David Gonzalez

 Riane Eisler’s theory (Cultural Transformation Theory) says that male dominated societies use the “Dominator Model” while more gender equal societies use the “Partnership Model”  Hitler’s Germany, contemporary Iran and Japan’s Samurai are examples of the “Dominator Model”  Angola and Namibia are some examples of the “Partnership Model”  Subordinated men, gay men, men of color, women of color and women in the lower class are all more prone for being victims of violence.

 Every 90 seconds, a person above the age of 12 is sexually assaulted.  90% of victims are women and girls.  99% of the perpetrators or men and boys.  Of the 90% of women assaulted, 97% of those women were assaulted by men and boys.  84% of men victimized by nonfatal intimate partner violence were assaulted by women.  12% of men were victimized by another man.  There are more than 5 million cases of domestic violence each year. Most are perpetrated my males.

 Domestic violence and rape tend to be intraracial.  In the United States 1.5 million women are raped or physically assaulted. Nearly 25% or women are either raped or physically assaulted at one time in their life.  Only 7.5% of men said they were raped or physically assaulted by their wife/girlfriend.  11% of lesbian couples report partner violence.  The extence of lesbian an gay batterring supports tha t violence is related to power over others, and is simply not man’s power over women.  Most of the rape and battering goes unreported.

 Fear of crime, strangers and of dangerous streets/neighborhoods destroys trust and due to this, many people feel like that divests citizens of their ability to voice concerns.  Violence usually happens between people who know each other.  Harassers during the day. Why?  Some men believe women enjoy it.  20% of men only do it with friends. Why?  Street harassment tells women that the streets belong to men.

Most men don’t realize that women truly do not like that kind of attention.

 Sexual Harassment is the easiest way to put women in their place.  Women promote Hollaback.  Most of the time street harassment doesn’t end in violence but in lower class neighborhoods it can.  Because of street harassment and violence, parents keep their kids indoors.  Most gang members and police are male so they show their masculinity often.

 Men are expected to be able to protect themselves.  Don’t feel threatened.  Men actually are victimized more often than women. Men learn to accept and give out violence.  School and sports promotes this by having boys play sports and have girls join cheerleading  Competitive talk between males. Supports men as dominate and women as subordinate.

 Most by husbands and boyfriends (28%).  Relatives (7%)  Friends (38%)  Men are most likely to be assaulted by a stranger.  Women are the most prone to be victims of rape. The most vulnerable are young women and women of color and working class women.  More than half of rapes go unreported. One in fifty women report they have been raped.

 Men are about 10% of all rape victims.  Consequences of Rape similar to females.  Many cases are in prison but most happen remote outdoor areas. Teenage boys.  Gang rape is more common when a male is the victim.  Adolescent girls and women are in danger of date rape. Alcohol and fraternities.

 Decline in the past several decades. 85%  Many explanations. Unreported, clearer statistics, bad statistics and real decline.  Many opportunities for rape victims. Includes rape crisis hotline, courts show more sympathy to victims and news organizations respect privacy of victims.  Homicides of men by women which may support that that the advances in help for rape and battery victims lead women to not have to take extreme measures to not get hurt any more.

 Darwinian Evolution  Sexual selection propels men to rape.  According to theory men rape to procreate.  Men want to procreate while women resist sex (To the disadvantage of the species).  Women should not wear provocative clothing or flirt with men.  Assumes rape is universal however that is not true.

 Individual Psychology  Focuses on the minds of the people who rape.  Many were raped as children.  Emotional need to dominate and feel power over their victims. Can’t relate to women or hatred towards women.  Two problems Individual Psychology  We lose the structural dimensions of violence.  Can’t explain why men usually are the most prone to violence.  All information is gathered from convicted rapist. They tend to be lower class. Upper class rapist aren’t in jail.

 Kimmel suggests that gender is the outcome of inequality, not its cause.  The power differences produces gender domination.  Gender isn’t natural. It is invented because of the power difference between men and women.  Kimmel also brings up “Intersectionality”  Some people believe in the “female fear” which means that all women are scared to be raped naturally. The argument can be countered because not all cultures are male dominated.

 Like rape, domestic violence was invisible until feminists named it. Most of the time it was just considered an unfortunate event.  Feminists battled it until domestic violence gathered more sympathy from the government and the public eye.  People than began to marry later and divorce became more popular. More women went to work and were not as dependent on their husbands.  Most of time, problems were that the wife was not doing her job at home.

 Laws are now in place that are supposed to help battered women but some courts and police stations still view the matter of domestic violence as private.  Women who fought back could only do so when their husband was asleep meaning it was not self defense.  Criminal justice system was saying that the women we at fault for their victimization.

 Some studies said that violence was shared.  Learned helplessness (passive and helpless)  Feminists challenged early studies by saying people were not taking the context of violence into consideration. (self-defense)  Feminists pressured the courts to do more about domestic violence.  Police still did not arrest people however.  In other countries women were even killed with no punishment for the murderers

 Police and courts were better informed after two decades of feminist work.  1994, Violence Against Women Act  Used to better investigate domestic violence and provide restitution to victims.  It failed to help women in other cases especially when it came to women of a different race, religion and immigrant status.

 Reliance on police for help can be disempowering.  Tax money spent on police could be spent on actual service that can help battered women such as shelter or welfare.  The knowledge of of the criminal system took precedence of the knowledge of the women who actually lived with the violence.  That is why some people don not like the criminal justice approach. These people want money for housing for these women, bi-lingual services, shelters for lesbians or homeless women etc.  INCITE!, Women of Color Against Violence and Critical Resistance all work to eliminate prison aspect

 More than 2 million people were in prison in the U.S. in 2005  20-33% of male inmates have been raped  Looks, age, and size. Some what feminine.  These prisoners are forced to other stigmatized feminine roles for the “owner” like cleaning up after them.

 Women, children and elderly are often victims.  Some countries will abduct children and use them as sex slaves or child soldiers.  Other countries commit mass rapes such as the country of Ugandan.  To date there ha been little done to help the surviving victims of these rapes and abductions.

 Mass rapes and killing of females usually happen in conflict zones of poor countries.  These are called Femicide.  Rape and sexual violence was used to intimidate and silence opponents.  In Guatemala, American troops took part in rape of the indigenous people.  After the initial conflict ended, similar murders continued.  Once soldiers come home after had been involved in rape, they feel entitled to exhibit violence at home.

 United Nations created “The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),” the “International Criminal Court” and the Resolution 1325 of the UN Security Council.  the CEDAW says that government must not discriminate against women and take actions against barriers from women.  2001, military was help accountable for rape for the first time. Bosnian Serbs.

 There are programs out such as the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. They wrote a paper that suggests that we educate men and boys (Especially those who have been brought up to think that women are property) on how to treat men and women equal.  All of this will eventually lead to a formula for promoting the partnership model of society.