612707 research-article2015 GASXXX10.1177/0891243215612707GENDER & SOCIETYGOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE: Gender, Domination, and Mobilizing Rape C. J. PASCOE JOCELYN A. HOLLANDER University of Oregon, USA W hen the University of Oregon Ducks football team defeated the Florida State University (FSU) Seminoles at the Rose Bowl in early 2015, the content of their post-game revelry may have surprised some viewers. In celebrating their victory, several Oregon players were filmed singing “No Means No!” to the tune of the “War Chant”1 regularly sung by FSU fans. The song was presumably directed at a particular FSU player, quarterback Jameis Winston, who had been accused of (though not charged with or convicted of) raping a female student. Some commentaries on this incident lauded it as a moment in which young men were collectively and publicly reprimanding another man accused of sexual violence by using a long-time feminist slogan: “no means no.”2 Certainly, on first read this appears to be exactly the sort of phenomenon antirape activists have been waiting for: normatively masculine men shaming other men for sexually assaulting women. It seemed to call into question assumptions about the central role of sexual assault in enforcing gender inequality. We propose an alternate interpretation of this moment, however. What if the chanting football players were using the accusations against Winston AUTHORS’ NOTE: The authors would like to thank Kemi Balogun, Tristan Bridges, Sarah Diefendorf, Aaron Gullickson, Patricia Gwartney, Jill Harrison, Matt Norton, Jianbinn Shao, and Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, the editorial team at Gender & Society, for their comments on earlier iterations of this article, as well as Andrea Herrera for her research assistance. Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to C.J. Pascoe, University of Oregon, 736 Prince Lucien Campbell, Eugene, OR 97403-1291; e-mail: cpascoe@uoregon.edu. GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 30 No. 1, February 2016 67–79 DOI: 10.1177/0891243215612707 © 2015 by The Author(s) 68 GENDER & SOCIETY/ February 2016 not (or not only) to decry the practice of rape but to publicly shame their opponent in a way that specifically preserved or even enhanced their own gendered status as masculine? That is, perhaps they used the chant as an opportunity to celebrate their own dominance in two ways—over the losing team and over Winston himself. What if the point of the chant was not to make a statement about sexual assault but to position their opponent as a failed man—a man who needed to use force to secure sexual access to a woman’s body? A real man, the chant implies, would be so sexually desirable as to render force unnecessary. A real man—like, presumably, the chanters themselves—would also be able to control his own sexual and violent urges such that they would not overwhelm him or others (Pascoe and Bridges 2015). Reading the post-game revelry from this perspective brings masculinity to the fore in the task of theorizing rape and other forms of sexual violence. Of course, men and masculinity have long been central to feminist theorizing about gender and sexual violence. We suggest, however, that the ways scholarship and activism have tended to address men—as those who perpetrate sexual violence against women and as those who must be taught to not rape—may elide some of the complicated ways in which sexual violence and masculinity are intertwined. What is needed, and what we begin in this article, is a further interrogation into the changing relationship between masculinity and sexual violence in an era in which men both engage in and speak out against sexual violence. We argue that both of these practices—participating in and publicly opposing sexual assault—may serve as resources that enable young men to solve the “identity dilemmas” (Wilkins 2009) posed by changing and conflicting expectations of gendered selves by drawing on cultural resources that affirm expectations of normative masculinity. Even though it may appear that some deployments of such resources support while other enactments challenge gender inequalities, Wilkins argues that both may actually achieve similar ends; that is, both may support meaning-making systems that invest in gendered inequalities (Wilkins 2009). We suggest that contemporary relationships between masculinity and rape may be a concrete example of “hybrid masculinities,” using new kinds of masculinity resources to “fortify existing social and symbolic boundaries in ways that often work to conceal systems of power and inequality in historically new ways” (Bridges and Pascoe 2014, 246). Thus, young men can simultaneously position themselves as “good guys” who don’t rape while symbolically engaging with sexual assault to signal the dominance that is constitutive of Western masculinity at this historical moment. Pascoe and Hollander / GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE 69 We call this approach “mobilizing rape.” Rape, in this sense, may be symbolically utilized in a variety of ways to reinforce the contemporary ordering of gender relations, a specific form of what Patricia Yancey Martin calls “mobilizing masculinity” (Martin 2001). While sexual assault has been defined as a situation in which “one or more persons impose a sexual interaction upon another unwilling person” (Cahill 2001, 15), through the concept of “mobilizing rape” we suggest that sexual assault is not simply an individual incident but a wide-ranging constellation of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and talk that work to produce and reproduce gendered dominance in everyday interaction. We conceive of mobilizing rape as a way of doing gender (Fenstermaker and West 2002; West and Zimmerman 1987): as an interactional accomplishment that includes not only engaging in activities legally defined as rape but also engaging in other forms of sexual assault and nonconsensual sexual interaction, talking about rape and sexual assault, making jokes about it, laughing at imagery about it, labeling oneself or others as rapists, blaming sexual assault survivors for their own victimization, or otherwise symbolically deploying the idea of rape. From a “mobilizing rape” perspective, practices, discourses, and symbols associated with sexual violence and assault may be deployed in the service of masculine dominance3 at interactional, discursive, structural, symbolic, and global levels. As other scholars have pointed out, dominance is a hallmark of contemporary Western masculinity (Connell 1995; Jaggar 1983; Mackinnon 1989; Pascoe 2007; Peirce 1995). Indeed, sexual assault has long been theorized as a form of masculinized dominance over women’s bodies (Cahill 2001; Dworkin 1991; Jeffreys 1998; Mackinnon 1989). However, as Raewyn Connell argues, gender inequality is sustained by men’s dominance over other men, as well as men’s dominance over women (Connell 1995). As such, we suggest that these hierarchical relations between men are in part constituted by processes of “mobilizing rape.” These hierarchical relations can be established or supported by the rape of (other men’s) women, by the rape, real or symbolic, of other men themselves—and, we suggest, by claims of not raping. In other words, mobilizing sexual assault as a masculinity resource allows men to do the dominance work not only over women, but also over other men, that comprises masculinity at this historical moment, even as rape itself becomes increasingly framed as socially undesirable. RAPE CULTURE Feminist scholars have pointed out that heterosexual relationships take place in the context of a “rape culture” (Buchwald, Fletcher, and Roth 70 GENDER & SOCIETY/ February 2016 1993) in which rape is normalized and sexual dominance is rendered “sexy” (Jeffreys 1998, 75). As Pascoe (2007) argues in her research on young men in high school, heterosexual violence (symbolic or actual) plays a central role in crafting a masculine identity. From sexualized “horseplay” in school hallways (such as a situation in which a boy jabbed a girl in the crotch with a drumstick while yelling “GET RAPED! GET RAPED!”), to flirtatious cross sex touching (as when one boy wraps his arms around a girl’s neck while another punches her lightly in the stomach as she laughs and squeals), to descriptions of sex that sound more violent than sexy (“I did her so hard I ripped her walls”), this research echoes the feminist claim that rape is “the defining paradigm of sexuality” (Dworkin 1991, 62). Sexual violence, rape, and threats of rape are deeply integrated into the fabric of young people’s lives such that it is a normative rather than an unusual part of their emotional and physical relationships (Hlavka 2014; Pascoe 2007; Phillips 2000). These forms of symbolic sexual violence are central to constitutions of normatively masculine and feminine identities. Precisely because “normal” heterosexual relationships take place in a “rape culture,” the last 30 years have seen very