The University of Oregon dominated Florida State in the 2015
Rose Bowl. The Ducks’ converted four consecutive turnovers into 27 unanswered
points, leading to a 59–20 rout. Afterward, several
Oregon players were filmed singing “No means no!” to the tune of the FSU “War
Chant.” An act that was presumably directed at star quarterback and Heisman
Trophy winner Jameis Winston, who’d recently been accused of raping a female
student. Antirape activists heralded the mocking jibe as a victory: Finally,
here was a group of normatively masculine men shaming other normatively
masculine men for sexually assaulting women.
But two University of Oregon sociology professors, C.J.
Pascoe and Jocelyn
Hollander, saw it differently. What if the point of the chant wasn’t to
make a statement about sexual assault, but rather to position their opponent as
a failed man, thereby humiliating him both on and off the
field? This question introduces a paper they published in October 2015 entitled “Good Guys Don’t
Rape,” which documents how young men distance themselves from identities as
rapists while simultaneously exhibiting dominance over women and other men with
behavior that “mobilizes rape.”
It’s yet another form of “toxic masculinity,” they argue,
which refers to attitudes that describe the masculine gender role as violent,
unemotional and sexually aggressive. Some refer to this as “classic masculinity” — a rite of passage of sorts.
Others, like The Donald, chalk it up to “locker room talk.”
Whatever you call it, Pascoe notes that many men who exemplify toxic masculinity
actively seek to avoid the label. She points to Brock
Turner, the Stanford student convicted of raping an unconscious woman in
January 2015 as a perfect example.
Despite two eyewitnesses watching him sexually assault his
victim, Turner insisted “in no way was I trying to rape anyone.“ Judge Aaron Persky,
a Stanford alum, sentenced the 20-year-old to a mere six months in a county
jail. The decision was influenced by a probation report that included a letter from one of Turner’s friends, Leslie
Rasmussen, who claimed Turner wasn’t a “real rapist,” since what happened was
“completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is
walking to her car.” For Pascoe and Hollander, this is classic “good guy”
syndrome. Only bad guys rape women while they’re walking to
their car. Good guys, they suggest, aren’t sexist, aren’t racist,
aren’t homophobic and definitely don’t condone sexual assault.
Pascoe and Hollander recently elaborated on this notion for
us.
Brock Turner’s dad described his son’s crime as “20
minutes of action” and insisted that Turner had “never been violent to anyone
including the night of the Jan 17th 2015.” He’s essentially saying Brock’s a
good guy, right?
JH: That’s exactly what he’s saying.
What about Jay, one of the high school respondents in
your study?
CJP: Jay angrily shared a story about how he had
been found guilty of sexual assault. He emphatically insisted that he was
innocent and that he was sentenced to wear an ankle bracelet under “house
arrest” because the victim lied during the trial. While livid about being
accused of rape, he later seemingly endorsed rape in conversations with his
friends as they talked about a girl they agreed was “hella ugly” and “a bitch”
but who “has titties.”
At the end of this conversation, Jay threatened to “take her
out to the street races and leave her there. Leave her there so she can get
raped.” His friends responded with laughter. While Jay was angry at being found
guilty of a rape he claimed he didn’t commit, he endorsed setting up a
situation where other men could inflict sexual violence on a young woman he
found distasteful. He really exemplifies both sides of the issue: He’s a “good
guy” so he would never rape, but women are also awful people, liars and
manipulators who need to be put in their place via sexual violence.
Explain what you mean by “good guy” in both Turner’s and
Jay’s case.
CJP: If you’re a good guy, you can’t possibly be
a rapist. We see something similar happen with racism, sexism and homophobia.
The “good guy” defense gets deployed in those instances to excuse all sorts of
problematic behavior and attitudes. One can’t be a racist if one’s a “good
guy.” This allows us to think of these qualities as individual traits rather
than culturally systemic beliefs and practices in which we all participate.
For example, in our paper, we looked at how men are opposing
sexual violence against women. What we found is that some of the ways in which
men are speaking out against sexual assault are actually congruent with
cultural expectations that men be dominant over others.
Why can’t men shake their need for dominance?
CJP: Dominance is the central component of
Western masculinity. To be considered masculine, men have to engage in constant
displays of dominance (over women, over other men and often over socioeconomic
and racial boundaries as well). Sometimes these displays are totally serious
(such as in physical assaults); other times they’re humorous (such as in the “know how I
know you’re gay?” scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin). Either way, this
dominance can never be fully secured, which means these actions and
interactions have to be constantly performed and monitored.
JH: Even some anti-violence campaigns reaffirm
masculine dominance. I’m thinking, for example, of the “My Strength is Not
for Hurting” campaign. Campaigns like these oppose sexual assault (and
other kinds of violence against women), but they do so while reaffirming
conventional ideas about gender — particularly, the idea that men are strong
and powerful and the idea that women are vulnerable and need to be protected.
CJP: The same goes for the “Real
Men Don’t Rape” campaign. By saying “real men” don’t rape, that campaign
automatically positions rapists as failed men or as unmasculine men, rendering
the non-rapists more dominant. If rape itself is an act of dominance as opposed
to sexual desire, these men are achieving the same level of dominance through
different means, i.e., being sexually dominant over a woman or socially
dominant over another man.
Is it possible to have a gender-equal anti-rape campaign?
JH: My research recently has been on women’s
self-defense training, which reduces violence against women without reaffirming
gender inequality. It does so by demonstrating that the stereotypes about
gender aren’t true: Women are strong and can protect themselves without relying
on others to do it for them, and men aren’t invincible or inevitably dangerous.
There also have been some interesting anti-harassment
campaigns in the last few years. The organization Hollaback!,
for example, encourages its constituents to document and share their
experiences of harassment, urging them to
“be someone who knows they have the right to define themselves instead of being
defined by some creep’s point of view.” Similarly, Canada’s Project Respectfocuses
on mutual respect, not chivalry and efforts that explicitly put gender and
power center stage.
CJP: Campaigns in favor of sexual consent like consentissexy.net are
better, too. Additionally, I’d say comprehensive sex ed that covers issues of
desire and consent (rather than the usual fear-based curriculum) is a step in
the right direction as well.
Where does the “No means no” chant after the Oregon-FSU
game fall on the spectrum? Is it more like “Real Men Don’t Rape” or the
self-defense training you’re talking about?
CJP: The effect was to seemingly take a feminist
stance, but to do so by humiliating another player and render him less
masculine. A real man — like, presumably, the chanters
themselves — would be able to control his sexual and violent urges. They were
doing dominance work through opposing sexual assault. This, like some of the
other examples we talked about, is using rape to reinforce contemporary
definitions of masculinity as dominance. What we’d really like to see is for
people to be highly critical about their activism and to be sure they’re not
supporting the same kind of inequality they’re trying to dismantle.
Cross-posted with permission from Gender & Society. The
post can be accessed at the following address: https://gendersociety.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/if-youre-a-good-guy-you-cant-possibly-be-a-rapist/
Posted by
C. Brian Smith
Contributing writer to MEL.
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