Rape-Free Societies

[bloom]

The outstanding feature of rape-free societies is the ceremonial importance of women and the respect accorded the contribution women make to social continuity, a respect which places men and women in relatively balanced power spheres. Rape-free societies are characterized by sexual equality and the notion that the sexes are complementary. Although the sexes may not perform the same duties or have the same rights or privileges, each is indispensable to the activities of the other.

Since l981 when this research was published, I spent approximately twenty- four months (extended over a period of fourteen years) doing ethnographic research among the Minangkabau, a rape free Indonesian society. I chose the Minangkabau because of social factors that conformed with my profile of rape- free societies. The Minangkabau are the largest and most modern matrilineal society in the world today. Women play an undisputed role in Minangkabau symbol system and daily life, especially in the villages. Among the most populous of the ethnic groups of Indonesia, the Minangkabau are not an isolated tribal society in some far off corner of the world. Banks, universities, modern governmental buildings are found in two of the major cities of West Sumatra, the traditional homeland of the Minangkabau people. At the major universities, it is not uncommon to find Minangkabau Ph.D's trained in the U.S. People own cars and travel by bus throughout the province. Most children go to local schools, and many increasingly attend college.

The challenge facing me when I went to West Sumatra was first to find out whether the incidence of rape was low and if so to crack the cultural code that made it so. In the early years there was ample evidence from police reports and from interviews conducted all over the province that this was a rape free society. Ethnographic research conducted in several villages provided confirmation. This research demonstrated that women are the mainstays of village life. The all important family rice fields are inherited through the female line. Husbands live in their wives houses. It is believed that this is the way it should be, because otherwise in the event of a divorce women and children would be left destitute. The main reason given for the matrilineal inheritance of property is that since women bear the infant and raise the child it is in keeping with the laws of nature to give women control of the ancestral property so that they will have the wherewithal to house and nurture the young.

Missing from the Minangkabau conception of sexuality is any show of interest in sex for the sake of sex alone. Sex is neither a commodity nor a notch in the male belt in this society. A man's sense of himself is not predicated by his sexual functioning. Although aggression is present, it is not linked to sex nor is it deemed a manly trait. The Minangkabau have yet to discover sex as a commodity or turn it into a fetish....

as opposed to:

Rape-prone behavior is associated with environmental insecurity and females are turned into objects to be controlled as men struggle to retain or to gain control of their environment. Behaviors and attitudes prevail that separate the sexes and force men into a posture of proving their manhood. Sexual violence is one of the ways in which men remind themselves that they are superior. As such, rape is part of a broader struggle for control in the face of difficult circumstances. Where men are in harmony with their environment, rape is usually absent...

Getting their information about women and sex from pornography, some brothers don't see anything wrong with forcing a woman, especially if she's drunk. After the l983 case of alleged gang rape I describe in the book one of the participants, a virgin at the time, told a news reporter:

We have this Select TV in the house, and there's soft porn on every midnight. All the guys watch it and talk about it and stuff, and (gang banging) didn't seem that odd because it's something that you see and hear about all the time...

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~psanday/rapea.html


Once TV came to the Minangkabau in the 90s - the eroticization of popular culture began and attitudes started changing. It's not like most people are ever going to give up their TVs - but it does make an interesting cultural study.

[cally]

1. I didn't know there were rape-free societies

I'll have to find out more. This is fascinating. Thanks. :hug:

[bloom]

2. It is rather hopeful.

And what a sensible idea to have the rice fields/property pass down through the women "since women bear the infant and raise the child it is in keeping with the laws of nature to give women control of the ancestral property so that they will have the wherewithal to house and nurture the young."

It is interesting how that would affect the power dynamics of a society - and how that could affect the aggression dynamics. (My mother was always aggravated that the "store" was always passed down to the men in the family).


Somehow I ended up @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_orientation:

"Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), is a personality variable which predicts social and political attitudes. It is a widely applied Social Psychological scale. SDO is conceptualised as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination and domination; that is, it is a measure of an individuals preference for hierarchy within any given social system.

SDO is commonly deployed with the Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. SDO correlates with Right Wing Authoritarian and together they are strong predictors of many forms of prejudice, such as sexism, racism and anti-homosexual attitudes. The two measures can be thought of as two sides of the same coin: RWA provides the prejudiced, religious submisive followers, and SDO provides the manipulative, prejudiced, power-seeking leaders....

Sidanius and Pratto propose that one mediating factor in SDO is androgens, noting primarily that males tend to have higher SDO scores than females, and are also observed to be more socially hierarchical. The biological reason for this difference in dominance is increased levels of androgens, primarily testosterone. Male levels of testosterone are much higher than that of females. Higher levels of androgens are correlated with sexual aggression, dominance, spontaneous aggression and decreased restraint of aggression. There is also a correlation between gains in social status and increased testosterone. Thus there is a potential link between social dominance and aggression."