public struggles over where, exactly, the border between rape and non-rape lies, ranging from controversies over Mary Koss’s (1988) strategy of measuring rape behaviorally in the late 1980s, to the gradual criminalization of marital rape, to more recent debates over “incapacitated rape” (i.e., sex when one party is drunk, drugged, or otherwise unable to consent). Many of these struggles have eventually led to the acceptance of a broader understanding of rape. Nonetheless, there remains a wide zone of experience—between clear examples of bodily violation, on the one hand, and “enthusiastic consent” on the other—where the relationship of an experience to rape remains contested. For example, what if consent is achieved not through violence but coercion—for example, through explicit or implicit threats to the relationship or to one’s job or children? What if consent is achieved through simple but relentless persistence? What if there is no active consent, but also no resistance? Because of this definitional blurriness, a range of behaviors that fall between the categories of rape and not-rape are available to enact male dominance while still allowing men to preserve their identity as non-rapists, and perhaps even allowing them to shame other men for being rapists. This definitional murkiness allows for the mobilization of rape as a symbol with no clear referent, such that men can engage in sexual assault and simultaneously distance themselves from it discursively in ways that not only reinforce dominance over women but, impor- Pascoe and Hollander / GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE 71 tantly, also over other men. Even active disavowals of rape may reaffirm normative understandings of masculinity as dominance over other men, thus rendering some moments of seeming resistance congruent with rape culture, rather than in opposition to it. MOBILIZING RAPE The depathologizing of rape that followed from conceptualizing rape as a culture, not (only) as a behavior, presents identity dilemmas for men. In a rape culture, sexual assault is not caused by a few deviant or depraved bad guys; “normal” men can be rapists, and rape is part of the very culture in which we live and forge romantic relationships. In a rape culture where rape is increasingly stigmatized and where any man is a potential rapist, how can a man distance himself from rape while still doing the dominance work demanded by cultural expectations of normative masculinity? Men are accountable to both these notions (Hollander 2013) and must find a way of navigating between them. Jay, one of Pascoe’s high school–aged respondents,4 illustrates this dilemma. He angrily shared a story about how he had (according to him, wrongly) been charged and found guilty of sexual assault. One of his classmates accused him of rape, saying he “put a gun to her head and shit.” Jay emphatically insisted that he was innocent, and that he was sentenced to wear an ankle bracelet under “house arrest” because she 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 did not commit, he endorsed setting up a situation such that other men could inflict sexual violence on a young woman he found distasteful. In other words, Jay and his friends see sexual dominance over women as unproblematic, even if violating legal codes of rape is. To be considered sufficiently masculine, one must demonstrate dominance over women and other men, but available avenues of sexual dominance are being redefined and curtailed. Mobilizing rape helps resolve this type of “masculinity dilemma” (Wilkins 2009). Consider the example with which we opened this paper: the post-game celebration during which 72 GENDER & SOCIETY/ February 2016 victorious football players chanted “No means no!” at an opposing player accused of rape. In a context of growing opposition to sexual violence, rape can be used symbolically as a tool to emasculate other men. Rape, in this sense, is something that other, “bad,” perhaps “less masculine” men do. Men can simultaneously draw upon discourses of rape to establish their masculinity and distance themselves from the actual practice of rape. Yet, who these “bad” men are is not neutral. As we discuss at greater length below, it is men of color who disproportionately bear the burden of being labeled as rapists. This form of distancing is visible throughout the culture. A conversation with one of Pascoe’s respondents is particularly illuminating in this regard. Chad, an extremely popular football player, described his sexual history as the following: When I was growin’ up I started having sex in the 8th grade. . . . The majority of the girls in 8th and 9th grade were just stupid. We already knew what we were doing. They didn’t know what they were doing you know? . . . Like say, comin’ over to our house like past 12. What else do you do past 12? Say we had a bottle of alcohol or something. I’m not saying we forced it upon them. I’m sayin’. . . . (Pascoe 2007) While the incident Chad describes—plying underage women with alcohol in order to have sex with them—is one that many would agree would constitute rape, he self-consciously distances himself from rape (“I’m not saying we forced it upon them”). Indeed, he went on to share that his friends, “Kevin Goldsmith and uh, Calvin Johnson, they got charged with rape,” while claiming that, in contrast, he never had to force a girl to have sex: “I’ll never (be in) that predicament, you know. I’ve never had hard time, or had to you know, alter their thinking.” The sort of sexual assault Kevin Goldsmith and Calvin Johnson participated in is something that other, less masculine guys do. By distancing himself from this practice, Chad confirms his own claim to masculine dominance—a claim that is stronger because he obtained sex without physical force. Chad emphasizes his own sexual virility to distance himself from sexual assault while confirming his masculinity: he is desirable enough that he has no need to use force to obtain access to girls’ bodies. This is not the only way to mobilize rape in the service of masculine dominance, however. Some of Chad’s religious peers used similar language in the service of refraining from, rather than engaging in, sex. As Sean said, “There will be some guys that they’ll go up to a girl, you know? ‘Hey, girl, come here.’ And they will keep on bugging them. They’ll try to grab and touch Pascoe and Hollander / GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE 73 them and stuff like this. They’re just letting all their, they’re acting on emotions pretty much.” Sean casts himself as more mature than other boys because of his sexual restraint, drawing on masculine discourses of self-control (Wilkins 2009) and maturity (Mora 2012).When asked if he felt less masculine because he planned not to have sex until he was married, another religious young man at River High said, “No. If anything, more. Because you can resist. You don’t have to give in to it.” Both these young men position themselves as more masculine, more in control than other young men because of their ability to control their bodily impulses. Their comments echo what both Amy Wilkins (2009) and Sarah Diefendorf (2015) have found in their research on young Christian men who abstain from sex: that this restraint was itself cast as a form of dominance over other men. Their self-control, in other words, trumps the lack of control exhibited by other, libido-driven young men. Some organized anti-violence work can also be read through the lens of “mobilizing rape.” The My Strength Is Not for Hurting campaign, for example, encourages men to use their (presumed) strength for good (Masters 2010; Murphy 2009)—not challenging the underlying assumption that men are strong and women are vulnerable (Hollander 2001). Men’s not raping is thus a chivalrous choice, a courtesy extended to a subordinate rather than the respect due to an equal. At the Ohio State University, the Rape Education and Prevention program posted signs near urinals that told men, “In your hands you hold the power to stop rape” (Gold and Villari 2000). In other words, the thing that presumably makes one a man, one’s penis, also gives men the ability to end sexual violence against women. Additionally, participants in men’s Walk a Mile in Her Shoes anti-violence marches, as Tristan Bridges’ research demonstrates, mock femininity even while advocating an end to gendered violence (Bridges 2010). While opposing violence, these campaigns are founded on assumptions of men’s greater strength and power and thus underscore the subordinate status of women. They “mobilize rape” by opposing rape in ways that work to reinforce, rather than challenge, underlying gender inequalities. In these ways, then, not sexually assaulting may also do dominance work. Men can assert dominance both over women and over other men, who are constructed as ruled by emotions, unable to exercise masculine self-control, or not masculine enough to have young women simply fall over themselves with sexual desire. Even formal movement campaigns