Rape is obviously considered a gendered crime. This is considered true because of our concept of rape and how it plays out in the real world– both the idea and act of rape are used to perpetuate a patriarchal gender hierarchy. In her powerful theory of violence, Eesha Pandit made clear that violence, in general, is considered gendered and functionalized. It is always deliberated that sexual violence is more often enacted by men against women. But we do not have any clue about how strong the gender disparity is mostly because of how gendered our notion of rape is. Taking the FBI, for example, has in recent times started changing the outdated definition of rape from the traditional knowledge of female forcibly and contrary to her will. We don't have a broad picture of the gendered ways these crimes play out in the real world mainly because our idea of sexual violence is so gendered in an essentialist way.`
This is a part of how the gender binary works. It sets up two boxes: one for the men, people in power and another for the women, the people who face oppression. Any other soul, who does not fit our culture's narrow definitions of man or woman, and anyone who is not one, falls outside, where it's difficult to make even people recognize our humanity, forget our experiences of oppression. There are an infinite number of problems with this setup, note, the least of which is imaging women broadly as victims and men as villains. Another way gender-based violence works is by wiping out the many people whose involvements of sexual violence don't fit this model. Sadly, feminists end up spreading this exclusion when we talk about only women as victims and men as the guilty party. Arguably, rape is a crime that has been gendered though the act itself does not follow the rules. Correspondingly, it is important that people understand rape as a genderless act and recognize it as being embedded in a gendered culture of aggression.
Susan Ehrlich’s provides a framework for interpreting the relatively new cultural explanation for heterosexual acquaintance rape: male/female “miscommunication.” This has developed as an alternative to the model of “victim-precipitation,” but Ehrlich argues that the new model leaves intact the assumption that women victims are responsible for rape. Instead of blaming victims for their “provocative” dress or “promiscuous” past, the miscommunication framework holds victims accountable “for not communicating their lack of consent clearly and unambiguously” (p. 121). Thus, miscommunication is the “ultimate resistance” standard in disguise.
Tannen and other scholars of communication propose that women and men are members of different cultural groups and, therefore, have different communication styles. Tannen maintains that each style is valid on its terms; they are separate but equal. Other scholars advocate a "dominance" rather than "difference" approach; in this interpretation power relations shape the particular forms these male/female communication styles assume. Tannen maintains that her model is only meant to explain everyday gendered struggles to communicate, not to explain away abuse and violence. Despite this disclaimer, the miscommunication model has become the culturally dominant explanation for acquaintance rape among helping professionals, educators, and the college students whose behavior the model seeks to explain (Crawford, 95).
What happens when this miscommunication model is used to understand heterosexual acquaintance rape of females by males? The accused males can draw upon accessible and widely shared assumptions about masculinity and male sexuality, that is, males are driven to seek sexual intercourse, while the female victims’ perspectives such as fear of escalating the physical and sexual violence by her resistance are often ignored or discredited by measuring them against masculine standards for forceful resistance. The consequence is that the sexual prerogatives of male aggressors are protected at the expense of females’ sexual autonomy.
Ehrlich's point is that we come to decision processes concerning rape with assumptions that meddle with our ability to take women victims more seriously. Knowing this may discourage many such victims from reporting rape, while also failing to deter offenders. We have a discourse, practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak, about rape that constructs these common social realities within social interactions and social institutions. “Real rape” is rape that affords us a way to deny responsibility for deciding that a rape has occurred. It might be that the assailant is a stranger, with a weapon, who commits significant physical violence and there is no evidence of a consensual intimate contact with the victim. Any claim of rape that does not match these characteristics is ambiguous and, therefore, demands the construction of a clarification of events. Within that process of construction, gendered perquisites associated with masculinity exert considerable influence. So, the outcome of acquaintance rape, the adjudication often is that, he was doing what our culture and society as a whole expect men to do, and he didn’t understand that she tried to restrain him from advancement or was not in a position to tell him to stop.
Stephen Schulhofer states that “existing laws against rape and sexual assault fail to protect because our legal system fails to acknowledge the right of every person to sexual autonomy, which includes people’s liberty to look for sexual fulfillment and emotional intimacy with willing partners and the right to decline such involvements” In the U.S., property rights are vigorously protected, but there is no comparable protection for sexual autonomy: “In nearly all states, rape laws continue to require proof of physical force, (p.4). Arguably, such ‘force’ must evidently show something outside the acts drawn in intercourse and must be justifiable in a court of law. He also recognizes and considers that it will not be easy to develop workable standards for sexual autonomy, but he believes this is necessary because our existing standards make do not have measure put in place to control sexual assault that do not have physical aggressiveness in the sense of “abnormal force.”
Anthropologist Peggy Sanday has written extensively about the differences between rape-free and rape-prone cultures. In rape free cultures, rape is infrequent, clearly and harshly punished whereas, in rape prone cultures, it is the opposite, rape and attempted rape are common occurrences, and punishment is rare. In terms of comparing societies from across the globe to comparing college campuses, she identifies the following as socio-cultural correlates of rape on college campuses: intense consumption of alcohol, the use of pornography to learn about sex and women, bragging about sexual conquests, the use of women as a vehicle for displaying masculinity to other men, heterosexism, and homophobia. All these factors contribute to the rapid and in the deterministic spread of the vice. Polarization of men's and women's worlds leads to reduced gender equality and mutual respect. This in turn acts as a catalyst for the likelihood of rape.
There are some conditions such as equality and closeness between women and men that work against the occurrence of rape. Furthermore, these factors also enhance our society above gender-based role classification and promote mutual respect. This in turn leads to many benefits that would be witnessed at even the national level. So, despite efforts to promote equality and respect, the U.S. today is a society with a high prevalence of both rapes and sexual aggression.
There are a couple of theories that might be relevant to this situation but personally, the first being the possibility of sexual offenders utilizing the loopholes within the judicial system and secondly, the sexual offenders being smart, that is, they make sure no evidence is left. But despite all these facts, there still remains a void that needs to be filled in order to make clear judgments given how tremendously gendered sexual violence is; it’s easy and understandable to find yourself into essentialist language when talking about the issue by painting all victims as women and all perpetrators as men.
Works Cited
Crawford, Mary. Talking Difference: On Gender and Language. London: SAGE, 1995. Print.
Ehrlich, Susan. Representing Rape: Language and Sexual Consent. London: Routledge, 2001. Print.
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Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. N.p., 2015. Print.
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Schulhofer, Stephen J. Unwanted Sex: The Culture of Intimidation and the Failure of Law. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. Print.
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