[cally]

3. It's perplexing to consider the events that

caused matrilineal societies to change to patrileneal societies. I've read various theories but none have totally convinced me. Women certainly lost power with the advent of the Moses based religions. I find it difficult to believe that the religion caused the change instead of the religion following a change in culture.

Your last paragraph should be used in some of the recent threads.

[bloom]

6. I think religion can be a powerful force

maybe even "the" powerful force. And not by the nature the "power of God" but in the group-think kind of way. Esp. in a small group/small town setting...

The example in my OP - of the college men watching pornography as a group every night. In a way - it became their religion. It shaped their group activities and allowed them to feel Ok about rape - including gang rape.

In the same way - I think television can become many people's "religion". People all watching the same thing. Being indoctrinated in the similar modes of feeling and thought.

I came across and article this morning about a totally unscientific study about rape - that was trying to put forth the idea that rape is "natural" and so there was no point in blaming men about it - basically. The writers got a of TV coverage. The article was found on the FAIR website as an example of how distorted news can be - and is a good example of how problematic the TV media can be with social questions.

In Rape Debate, Controversy Trumps Credibility
"Natural" sexual assault theory "irresistible" to profit-driven media

By Jennifer L. Pozner

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1034

---

See my post to the next question in regards to the last paragraph.

[kalibex]

4. Yeah, but...

....are they higher in the heirarchy because their tetosterone level is higher...or is their testosterone level higher because they're higher in the 'heirarchy'?

[bloom]

5. I was thinking about that

because if you read the original link - that shows that in groups of people where men and women are more equal - there is less rape - and obviously less Social Dominance.

I've noticed men who are more equal minded seem a lot less likely to be into body-building and all that. My theory is that it is a "cultural" thing - that many buy into that - testosterone is king - more muscles are better (even though super muscles don't make any difference in most people's lives) - the whole "Male sports stars are Gods" kind of mentality. And what what is generally "sold" to us on television - corporate TV, anyway. For whatever reason - the mainstream society is rewarding high testosterone levels. We wouldn't have to be.

Whereas - the equality-minded men were doing awesomely creative things - with music and art and movies and stuff like that. So to some extent - I think it is what the society values. And everyone has a role to play in that. What we spend our time/money on - for instance. A lot of people who do really cool things are not into the Marketing mentality - so people have to look harder to find them. (Support local artists and musicians!)

Around here there was a man who was taking steroids and doing the whole body building thing and first he was punching holes in the walls, and shooting his gun off around the house and then he killed his wife and himself.

To me there is no question that our society is encouraging violence through a lot of things that many think are Socially acceptable that indirectly leads to rape, murder and so on and so forth. And I do see it as comparable to the society going along with segregation/the humiliation of blacks prior to the civil rights movement. Both men and women can contribute to the problem. Esp. in our culture of advertising - it takes mindfulness to overcome.

I found this - this morning:

OPEN LETTER TO MEN
Who Say They Believe in Freedom and Equality
by Nikki Craft

...You who express your belief in freedom and equality: you have done more than defend pornographers' First Amendment "right" to abuse and degrade women. You have often actively excused it. You have in many cases embraced the bigotry and bought their lies about women. You have read and at times enjoyed this propaganda.

If blacks were being lynched in this country in the same numbers that women are being sexually tortured and slaughtered, you would do something. Or would you? Your failure to grasp the political nature of these heinous crimes against women is inexcusable; your failure to act against them is complicitous. Those of you who remain silent should know that you are as guilty as your predecessors who closed their ears to the rumblings of hatred and prejudice expressed towards Jews and others in Nazi Germany. You are as guilty as those who cast their eyes downward as these people were marched away; one by one by one by one.

But if you cannot, or will not, join with us, we ask this of you: at least stop supplying ammunition to the enemy. Help us break the support network for men who commit these acts of sexual violence against women. Please do not work for pornographers. As we would not work for the Pentagon, we ask that you do not take jobs from Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt or Bob Guccione. Please do not give interviews, supply photographs or write articles for them. Don't advertise in or help distribute their magazines. Please do not accept their tainted donations for 'liberal/progressive' political causes. No matter what personal gains are offered you, and they may be significant, do not collaborate against women by giving the pornographers more credibility. Use your creative energies elsewhere. Avoid being entangled in their network of production and distribution, knowing that our blood drips from every dollar they pay.

Lastly, we ask you not to give them your money: don't be consumers of pornography. Don't buy the lies about women, men and sexuality they offer you as truth. Your humanity is victimized by those lies too.

http://www.feminista.com/archives/v1n1/craft.html

I don't think there is any coincidence that Robert Jensen is Anti-Porn and Anti-War. There is a cultural connection...