against sexual violence may perpetuate male dominance by constructing men as physically dominant even while encouraging men not to exercise 74 GENDER & SOCIETY/ February 2016 that dominance. Mobilizing rape, in this way, allows young men to exercise masculinized dominance over other men, even while adhering to other cultural changes, such as the increasing stigmatization of rape. GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE Massive cultural changes have had to take place for members of a winning football team to publicly shame an accused rapist. While sexual assault remains widespread, being identified as a rapist has come to be seen, at least in some contexts, as unmasculine. However, this change coexists with the fact that dominance, especially sexual dominance, continues to be a central component of Western masculinity. As such, the changes surrounding rape need to be understood in the context of gender inequality that is perhaps more flexible, durable, and tenacious than is popularly assumed. Feminist theorists depathologized rape through the notion of rape culture, reconceptualizing it as something any man, not just pathological monsters, could commit. When men distance themselves from rape, they repathologize rape as something a bad man does, not something that informs all gendered relationships between men and women. This move depends on an understanding of rape as a narrowly defined category of behavior and experience. Rape, in this view, is a violent act of sexual intercourse committed by force and clearly resisted by the woman. The stereotype of the frightening stranger jumping out of a dark alley or from behind a car in a parking garage is perhaps the paradigmatic example of this kind of sexual assault (Estrich 1987); current assertions about a small group of serial rapists being responsible for sexual assaults on college campuses are a more subtle variant (Swartout et al. 2015). In other words, narrow definitions of rape allow for the mobilization of rape (and the label of rapist) such that it is seamlessly integrated into contemporary definitions of masculinity. With this constrained understanding of rape as background, everyday behaviors of sexual coercion and dominance (over men or women) can be framed as “not rape.” With this analysis, we advocate placing masculinity at the center of theorizing rape in a cultural context in which the meaning of rape and sexual assault are contested and shifting. Rape can be mobilized to various ends, all of which support the contemporary ordering of gender and race inequality. The acts of engaging in and resisting engaging in sexual assault, while seemingly distant from each other, can both work in the service of masculinized dominance. Mobilizing rape through not engaging in sexual assault, Pascoe and Hollander / GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE 75 either by defining oneself as not a rapist or by actively opposing rape and rapists, can also be a form of masculinized dominance. Using the concept of “mobilizing rape” to think seriously about hierarchical relations between men moves theorizing about rape in two directions. First, it raises questions about who symbolizes the rapist in contemporary discussions about rape. When some men absolve themselves of the identity of rapist, who becomes the imagined rapist? Racism and sexual violence are deeply intertwined, as demonstrated by white men’s sexual dominance over black women, as well as the representation of black men as the embodiment of sexual violence (Collins 2005; Davis 1983; McGuire 2011; Nagel 2000). As other scholars have argued, the specter of rape is largely transferred to poor men and men of color, symbolically purifying white, middle-class, or educated men of this sort of undesirable behavior (Collins 2005; Davis 1983; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner 1994; McGuire 2011; Messner 1993). Second, the concept of mobilizing rape calls attention to actual or symbolic sexual domination of other men, phenomena often obscured by the heterosexual focus of research on sexual assault (Abdullah-Khan 2008; Lees 1997). Consider, for example, the wartime cartoons collected by folklorist Alan Dundes (1991) that depict multiple variations of Saddam Hussein being anally penetrated by a SCUD missile, which symbolically represented American military might at the time. These cartoons positioned a (male) America as militarily and culturally dominant through symbolizing male-male rape. Analyzing male-male rape indicates that “like the rape of women, sexual violence against men is thought to be an expression of power and control where sexuality is used as a weapon to dominate, humiliate, and degrade” (Lundrigan and Mueller-Johnson 2013, 768). Being penetrated feminizes men, rendering them as less than masculine, perhaps as symbolic women, and rendering the perpetrator as dominant, that is, masculine. The concept of mobilizing rape thus explores nuances of rape culture in which young men who might engage in sexualized dominance “play,” such as punching a girl in the stomach “for fun,” might also put down other young men who see fit to sexually assault young women. That is, the same young men can both engage in rape culture and attempt to distance themselves from it, all the while using rape as a “masculinity resource” in a way that undergirds gendered inequality by setting up hierarchical relations between men and women and men and men. As such, changing rape culture involves more than teaching men not to rape or rendering sexual dominance unsexy or unmasculine; it involves rethink- 76 GENDER & SOCIETY/ February 2016 ing gendered dominance intersectionally such that attempts to combat sexual assault do not reinscribe gendered, raced, sexualized, and classed inequalities in more subtle ways. At first glance this may seem like a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, where men reinforce gender inequality both by engaging in sexual assault and by not engaging in those same behaviors. We believe, however, that there are ways to oppose sexual assault that do not reinscribe gender inequality or dominate other men. A burgeoning body of literature on “allies” suggests ways that individuals may work for social justice while not investing in the current ordering of inequalities (see, for instance, Grzanka, Adler, and Blazer 2015; and Mathers, Sumerau, and Ueno 2015). Other violence prevention strategies, such as campaigns founded on mutual respect (e.g., Project Respect, http://vsac.ca/prevention/) or efforts to empower women through self-defense training (Hollander 2004), also resist sexual assault without relying on assumptions of men’s physical superiority. When confronting issues of sexual assault, these approaches suggest that rather than simply making small adjustments in contemporary definitions of masculinity regarding who is dominated (for instance, women who can’t help but be sexually drawn to a young man because of his virility or other young men who can’t control their own bodily desires), we must think about what gendered messages are being deployed when condemning it. When we attend to the way in which we provide avenues to oppose rape, we must combat normative masculinity as a mode of domination, rather than relying on tactics that render opposing gendered sexual violence part of that very system of domination. NOTES 1. Both the chant and the “tomahawk chop” arm movements that accompany it are deeply racist imaginings of Seminole practices and culture. 2. See, for instance, http://www.bustle.com/articles/56478-oregon-footballplayers-chant-no-means-no-to-mock-jameis-winstons-rape-exoneration. 3. While at this point in history Western masculinity is characterized by dominance, masculinity is not limited to the male body (see Halberstam 1998; Kazyak 2012; Pascoe 2007). Women do dominance work as well, but at this historical moment the relationship between femininity and dominance is complicated and less tightly bound than masculinity and dominance. Dominance work doesn’t characterize normative femininity in the way it characterizes normative masculinity. 4. The names of Pascoe’s respondents and school have been changed. Pascoe and Hollander / GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE 77 REFERENCES Abdullah-Khan, Noreen. 2008. Male rape: The emergence of a social and legal issue. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bridges, Tristan. 2010. Men Just Weren’t Made To Do This: Performances of Drag at “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” Marches. Gender & Society, 24 (1): 5-30. Bridges, Tristan, and C. J. Pascoe. 2014. Hybrid masculinities: New directions in the sociology of men and masculinities. 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Ruling passions: Sexual violence, reputation, and the law. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Lundrigan, Samantha, and Katrin Mueller-Johnson. 