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 CrossCulturally
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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.
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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
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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.
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Recently became co-educational.
The major Walkway is dominated by fraternity houses.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.