You are what you eat:
The pervasive porn industry and what it says about you and your desires

by Robert Jensen

...We can stop glorifying violence and we can reject its socially sanctioned forms, primarily in the military and the sports world. We can make peace heroic. We can find ways to use and enjoy our bodies in play without watching each other crumble to the ground in pain after a “great hit.”

We can stop providing the profits for activities that deny our own humanity, hurt other people, and make sexual justice impossible: pornography, strip bars, prostitution, sex tourism. There is no justice in a world in which some bodies can be bought and sold.

We can take seriously the feminist critique of sexual violence, not just by agreeing that rape and battering are bad, but by holding each other accountable and not looking the other way when our friends do it. And, just as important, we can ask ourselves how the sexual ethic of male dominance plays out in our own intimate relationships, and then ask our partners how it looks to them.

If we do those things, the world will be a better place not just for the people who currently suffer because of our violence, but for us. If you are not moved by arguments about justice and the humanity of others, then be moved by the idea that you can help make a better world for yourself. If you cannot take the pain of others seriously, then take seriously your own pain, your own hesitations, your own sense of unease about masculinity. You feel it; I know you do. I have never met a man who didn’t feel uneasy about masculinity, who didn’t feel that in some way he wasn’t living up to what it meant to be a man. There’s a reason for that:Masculinity is a fraud; it’s a trap. None of us is man enough....

Let’s stop trying to be men. Let’s struggle to be human beings.

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/pornography&masculinity.htm

[ismnotwasm]

11. Wow. Just wow

These articles express what I feel in so many ways. When my marriage was younger, my husband and I looked at a few porn tapes. Bought a few porn books. What's interesting, is that both of us became bored, being far more into exploring each other. They pornography didn't even have good ideas. What I saw was initially stimulating, then repititious, and finally boring. And my husband just isn't interested.
My stance on pornography as a feminist is that it is ultimetly destructive to both male and female psychology. My husband understands how I feel, but he came to the same conclusion without any lectures from me.
Porn is designed to manipulate not only sexuallity, but sexual attitudes. The message is constant--women like to be used and abused. Men like to use and abuse women. There is little deviation on this theme from what I've seen and and it would be extremely sad, if it wasn't so destructive.
I will mention again I think, that I was a runaway and a street kid for a long time. (Many years ago) I was exposed to a lot of things that shaped who I am today. Including alternate and violent sexuallity, violence, pornography and crime. The most destructive of all these forces to my mind was the combination of sexuallity with violence. It damages everyone.

[Hello_Kitty]

12. I wonder the same thing

We are incredibly responsive to the stimuli in our environment. And our bodies release various chemicals and hormones that enable us to do what we need to do in order to adapt and survive. So when your environment is set up such that it appears you must fight for extremely limited resources and secure and defend a tenuous position in the hierarchy, it's entirely possible that your body will go into overdrive to create a surfeit of testosterone.

[Maat]

7. This is fascinating.

Thanks for the post.

On edit:

Thanks for all of the posts. This 47-year-old married mom and feminist loved all of them.

I'm very happy; my husband has always treated me as an equal. We have always been committed partners.

I urge women not to settle for less than a partner who fully respects them.

Just my two cents' worth.

[bloom]

8. I'm interested in the culture as a whole

and what we should expect from it.

I don't have any problems with my husband, either. He had studied some of these ideas before our marriage and has always been great about everything. (I can't say the same thing about my siblings and their marriages, however.)

I think some of these ideas never did make to the mainstream - esp. here in the Midwest. At any rate - if we don't talk about it - who will?

[Maat]

9. Exactly (n/t)!

[Nikia]

10. Good articles

I have been thinking about all these things for a while. In a way, I feel too angry to intelligently comment. It is good that there might be an alternative to hypermasculine culture that encourages rape.

[ismnotwasm]

13. Thank you

Excellent read.
One of the things I've been finding are studies with the words "sexual coercion" relating to College campuses that evidently an increasing number of women are participating in. When I read such things, "rape" is not brought up, but it's a disturbing trend.

I understand the point of these studies,(I think) but to me they go sideways on the issue of rape by bringing up sexually aggressive women. The men in these studies "feel pressured" to have sex. It irritates me to read these studies because I get the feeling I'm supposed to be grateful that all men aren't trying for sexual activity.
I also feel that such studies have to be inherently flawed given the atmosphere on college campuses. (I haven't read what these women "look" like for instance--ie. an young overweight women with a crush comes on to a young man who would never be seen with her. Nor do they bring up the sexualization of young women, or the so called sexual freedom that is really sexual bondage-- to be available to males for male sexual satifation)

I would love to see a rape free society, but l agree, it seems we would have to start over. But we continue the fight I guess, with what we have.

[antigone382]

14. I've read this study before...it's really interesting.

I like when she talks about the "rape-free fraternity," where women are welcome to come study and relax, and are valued as people rather than sex objects.