2013. Male stranger rape: A behavioral model of victim-offender interaction. Criminal Justice and Behavior 40 (7): 763-83. Mackinnon, Catharine A. 1989. Sexuality, pornography, and method: “Pleasure under patriarchy.” Ethics 99:314-46. Martin, Patricia Yancey. 2001. Mobilizing masculinities: Women’s experiences of men at work. Organization 8 (4): 587-618. Masters, Tatiana. 2010. “My strength is not for hurting”: Men’s anti-rape websites and their construction of masculinity and male sexuality. Sexualities 13 (1): 33-46. Mathers, Lain A. B., J. Edward Sumerau, and Koji Ueno. 2015. “This isn’t just another gay group”: Privileging heterosexuality in a mixed-sexuality LGBTQ advocacy group. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 44:306-34. McGuire, Danielle L. 2011. At the dark end of the street: Black women, rape, and resistance—A new history of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the rise of Black Power. New York: Vintage. Messner, Michael A. 1993. “Changing men” and feminist politics in the United States. Theory and Society 22 (5): 723-37. Mora, Richard. 2012. “Do it for all your pubic hairs!” Latino boys, masculinity, and puberty. Gender & Society 26 (3): 433-60. Murphy, Michael J. 2009. Can men stop rape? Visualizing gender in the “My Strength Is Not for Hurting” rape prevention campaign. Men and Masculinities 12 (1): 113-30. Nagel, Joane. 2000. Ethnicity and sexuality. Annual Review of Sociology 26:107-33. Pascoe, C. J. 2007. Dude, you’re a fag: Masculinity and sexuality in high school. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pascoe, C. J., and Tristan Bridges. 2015. Bronies, anti-rape chants, and gendered change. Manly Musings, April 1. http://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/category/manly-musings/. Pascoe and Hollander / GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE 79 Peirce, Jennifer. 1995. Gender trials: Emotional lives in contemporary law firms. Berkeley: University of California Press. Phillips, Lynn. 2000. Flirting with danger: Young women’s reflections on sexuality and domination. New York, NY: NYU Press. Swartout, Kevin M., Mary P. Koss, Jacquelyn W. White, Martie P. Thompson, Antonia Abbey, and Alexandra L. Bellis. 2015. Trajectory analysis of the campus serial rapist assumption. JAMA Pediatrics. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0707. West, Candace, and Don Zimmerman. 1987. Doing gender. Gender & Society 1 (2): 125-51. Wilkins, Amy C. 2009. Masculinity dilemmas: Sexuality and intimacy talk among Christians and goths. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 34 (2): 343-68. C.J. Pascoe is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School and coeditor of Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Continuity, and Change. Her research focuses on gendered and sexual inequalities among young people. Jocelyn Hollander is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. She is the coauthor of Gendered Situations, Gendered Selves: A Gender Lens on Social Psychology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd edition, 2011). She has written extensively on women’s resistance to violence and the effectiveness of self-defense training, as well as on the construction and accomplishment of gender. This is a very important week of readings. When most people think of gender they think of women, why? As if men do not have a gender. Indeed, the dominant gender is invisible, much in the way privilege is invisible till we deconstruct it and place it in the center of our exploration. One of the outstanding quotes I can share with the class, from a classmate of color is something he hears his white friends say, “Nothing will happen to me because I'm white." There it is, unearned privilege. As you read this week, think about your own lived experiences. Thin about your own intersectional status. One status may add privilege, while another may add you to a marginalized group. The key is to think about identity status in relationship to structural identities, and not the identities you may opt in or out of. In other words, you cannot opt out of your race, unless you “pass” which many of you discussed in your RR. Many of you were, frankly, shocked to find out what feminism, is, and what it is not. This week we look at masculinity, or as I like to say masculinities, since masculinity is not a monolithic category. As with feminism, the "one size fits all" approach is faulty. Since we also learned about how important intersectionality is when looking at social issues and the way we all experience race, gender, age, class, access to resources, history, etc. The key to remember as you do this week’s readings (yes, there are several, but they are all short, and very engaging) masculinity is another unearned privilege, but not for all. Not all men are created equal! Hegemonic masculinity describes a position in the system of gender relations, the system itself, and the current ideology that serves to reproduce masculine domination. In presenting the term, Connell demonstrates the essentialistic, a historical, and normative liabilities in previous men’s studies scholarship. In the concept of hegemonic masculinity Connell joins the constructivist view of” doing gender” (West & Zimmerman 1987) with insights drawn from feminist scholars who described the ways in which gender relations shape social structures (Hartsock 1983). Hegemony- a group of claims that sustains a leading position in social life. One form of masculinity is favored over another. This is a fluid and flexible definition, and not experienced the same by all men. Currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and subordination of women. Again, not all men are created equal! These norms and ideologies are linked to cultural beliefs, institutional power, top level businesses, the military, the government and family relations. Currently acceptable conditions change, patterns change, parenting of boy’s changes, and one particular type of masculinity are eroded. New groups may challenge old solutions and construct a new hegemony! This is why sociology is awesome because society is socially constructed. The dominance of any group of men may be challenged by women. Hegemony- then is a historically mobile and fluid relation- It ebbs and flows- this is a key element of the picture of masculinity. I suggest you read Paul Kevel, The Act Like a Man Box, first. This article and language have become quite mainstream, and my students use this language even before learning about the more nuanced meaning of masculinity. Then follow with Seeing Privilege Where It Isn’t, and 1 then finally the other two readings, that focus on Latino and Asian men’s experiences of masculinity. Usually if we were in class, we would break into groups and share back about all these important sociology readings about masculinity. Finally make sure to view the TED talk. You might also review the TED talk from the intro week. https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_kimmel_why_gender_equality_is_good_for_everyone_men_ included/transcript?language=en Questions to consider for discussionCoston and Kimmel- Discuss the three strategies Goffman identified to neutralize stigma and reserve a spoiled identity? Use examples from your own lived experiences and something going on in society today. Discuss the role of dominance and subordination we read about for the following groups: Asian men, Latino men, working class men, Black men, gay men, disabled men and how these marginalized groups intersect with privilege. Use examples. Espiritu- Discuss the historic changing gender roles of Asian men and the intersectional way ways women can hold power of certain groups of men. Use examples from your own lives and today’s current events. Ramirez and Flores- Discuss Latino masculinity at work, and Latino masculinity in recovery. Compare and contrast the structural constraints, the myths and assumptions and the overarching diversity and complexity of Latino masculinities. How are these constraints reproduced and maintained? Use examples, and also link to everyday taken for “grantedness” that we learned about last week. Discuss what feminist masculinity is as per hooks, and how it reimagines the way we socialize boys and men. Contract hooks loving ideology with Kivel’s “act like a man box.” Use examples from your own lives. Please work to use your sociological language to incorporate what you have learned from past readings, films, lectures. Those earning full credit, will show me and their group how they are connecting the dots of weekly learning. Make sure to review my discussion expectations. 2 Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack II Daily effects of straight and cisgender privilege: This article is based on Peggy McIntosh’s article on white privilege. These dynamics are but a few examples of the privilege which straight people have. