alienating. And while this is not uncommon in any workplace, sports bonding can afford a point of entree with the boss.

[...]

Mr. Obama is hardly the first commander in chief whose penchant for sports and other guyish stuff (comic books, “Star Trek”) has become part of his presidential persona. The first President George Bush presented himself as a horseshoe-playing, pork-rind-eating Texan. He was followed by the Big Mac-gobbling, cigar-chomping Bill Clinton and the brush-clearing, bike-busting George W. Bush. It worked to good effect, said Mark McKinnon, a media adviser and mountain bike companion of the latter Mr. Bush.

This criticism is naturally downplayed by President Obama and his supporters, citing the prominent women/girls in Obama's personal and professional life:

“Women are Obama’s base, and they don’t seem to have enough people who look like the base inside of their own inner circle,” said Dee Dee Myers, a former press secretary in the Clinton administration whose sister, Betsy, served as the Obama campaign’s chief operating officer.

[...]

[Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett] cites the prominent women Mr. Obama has appointed to top positions, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and six other cabinet-level officials; Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor; the health care czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle; and the domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes. According to figures provided by the administration, there is a 50-50 gender split among White House employees.

It's an interesting choice of words to say, "Women are Obama’s base," illustrating to some degree the age-old pattern of women supporting male leaders, often times in relative anonymity. In this case, however, Jarrett argues Clinton, Sotomayor, and DeParle are hardly invisible.



While the gendered composition of President Obama's visible and influential allies may be up for debate, this story provides an excellent stimulant for discussion on how the old boys network manifests in different contexts, crisscrossing males' social connections across friendly and professional boundaries. In turn, women and those men who do not fall into a traditionally male box are left to advance without the assistance of the hegemonic male springboard. It's really no wonder why, on average, the visible leaders in society continue to be heterosexual males, many of whom simply do not want to relinquish their power-base.

(Photos courtesy of The New York Times).

Ethnocentrism in the Media

Examining the ways stories are framed in the media is a useful way of illustrating how ethnocentric we are as a global society. On the current front page of National Public Radio (NPR.org; 10.22.09) are international stories on Iran's failure to meet deadlines on nuclear proposals, the lack of key American politicians working with Afghanistan, and traumatic brain injury from gridiron football. It's obvious NPR has an international eye, but it appears the international stories typically covered are those that have a close connection to the United States.

On Al Jazeera's front page one can see immediately in its website structure, a broader international focus, with user-friendly links established so readers can quickly go to pages dedicated to Africa, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Central/South Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. On "The America's" front page (10.22.09), the major stories promoted focus on the the U.S. envoy and the Afghan elections, an explosion in Puerto Rico, and the shifting government in Honduras. In Al Jazeera's conception of "The America's," the United States is not necessarily framed as the center.

While ethnocentrism (or some may say nationalism) embedded in major news sites may seem fairly obvious, what's less obvious is the way ethnocentrism shapes our international awareness and sensibilities. As an example, one recent and hideous story only making marginal news across U.S. websites, but which is being covered much more heavily on Al Jazeera, is the terrorizing of protesters in Guinea who were advocating for democracy and speaking out against Guinea's military government at the end of last month (September 2009).

The violence enacted against the protesters was grotesquely physical and sexual, said to be carried out openly by military forces backing Moussa Dadis Camara, Guinea's military leader who assumed leadership via a bloodless coup last year (not so bloodless anymore).





With Guinea perceived as less consequential for the United States at this moment, one has to search with far greater effort to find U.S. news sites that pay even moderate attention to this issue. Conversely, finding background stories on Guinea within Al Jazeera' site is rather easy. Because these stories are erased from or are never introduced to the West's public consciousness, we continue to look inward and ignore certain global crises, and in this case, the attendant forces that shape international terrorism.

Facebook and Violent Masculinity

I was recently directed to this story about a man who was found guilty of killing his wife after she changed her Facebook "status" to single. For all the hoopla about how the internet will liberate society, there will be an equal number of examples showcasing how the internet is used to extend different forms of discrimination. In this case, although the net was certainly not the root cause of the problem, it did to some degree help spark the interpersonal violence. From the story (posted back on 1/23/09):

Edward Richardson, 41, was found guilty of stabbing to death Sarah Richardson, 26, a hairdresser, in her parents’ house in Staffordshire on May 12 last year.

Fiona Cortese of the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Richarsdon became enraged when Sarah changed her marital status on Facebook to single and decided to go and see her as she was not responding to his messages."

Stafford Crown Court heard that Richardson, a carpenter from Biddulph, Stoke-on-Trent, had sought out Mrs Richardson in her parents house and entered by breaking the front door window.

“Once inside he found Sarah in her bedroom and subjected her to a frenzied and brutal attack with a knife and then attempted to take his own life,” said Ms Cortese.

Here we see how dimensions of masculinity (in this case a violent sense of ownership over one's spouse) fuses with a new form of electronic surveillance, and leads to a tragic outcome. In a highly patriarchal culture, even those institutions that appear to be the most socially helpful will be used to maintain and perpetuate gender imbalances.

