Summary Of Fraternities And Collegiate Rape Culture

For my generation when many of female friends go off to college their parents teach them not to walk home alone late at night in fear of rape, it is such a common occurrence that a friend of mine has taken to carrying around pepper spray. There is a company called women on guard that provide personal safety equipment for its customers. The problem with this is that young women are taught to be on guard for a shadowy figure attacking them at night and not that “60 to 80 percent of rapes are date or acquaintance rape.” (Koss, Dinero, Siebel, and Cox 1988: 217) The essay “Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women?” by A. Ayres Boswell and Joan Z. Spade differs by acknowledging who the

Two were fraternity parties held by either a high-risk fraternity or a low-risk one, the other two locations were bars one frequented by upper classmen and another more catered to freshmen students. The low risk fraternity parties were considered safer by the female population and had an equal number of men and women. The men and women at the low-risk parties interacted more. They knew each other well. There was an atmosphere of respect for women so much so the women bathrooms were clean and well supplied. The high-risk parties however had skewed gender ratios, gender segregation, and an apparent disrespect for women with bathrooms being clogged with vomit in the sink. The bar atmosphere was very different from both types of parties as the music was not as loud and they both had places to sit. However the student at bars behaved the same as those at low-risk parties except when the second bar got overcrowded and they began to behave as if they were at a high-risk party. (Boswell, and Spade 1996: 217-219) Boswell’s and Spade’s experiment can be used to decrease the rates of rape and sexual assault on our campuses because they have identified the cause of acquaintance rape on so many college

The first being that “relations between men and women are shaped by the contexts in which they meet and interact.” (Boswell and Spade 1996: 221) This causes rape because the men and women meet at fraternity parties where sex is expected, when a women says no the men find it hard to believe and assume she’s playing hard to get so he does not think badly of her. Another is the attitude towards rape on college campuses, while many women understand and accept the legal definition of rape many of the men interviewed struggled with it one even went as far as to say “If that is the legal definition of rape, then it happens all the time on this campus.” This is a problem because many of the men do not realizing they are raping a girl when it occurs. One last main cause of many of the rapes on campus is the setting. The way each student behaved changed with were they were located and places such as high-risk parties held an attitude that condoned and even encouraged rape. Boswell and Spade identifying the cause of rape helps reduce the rates by making it so faculties can recognize the issues and propose effective