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified folk have a range of different experiences, but cannot count on most of these conditions in their lives. Sexual Orientation On a daily basis, as a straight person… • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • I can go for months without being called straight. I am not asked to think about why I am straight. I am never asked to speak for everyone who is heterosexual. People don't ask why I made my choice of sexual orientation. People don't ask why I made my choice to be public about my sexual orientation. Nobody calls me straight as an insult. People do not assume I am experienced in sex (or that I even have it!) merely because of my sexual orientation. If I pick up a magazine, watch TV, or play music, I can be certain my sexual orientation will be represented. When I talk about my heterosexuality (such as in a joke or talking about my relationships), I will not be accused of pushing my sexual orientation onto others. I do not have to fear that if my family or friends find out about my sexual orientation there will be economic, emotional, physical or psychological consequences. I can go home from most meetings, classes, and conversations without feeling excluded, fearful, attacked, isolated, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, stereotyped or feared because of my sexual orientation. I can be sure that my classes will require curricular materials that testify to the existence of people with my sexual orientation. I can easily find a religious community that will not exclude me for being heterosexual. I can count on finding a therapist or doctor willing and able to talk about my sexuality. I am guaranteed to find sex education literature for couples with my sexual orientation. Because of my sexual orientation, I do not need to worry that people will harass or assault me. My masculinity/femininity is not challenged because of my sexual orientation. I am not identified/definted by my sexual orientation. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has sexual orientation overtones. I can hold hands or kiss in public with my significant other and not have people double-take or stare. I can choose to not think politically about my sexual orientation. I did not grow up with games that attack my sexual orientation (IE fag tag or smear the queer). People can use terms that describe my sexual orientation and mean positive things (IE "straight as an arrow", "standing up straight" or "straightened out") instead of demeaning terms (IE "ewww, that's gay" or being "queer"). I can be open about my sexual orientation without worrying about my job. Adapted from http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~hyrax/personal/files/student_res/straightprivilege.htm Gender Identity On a daily basis, as a cisgendered person… • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Strangers don't assume they can ask me what my genitals look like and how I have sex. My validity as a man/woman/human is not based upon how much surgery I've had or how well I "pass" as a non-transperson. When initiating sex with someone, I do not have to worry that they won't be able to deal with my parts or that having sex with me will cause my partner to question his or her own sexual orientation. I am not excluded from events which are either explicitly or de facto* men-born-men or women-bornwomen only. (*basically anything involving nudity) My politics are not questioned based on the choices I make with regard to my body. I don't have to hear "so have you had THE surgery?" or "oh, so you're REALLY a [incorrect sex or gender]?" each time I come out to someone. I am not expected to constantly defend my medical decisions. Strangers do not ask me what my "real name" [birth name] is and then assume that they have a right to call me by that name. People do not disrespect me by using incorrect pronouns even after they've been corrected. I do not have to worry that someone wants to be my friend or have sex with men order to prove his or her "hipness" or good politics. I do not have to worry about whether I will be able to find a bathroom to use or whether I will be safe changing in a locker room. When engaging in political action, I do not have to worry about the *gendered* repercussions of being arrested. (i.e. what will happen to me if the cops find out that my genitals do not match my gendered appearance? Will I end up in a cell with people of my own gender?) I do not have to defend my right to be a part of "Queer" and gays and lesbians will not try to exclude me from OUR movement in order to gain political legitimacy for themselves. My experience of gender (or gendered spaces) is not viewed as "baggage" by others of the gender in which I live. I do not have to choose between either invisibility ("passing") or being consistently "othered" and/or tokenized based on my gender. I am not told that my sexual orientation and gender identity are mutually exclusive. When I go to the gym or a public pool, I can use the showers. If I end up in the emergency room, I do not have to worry that my gender will keep me from receiving appropriate treatment nor will all of my medical issues be seen as a product of my gender. ("Your nose is running and your throat hurts? Must be due to the hormones!") My health insurance provider (or public health system) does not specifically exclude me from receiving benefits or treatments available to others because of my gender. When I express my internal identities in my daily life, I am not considered "mentally ill" by the medical establishment. I am not required to undergo extensive psychological evaluation in order to receive basic medical care. The medical establishment does not serve as a "gatekeeper" which disallows self-determination of what happens to my body. People do not use me as a scapegoat for their own unresolved gender issues. Adapted from http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/gsc/downloads/resources/Gender_Privilege.pdf A primer on Intersectionality Table of Contents Intersectionality: Why a New Prism is Needed … 2 Capturing the New Mood in America … 2 Re-envisioning Group-Based Interventions … 3 1. Intersectional Analysis … 3 2. Intersectional Interventions …4 3. Intersectional Advocacy … 5 “What Kind of Ally are You?” … 7 Intersectionality: Why a New Prism is Needed Social justice advocacy has entered a new era. Rising expectations brought about by the remarkable shift in the national political arena have heightened the need to rethink standard approaches to social justice advocacy. One of the most significant aspects of current social justice practice that warrants rethinking, is the dominance of a particular orientation that disaggregates social problems into discrete challenges facing specific groups. These groups are often defined in mutually exclusive ways, generating artificial distinctions and sometimes conflicting agendas. This approach—sometimes called the single-axis analysis—corresponds to the silo-oriented structure of social justice mobilization and grant making. Interventions based on such models can frequently be ineffective and sometimes even lead to unnecessary exclusion and conflict within social justice movements. In cases where race, gender, sexual identity and class work together to limit access to social goods such as employment, fair immigration, healthcare, child care, or education, it is essential that social justice interventions be grounded in an understanding of how these factors operate together. Intersectionality can provide that grounding. Capturing the New Mood in America Never in recent memory have so many Americans been so hopeful that significant social transformation is possible. This new sense of possibility fuels the need for thought and action leaders to fashion new and effective strategies to deliver equitable opportunity, security and well-being to those who have been historically marginalized and underserved. At this time of rising expectations, traditional civil rights issues such as violence against women, pay equity, and affirmative action are meeting up with newer issues such as gay marriage, immigration reform, mass incarceration, and environmental racism. These new challenges have only heightened the need to find new modes to enable effective cooperation and problem-solving across constituencies. One thing is clear: none of the pressing social justice issues can be productively advanced through traditional frameworks by explaining these problems as the product of one axis of exclusion. Equally important, none of these social problems are exclusive to one set of people, separately defined. Contrary to the dominant framing of some of these issues, contemporary immigrants are not all Latino; prisoners are not all men; affirmative action beneficiaries are not all African American; and LGBTs are not all white and middle class. Recognizing that these constituencies are multiply-constituted means that interventions and programs designed to address group interests can no longer be framed in exclusionary terms. There are constituencies within constituencies that are not well-served by such categorical thinking. 