Gender, Culture, and Difference The case of american university fraternities

Study of Gender Within and Between Cultures Gender Roles: the expected behaviours of men, women and others as they have been socialized. Gender Division of Labour: the typical tasks that men, women and/or other perform. Gender Identities: the subjective sense of what it means to be masculine, feminine, or ‘other’ in a particular culture.

Gender and Sexuality Cross- Culturally This study is an example of discourse analysis, defined as a constellation of knowledge and power which shapes the ways we experience the world. Our experience is typically gendered, i.e. discourse tends to act in and through our senses of embodiment and what it means to be feminine or masculine in any given context. Foucault: sexual expression is channelled by strategies of knowledge and power used for defining the nature of desire. –How desire is defined varies a great deal cross-culturally. E.g. Herdt studied male initiation rituals in Papua New Guinea and found that what we would term ritualized homosexuality was an important part of the initiation process. Believe that the knowledge of the ancestors is passed down partly through ingesting semen of older men. Following initiation, however, young men would go on to marry and have children. Gender identities are a major way in which cultural values and hierarchies become naturalized, because they are simultaneously cultural and biological, as well as being connected with powerful emotions of sexuality and parenting. Establishment of authorities and hierarchies often involves the control over sexuality and bodies.

Fraternity Gang Rape in the 1980s USA as an Upper-Class Male Initiation Ritual How are bodies and minds shaped in ways that reflected and reproduced the prevailing hierarchies of the time? Occurred in a context in which the entry of women into the work force and universities was relatively new. Reports in the 1980s indicated that there were more than 75 reported cases of gang rape each year on college campuses in the U.S. Very often, these reports indicated that the gang rapes were perpetrated by relatively privileged young men, i.e. those who belonged to fraternities. Male-male bonding was an important part of fraternity culture. This bonding was embedded in gendered notions in which dominance became expressed through enforced sex. Had the function also of creating a climate of ‘fear and awe’ regarding male sexual aggression, and of its naturalness. The fact that some women are unconscious during the ‘train’ shows that the women is seen only as a vehicle or a body for male bonding

The Gendered Landscape of U. Recently became co-educational. The major Walkway is dominated by fraternity houses. –Means that young women walking to classes frequently experience stares, comments and ‘ratings’ from the male frat brothers. –Fraternities are also considered the major centres for parties. –Most women students at U. tend to stay away from fraternity parties, disliking or being frightened by the ‘fraternity culture’, although some who are vulnerable or insecure attend for the ‘fun.’. –Many of the women attending fraternity parties are from outside: nearby colleges or city girls who are considered ‘slutty’, ‘low-class’, or ‘cheap’, ‘hot’ and/or ‘fair game.’ –Some sorority women at U. collude in this designation and description of the outside women who attend fraternity parties. –The university administration also ‘colludes’ in gang rape indirectly: they see the ‘frats’ as places where male bonding occurs and where the excesses of male behaviour should be tolerated. –Sanday: interprets the aggressive sexual behaviour of privileged young men at fraternities as a way that they bond with each other THROUGH degrading ‘other’ lower-class women. The frat house rituals reinforce a sense of collective privilege, power and freedom from recrimination. –The fact that some women are unconscious during the ‘train’ shows that the women is seen only as a vehicle or a body for male bonding.

Frat House Rituals Victor Turner: All ritual processes exhibit three phases: separation, the ‘liminal’ phase, and incorporation. Separation is shown by the discrete dwelling places that fraternity houses occupy. The ‘brothers’ are separated from their previous family environments and placed into a new setting with its own codes of behaviour. Liminality is indicated by the fact that certain freedoms and a sense of unity and brotherhood exists among frat mates. –Circle dances: towards the end of a party, the entire frat house forms a circle that moves in greater and greater speeds, while some enter the circle and perform actions suggestive of homosexual intercourse. The circle continues moving ever-faster until the entire group collapses in upon each other. –Heaps: These occur when a particular member is caught doing something that breaks house codes and the ‘honour’ of the house. Someone in the group shouts ‘heap’ and everyone piles on top of the offender, forming a mound of bodies. –Riffing: Attempting to persuade, cajole, or convince a woman to have sex. This is accompanied by ‘scoping’, i.e. selecting out a woman at a party who is particularly vulnerable, drunk, or seems to be sending out signals of availability. –Pulling Train: Here the solidarity of the group vis-à-vis itself is expressed through collective sex, often with a half-conscious woman. These strong rituals of solidarity between brothers indicate that their primary identification and sense of responsibility is oriented towards the fraternity culture, even at the expense of external campus or societal norms.

Incorporation into the new group occurs through –Circle dances: towards the end of a party, the entire frat house forms a circle that moves in greater and greater speeds, while some enter the circle and perform actions suggestive of homosexual intercourse. The circle continues moving ever-faster until the entire group collapses in upon each other. –Heaps: These occur when a particular member is caught doing something that breaks house codes and the ‘honour’ of the house. Someone in the group shouts ‘heap’ and everyone piles on top of the offender, forming a mound of bodies. –Riffing: Attempting to persuade, cajole, or convince a woman to have sex. This is accompanied by ‘scoping’, i.e. selecting out a woman at a party who is particularly vulnerable, drunk, or seems to be sending out signals of availability. –Pulling Train: Here the solidarity of the group vis-à-vis itself is expressed through collective sex, often with a half-conscious woman. These strong rituals of incorporation between brothers indicate that their primary identification and sense of responsibility is oriented towards the fraternity culture, even at the expense of external campus or societal norms. Creates a climate of ‘power, privilege, and freedom’ which can go ‘beyond the law’ and is set apart from and above ‘the rules’. Can also produce a climate in which excesses are minimized, while victims are blamed. Creation of an ‘elite’ culture that is embedded in notions of the inferiority of ‘other’s, in this case lower-class or psychologically disturbed young women.