More on the Subtleties of Racism and Romance

Building off my previous post on the Justice of the Peace in Louisiana who refused to marry an African American man and white woman, this podcast was recently aired on NPR's "Tell Me More": "Love Might Be Blind, But Online Dating Isn't." Nothing terribly surprising here. As has been captured before in studies examining inter-racial marriage patterns, white men are the more common partners of choice for women in heterosexual relationships. Likewise on the whole, white women are considered the most desireable by men.

The interesting differences emerge when examining how people rate men and women of color. Generally, men of color are seen as the least desireable marriage partners, or in this case for online dating. Some women of color, however, are portrayed as highly desireable, a likely indicator of race and gender stereotypes portraying them as exotic and/or compliant. Notably, however, African American women, were found to be less desireable. From the "Tell Me More" podcast:

MARTIN (interviewer): And what made it particularly interesting is that you asked people what they were looking for, and then you could determine whether their behavior matched what it is they said, which is one of the things that intrigued me. And I have to tell you, some of the findings will be fairly painful, depending on your values, for some people to discover.

You found that black women get the least response to their messages. They also respond the most to received messages. You found that Indian men fare very poorly overall but also with Indian women, that Indian women do well overall. White women and men do the best.

[...]

So what do you think is going on here?

Mr. YAGAN (interviewee): Well, because we're able to adjust for compatibility, and what that means is we've already normalized for how well we think each person is going to get along with the other person, the only factor left in determining response rate really is the aesthetic appearance of the person who sent you that message. Obviously, there's more to aesthetic appearance than just race, but that is going to be the first thing that someone notices when they look at a picture. So we think that there really is racial bias in determining who people want to date.

As society continues to evolve in how it functions electronically, it is important to dissect how social distance between racialized and gendered groups is widened and closed. In this case, social distance presumably closes between white men and women of color, but on what terms and based on what race/gender stereotypes? What might these stereotypes contribute to in some inter-racial relationships when it comes to power imbalances (e.g., control, isolation, violence)? Conversely, social distance between women from all ethnic groups (whites included) and men of color widens, again, based on what racialized and gendered perceptions of diverse men of color?

Assigning Values to Manhood: An Example from Academia

Peter McAllister, an Australian anthropologist residing temporarily in Cambridge, studied fossilized footstep prints of Aboriginal hunters from about 20,000 years ago, documented in his book, Manthropology. He gauged the prints of an Aboriginal, dubbed "T8," and concluded that T8's running speed on soft ground translates to greater running speed than current 100 meter and 200 meter world record holder, Usain Bolt, on a rubber track. From the Reuters.com story:

An analysis of the footsteps of one of the men, dubbed T8, shows he reached speeds of 37 kph on a soft, muddy lake edge. Bolt, by comparison, reached a top speed of 42 kph during his then world 100 meters record of 9.69 seconds at last year's Beijing Olympics.

In an interview in the English university town of Cambridge where he was temporarily resident, McAllister said that, with modern training, spiked shoes and rubberized tracks, aboriginal hunters might have reached speeds of 45 kph.

"We can assume they are running close to their maximum if they are chasing an animal," he said.

"But if they can do that speed of 37 kph on very soft ground I suspect there is a strong chance they would have outdone Usain Bolt if they had all the advantages that he does."

McAllister also argues that women from eras ago were "superior," as exemplified through their ability to out-do Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestling contest. Isn't it interesting how he uses an example which pries at men's physical insecurities by having a woman from the past being able to out-muscle a male icon of physicality?

Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle.

[...]

McAllister said a Neanderthal woman had 10 percent more muscle bulk than modern European man. Trained to capacity she would have reached 90 percent of Schwarzenegger's bulk at his peak in the 1970s.

Okay, so comparative anthropology shows that average Homo sapiens from back in the day were more athletic than today's elite athletes. Maybe, maybe not. According to McAllister, they were. But so what? What's the big deal? Who cares, and why?

Apparaently McAllister cares becuase this decline in athleticism is a so-called indicator of men's decline, or physical "softening" in society. Good lord, how long is this male identity crisis in physicality going to go on? Note how McAllister assigns value to masculine physicality. More from the Reuters.com article:

"If you're reading this then you -- or the male you have bought it for -- are the worst man in history. [emphasis added].

"No ifs, no buts -- the worst man, period...As a class we are in fact the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet." [emphasis added].

[...]

Manthropology abounds with other examples:

* Roman legions completed more than one-and-a-half marathons a day carrying more than half their body weight in equipment.

* Athens employed 30,000 rowers who could all exceed the achievements of modern oarsmen.

* Australian aboriginals threw a hardwood spear 110 meters or more (the current world javelin record is 98.48).

[...]

"We are so inactive these days and have been since the industrial revolution really kicked into gear," McAllister replied. "These people were much more robust than we were."

We already know how society at large privileges manhood in terms of physical strength and aggression. We see this pervasively in popular culture (e.g., movies, television, novels).



But now we see how even academia perpetuates the socially constructed understanding that "good" masculinity is rooted in physical strength, power, an speed. Whereas the "worst" man is someone who is unathletic and who has been "feminized" by a more sedentary corporate culture.

Gee, this is the premise of the movie, Fight Club. Knowing that even academicians perpetuate these gendered values, it's no wonder guys continue to engage in violence against people from all genders and sexualities across the globe.

(Photo courtesy of Reuters.com)