2 Re-envisioning Group-Based Interventions Intersectionality is a concept that enables us to recognize the fact that perceived group membership can make people vulnerable to various forms of bias, yet because we are simultaneously members of many groups, our complex identities can shape the specific way we each experience that bias. For example, men and women can often experience racism differently, just as women of different races can experience sexism differently, and so on. As a result, an intersectional approach goes beyond conventional analysis in order to focus our attention on injuries that we otherwise might not recognize. The illustration below represents what it means to move beyond conventional forms of group and issue-based intervention. It demonstrates that the groups in question are not mutually exclusive, but are in fact multidimensional. Internally each group has multiple characteristics that must be considered in shaping advocacy and public policy. Whether those goals are equal opportunity, fair immigration policies, equitable pay, a just criminal justice system, or more inclusive visions of equal citizenship, the multidimensionality of these groups must be factored into the equation. These goals can be advanced by using an intersectional prism to 1) analyze social problems more fully; 2) shape more effective interventions; and 3) promote more inclusive coalitional advocacy. Intersectionality, a term coined by AAPF’s Kimberle Crenshaw, has been offered as a prism from which to view a range of social problems to better ensure inclusiveness of remedies, and to identify opportunities for greater collaboration between and across social movements. Intersectionality has traveled globally, shaping social justice awareness and actions in Europe as well as in the Global South. Several national, regional and now UN documents acknowledge the concept and encourage the development of policies and practices to sustain more productive approaches to equity, opportunity, and basic human rights. 1. Intersectional Analysis Intersectionality is thus a critical lens for bringing awareness and capacity to the social justice industry in order to expand and deepen its interventions. Intersectionality was initially conceived as a way to present a simple reality that seemed to be hidden by conventional thinking about discrimination and exclusion. This simple reality is that disadvantage or exclusion can be based on the interaction of multiple factors rather than just one. Yet conventional approaches to social problems are often organized as though these risk factors are mutually exclusive and separable. As a consequence, many interventions and policies fail to capture the interactive effects of race, gender, sexuality, class, etc. and marginalize the needs of those who are multiply affected by them. The exclusionary consequences of this problematic thinking were starkly presented in a case in which Black women challenged the exclusionary hiring practices of auto maker General Motors. In this historically race and gender segregated auto industry, women were only permitted to work in front office jobs and African Americans were limited to heavy industrial work. 3 The problem for African American women was even more acute: the front office jobs were only available to women who were white, and the industrial jobs were appropriate only for Blacks who were men. African American women argued that they had clearly been discriminated against on the basis of race and gender, but in Degraffenreid v. General Motors, the court dismissed their case because neither white women nor African American men were similarly excluded. In essence, the trial court was not convinced that the Black female plaintiffs could prove that GM had engaged in gender discrimination since obviously not all women were excluded, nor could they prove race discrimination because not all African Americans were excluded. Clearly something had happened to these plaintiffs, but the existing understanding of discrimination blinded the court to this kind of discrimination. Race and gender discrimination was seen as group based and exclusive, not overlapping and multiply-constituted. As a consequence of this limited thinking, the discrimination that happened to these plaintiffs literally fell through the cracks. It was in thinking about why such a “big miss” could have happened within a complex structure of antidiscrimination law that intersectionality was born. The specific effort was to locate and visualize this discrimination at a place where conventional thinking did not go, that is, where various forms of discrimination overlapped rather than ran parallel. Thus, one function of the intersectional prism is to draw attention to the overlap of various forms of exclusion or disadvantage. 2. Intersectional Interventions The second and important dimension of intersectionality was reflected in the DeGraffenreid court’s inability to address the obvious injury suffered by the Black female plaintiffs. To highlight the metaphor again, it was as if antidiscrimination law was called to the scene of an accident, but because it was unclear whether the accident was caused exclusively by race or by gender, each ambulance sped away, leaving these plaintiffs lying in the intersection. This second dimension of intersectionality directs attention to the ways that social policy, advocacy and social movements are often ill-equipped to address the needs of constituents who struggle against more than one disadvantage or discrimination. When feminism focuses exclusively on gender, or antiracism on race, or LGBT on sexual identity, they often fail to comprehend that countless numbers of their constituents confront circumstances and challenges that reflect more than one barrier or obstacle. Social movements typically follow analyses similar to the discussion in DeGraffenreid. They approach intersectional problems by claiming that the various issues should be taken up separately, preferably by separate institutions or organizations. Separating out or disaggregating such dynamics into distinct social problems, frequently distorts certain experiences or renders them completely invisible. 4 The failure to analyze and approach social problems from an intersectional lens can cause advocates and other actors to miss the boat on important issues. This sometimes leads to unfortunate or even tragic consequences. One example involves the special vulnerability of immigrant women whose lives are threatened by their abusive citizen spouses. Earlier immigration “reform” required spouses who immigrated to the US to marry American citizens to remain “properly married” for two years before they were eligible to receive permanent resident status. This requirement provided no exceptions for battered women who often faced the risk of serious injury and death on the one hand, or deportation on the other. Yet, advocates fighting for fairer immigration policies were generally uninformed about vulnerabilities relating to gender, while advocates for domestic violence survivors never considered that members of their constituency included immigrant women seeking permanent residence status. Only the predictably tragic consequences of this double burden brought this problem into the light, but even then the solutions did little to increase the safety of the most vulnerable women. Thinking and acting intersectionally from the start might have ensured that advocates for fair immigration policy and advocates for domestic violence survivors would have envisioned their common cause and seen their shared constituencies more clearly. Intersectionality thus informs not only a fuller understanding of the sometimes overlapping forces that structure the lives of constituents, but also draws attention to the limited vision that grounds advocacy and intervention on their behalf. Where problems are intersectional Intersectionality not only provides a tool to render certain exclusions more visible, it also points in the direction of a reframed approach to social justice politics. Intersectionality is thus a critical lens for bringing awareness and capacity to the social justice industry in order to expand and deepen its interventions. 3. Intersectional Advocacy The movement-building insights of intersectionality implicate the structure and occasional tensions between social justice movements. All too frequently, organizations and movements shape their rhetorical claims in ways that not only fail to address other dimensions of disadvantage, but sometimes reinforce them as well. There are now several classic cases where movements have been tragically pitted against one another in pursuing their legitimate ends. Historically, such examples include feminist anti-rape advocacy that sometimes foregrounded the stereotype of the Black rapist in appealing for legal reform; domestic violence advocacy that linked protection of women to the growth of incarceration; affirmative action advocacy that centralized gender over race; and gay marriage advocacy that linked the right to marry to nuclear, economically viable, two-parent families. What these examples have in common are the various ways—sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit— that key arguments or images used to advance one cause sometimes retard or work against other social justice interests. 