Rape In Race Class & Gender

Research on rape and race, class and gender can be acquired from the writers at Paper Masters. Use the book that Angela Davis writes about the Myth of the Black Rapist called Women and Race and Class.

Rape is a crime of violence, domination, hatred and control which manifests itself sexually. That is, men rape women to express dominance or ownership, to express hatred, to control women, and that the sexual nature of the act is secondary to these factors.

There are a number of topics concerning Race, Class and Gender which deal with rape:

• Is rape as a crime of discrimination?
• Are white-on-white rapes parallel to the rape of Black women by white men (whether as a slave women or post emancipation as a free women)? Why or why not?
• Do the stereotypes perpetuated in the American dialect of English rationalize or enable the society sanctioned rape of black women?

The social system of the United States is not unlike most societies where social relations are determined by political, cultural, economic and environmental elements. The sex/gender systems that are evident today are not excluded.Gender has consistently been organized around family, labor, economy and religion.These elements are also responsible for the organization and regulation of sexuality in this country.

According to research by Paper Masters, the combination of an expanding female work force and the social preoccupation with sex and sexuality has contributed largely to the dramatic increase in "sexualized" occupations such as prostitution, stripping and exotic dancing as well as to the preponderance of provocative representations of women in the media and advertising.

Unfortunately, the components of masculinity and female sexuality have worked together toward establishing an alarming social behavior. It is the same society that experiences little difficulty or hardship in attaining or paying for material necessities that makes similar provision for paying for and achieving sexual satisfaction from the expansive proliferation of profit-related sex venues - the majority of whose employees are female.

This depersonalization of sex and sexuality has contributed largely to one very distinct aspect of male violence against women - rape. According to Sanday, "rape is an act in which a male or groups of males sexually assault a woman" however she concedes that it is not confined solely to acts against woman and can occur with women assaulting men and men assaulting men. Sanday also disputes earlier assumptions that rape is a manifestation of the male nature and suggests that it is, in fact, a cultural or sociological response.

From the association of four exclusive studies on rape, Sanday offers four general hypotheses on how cultural or sociological response correlates with the act of rape. They are:

1. Sexual repression is related to the incidence of rape;
2. Intergroup and interpersonal violence is enacted in male sexual violence;
3. The character of parent-child relations is enacted in male sexual violence;
4. Rape is an expression of a social ideology of male dominance.

Schur agrees that rape demonstrates a great deal about men's attitudes toward women as well as about their attitudes toward sexuality. He emphasizes that the male perspective of sexual satisfaction is often equated with images of conquest. At the same time, he points to the desensitizing social misconception that a man must separate himself from the "love" aspect of sex in order to be available and responsive to a woman's needs.