5 These rhetorical problems exacerbate and are exacerbated by a host of “isms” that circulate within these constituencies. For example, sexism, homophobia, racism, and xenophobia exist within communities of color, immigrant communities, LGBT communities, and others. These dynamics sometimes serve as the scaffolding for rhetoric that undermines efforts to build progressive social justice coalitions. The challenges grow more ominous when one recognizes that none of these communities are exclusive. Like “friendly fire,” the rhetoric hurled back and forth between communities often strike members within. Thus, to use one unfortunate example, in the aftermath of Proposition 8 campaign in California, the recriminations and tensions between Blacks and Latinos on one hand, and the LGBT community on the other were sometimes premised on the assumption that these constituencies were utterly distinct warring camps and that neither was part of the other. This disastrous outcome has been particularly tragic for those simultaneously members of both communities. In the rallies, marches and civic debate following November elections in California, Black and Latino LGBTs suffered raced-based insults from other LGBTs and homophobic insults from other people of color. There were casualties of communities at war with themselves. Clearly one significant factor that permits these destructive politics to prevail is the failure to imagine, elevate and incorporate the sensibilities of LGBTs who are Black and Latino in the agenda setting of both the LGBT and people of color communities. At the most basic level, intersectional awareness encourages advocates and policy makers to ask how their approaches address and engage constituent members who are in fact constituents of other social groups as well. How do debates across constituencies sound different when it is recognized that each community contains members of the other? What is the broadest articulation of a problem that would embrace more than the interests of the most advantaged? Movement politics and advocacy must be recalibrated to more fully incorporate constituencies at the margins and to move away from single issue organizing. These are challenging questions and often there is no one right answer. But it is clear that ignoring these issues will no longer do. Efforts must be expanded to make the practice of intersectional awareness routine so that the hard work of creating and sustaining non-exclusive social justice initiatives becomes second-nature to everyone. 6 “What Kind of Ally are You?” * Or, What is your Disaster Relief Kit? Speech Delivered by Kimberle Crenshaw V-Day 10th Anniversary Celebration The Superdome New Orleans, LA April 11, 2008 You know, whenever I meet people from other countries, there are two things they want to talk about -- and one is Hurricane Katrina. Citizens of the word were shocked that our friends, our families, our fellow citizens and humans, would be called “refugees.” Can there be any doubt that this slip of the tongue describes exactly who they were seen to be -- you know, maybe they are God’s children, but not exactly our responsibility. And it’s not that the US was somehow exceptional in its miserable DISASTER RELIEF efforts. When we look at disaster relief all over the world, this American experience was tragically universal. Whether it was the Tsunami that killed thousands in Asia and Africa, the earthquake that wiped out 300,000 in Central Asia, Hurricane Mitch that devastated the lives of thousands in Central America, the DISASTER RELIEF failures were essentially the same: the poor, ethnically and racially marginalized, the women, the children, the old, the disabled, were all hardest hit by the disaster and least served by the relief. And why is this the case? Kofi Annan was asked during one of the crises whether the relief efforts were going to be “gender sensitive”. He responded that since all people were effected the same, then the disaster relief would be the same. Not true of course. We know that women in the midst of natural disasters or conflict are vulnerable to a whole range of harms, including loss of life, harassment, violence, rape and other forms of sexual abuse. We know they have different needs, they have different responsibilities, and the effect of disasters often exacerbates their vulnerability to violence and harm. And we also know that it isn’t just ALL WOMEN from region to region who are effected the most. It is SOME women, the women who are also the ones who are socially marginal, who are isolated, who are already burdened or viewed as less valued women. If you take just about any of these contexts and put a different face on these women -- a difference race, caste, or ethnicity -- I believe that the response would be different. Gender-neutral Disaster Relief efforts don’t work, because the effects of disaster intersect with women’s status, role, and context so that the disaster has secondary and tertiary effects. In the same way that we know that disaster doesn’t effect men and women in the same way, it also doesn’t always effect people the same way across race or social class either. Yet when we run to the rescue and don’t pay attention to race or caste or ethnicity, all the preexisting dynamics that marginalized some communities and made them vulnerable to receive the brunt of the disaster will render them less worthy of relief when the disaster strikes. In India for example, the Dalits, those who are at the bottom of the caste structure, were often entirely excluded from disaster relief efforts after the Tsunami. Some Dalit villages destroyed by the Tsunami received no rations or water because locals distributing the goods believed that Dalits didn’t need or deserve relief. Some believed that the Dalits destitution pre-existed the disaster so there was no need to lift the burdens that befell them along with everyone else. Others believed that Dalits should play the same role in the relief camps that they play in the villages, that is, removing dead bodies, carrying baskets of human waste on their heads, doing the most degrading dehumanizing work for 7 mere rations or for no pay at all. The problem with disaster relief that is colorblind, caste-blind or gender blind is that it reinforces all of the ills, the privileges, the silences, the oppressions that preexisted the disaster, and often makes them worst. Now believe it or not, I’m not here to talk about governments, or the UN, or any supernational entities. I’m really here to talk about us, all of us RIGHT HERE. I’m here to ask us, “what kind of Disaster Relief are we trying to build here?” Or to put it another way, we are all trying to build a Global Movement to end a tragedy—something we call VIOLENCE. We want to intervene, put our bodies, our minds, our resources between this particular man-made disaster and its effects. What kind of tools are in OUR disaster relief kits? Are we as a movement prepared to do any better than our governments? We want to be allies in this effort, but exactly what kind of ally are we prepared to be? Are we “just about me,” allies, or are we “taking it to the mat” allies? Well, maybe it really depends on whether we can see, hear and respond to those problems that happen in the INTERSECTIONS of disasters. It’s not too hard for us to see and respond to the kinds of local disasters that occur on our watch, in our neighborhood, to people just like us, or on terrain in which we are familiar. But can we broaden our purview, our experience, our rhetoric, and our practice, to really get at the vulnerabilities that we don’t share, and aren’t so sure about? You know, sometimes it seems as though with all these movements, the antiviolence and feminist movement, the antiracism movement, the LGBT movement, the antiwar movement, the human rights movement, and the anti-colonial movement, that we have got so many movements that nothing at all should ever fall through the cracks. All we have got to do is strengthen our own piece of the puzzle and we’d be all good. But is that really true? Do we pay attention when the issues that these movements address collide? And what do we do when they do? I use the metaphor of intersectionality to call our attention to precisely these questions. Imagine each of our movements as providing security and relief along their own highway. Let’s say the antiracism movement patrols and secures all of the traffic that rolls down the race highway. And that’s a particularly deadly patch of road there. Lots of people get hit trying to navigate across the road of racism. The role of the antiracist advocates is to come to their rescue, to call attention and to administer, to try to prevent further harm, to make the situation right. In short, to provide Disaster Relief. And feminists, they have a patch of road too where all sorts of things happen to folks who live on that stretch of highway, folks who get hit by sexism, patriarchy, and its consequences: violence, discrimination, disempowerment. Their job is to rush to the scene, administer, protect, and prevent and to provide resources and help. And there are other patches of road that other folks administer: LGBT has a patch; the antiwar folks have a patch. Whatever movement, there is a patch of road that they administer. But imagine, just for a moment, what would happen if an accident occurs on that patch of road where they all converge and intersect. Imagine no one actually SAW the accident, but everybody heard it. Terrible sounds, screeching breaks, a big crash and then a body, lying in the intersection, unconscious. All of the Disaster Relief specialists jump in their ambulances and rush to the scene, and are flummoxed. What do we do? She’s lying there, in the intersection. She’s on everybody’s road—the race road, the gender road, the LGBT road, but no one can tell which traffic hit her. So, they start to discuss it. Now nobody’s doing anything yet, they just, well… are thinking about it. So, Mr. Race man says, “hmm, well, can’t really tell what happened here, but my guess, since 8 she is a woman, is that she probably got barreled over by the gender traffic. I’m going to leave her to you.” But Ms Feminist says, “well hold it a minute, if it was really gender, I think she’d probably be over here, closer to this spot here. I don’t think I can handle this one but you know, she looks a little, well, BUTCH. Maybe she got hit by the homophobia traffic.” ‘Well,” Mr. LGBT says “to be honest, my guess would be…not. We’ve covered a lot of accidents but not around these parts. My guess would be that it was probably poverty, or you know, maybe she was coming from the Global South, so it could be, you know, globalization or something like that. Let’s ask the anti-imperialism folks if they recognize her” “Well,” Ms. Human Rights chimes in with a bright idea---“let’s just try to revive her and ask.” So they all move in a little closer, bend down, and one lifts her head up just a little, and yells, “WHO HIT YOU? WE NEED TO KNOW? WAS IT RACISM? WAS IT PATRIARCHY? TELL ME, WAS IT HOMOPHOBIA? WE NEED TO KNOW WHO INSURED YOU AGAINST THIS INJURY? SE HABLA ESPANOL?” And the woman struggles to come to, but can only say, “I don’t know, but can someone just help me? Just help!” And she passes out…again. Unable now to figure out who is responsible, all of the Disaster Relief Specialists just pile back into their ambulances and speed away to the next accident, hopefully one fully with their purview, and definitely on their exclusive patch of road. Just an apocryphal story? Sure. Exaggerated? Well looking around this place, looking at our movements, and looking directly into the mirror, you tell me. What about this: In upstate New York, I was working with Latina domestic violence activists who were struggling to persuade their white colleagues to adopt more language sensitive interventions in their shelters. One particular case is haunting. A woman called the crisis hotline. She was desperate, the fear and anxiety in her voice betrayed the adrenaline coursing through her body. She’d run for her life, she told the hotline worker in Spanish. Her husband had tried to kill her before, and this time he vowed to finish the job. She had fled with her young son, and they needed a place to stay. The hotline worker called the local shelter. “Good news,” she told the woman, holding the phone, “there’s room.” But, the intake coordinator wanted to know -- “does she speak English?” The hotline coordinator: “well I think, but I’ll check.” Back to the phone. She asks, but the woman is in so much fear, the coordinator can barely make out her Spanish, much less her English. She goes back to the intake coordinator. “I don’t know, but she’s desperate. Her husband is looking for her, it is after midnight, and she is out on the street alone with her son. She needs a place to stay now.” “Well we can’t take her unless she can speak English. We have an empowerment program that all of our women must take. If she can’t speak English, she can’t participate in the program.” 9 The hotline counselor was stunned, but kept trying. “Well, can’t we have her son translate for her? This woman is in trouble. I don’t know if she will survive the night.” Intake Coordinator: “Well, that’s just our policy. If the son translates, he would further disempower the woman. She needs to be able to speak for herself.” At that point the woman in crisis said she had to go, she’d call back. The hotline crisis counselor begged her to hold on, or to call back. “We’ll work something out.” It took several more phone calls, and several back and forth discussions before the counselor finally found a shelter that would take the woman and her son. When she finally secured a place, the counselor waited for hours for the woman in crisis to call back. She never heard from the woman again. No one knows WHAT happened to this woman. This is disaster relief gone wrong. Very, very wrong. So, while we sometimes dither and debate whether we can “take” an issue, or whether it fits our agenda, or whether we have the resources to deal with the accident, we miss the demands that we intervene. And when we do not relieve the disaster women face we simply contribute to it. We are not prepared for the call because we don’t always anticipate the kind of woman or the kind of person we will be asked to serve and protect. Rape crisis counselors in minority and immigrant communities, for example, complain that funding is often based on a model of a woman who has no other problems, a woman who might be more likely to be believed, or to press charges, rather than the women they typically serve, women who are homeless, jobless, who come in and say that they are hungry, or cold, or without shelter, and then tell them that they were raped. When crisis centers are funded on the model of “knowing your rights” or “court accompaniment” then these women are not served. In the global arena, women are displaced all over the world due to violence and conflict, but often crisis interventions don’t take into account the intersectional structure of their lives. In so far as the basic necessities of survival are concerned, women, because it is their job, must often travel long distances to collect firewood and water. It is in these long tracks that they are raped or even killed. When relief camps are set up without consulting these women or their concerns basic questions that should not determine life and death -- like ‘how am I going to eat today? -are not considered because the intersectional specificities of their lives takes the back seat to their identity as simply “displaced persons.” And lest you think I’m being hard on the antiviolence movement, let me assure you that there are problems within the antiracist movement itself. When we talk about Black-on-Black violence in the African American community we seldom talk about the most common type of violence -the violence that occurs in the home. It’s as if the Black bodies that we care most about are gendered in a particular way. We talk about ending the violence that endangers our fathers, brothers and sons, but we are often far too silent about the violence that endangers and sometimes takes the lives of our daughters, sisters, and mothers. Antiracism’s solidarity, it seems, is often drawn with a gender line. So then I ask, what kind of ally are you? Let me end with a story on a lighter note. By comparison to the disastrous scenarios described above it’s trivial, but it amplifies my question. I was once invited, along with a Black male friend, to an exclusive private club. We were to be the first black guests. We had a pact—“we are not 10 taking no mess. No matter what, we’re going in there strong and tall, proud Black people, unapologetic, in our power.” So we went to the place, knocked on the elegant door using the big brass doorbell, and our host stepped out, embarrassed that he had forgotten an important detail. We weren’t about to hear any excuses and we both stiffened our backs. ‘Be strong,’ we relayed to him with our body language. Be fierce. “Look man, you invited us here. Don’t come telling us that we can’t come in or some mess like that.” Our host said, “OH NO, that’s not the problem. You can come in for SURE. It’s just that I forgot to tell you that Kim can’t come in. Well not through here. She’s got to come in through the back door. Only men can come through the front door.” “OH,” my friend said. “That’s different.” “That’s different?” I said. What was so different about that? And what happened to our solidarity? The idea that we would stand fierce, stand strong, take no mess? What happened to our disaster intervention plan? I didn’t think it came with a rider… `I’m with you until we get what we want, unless I get what I want first. Then all bets are off.’ So as we come together here, standing shoulder to shoulder, what riders do we bring to the agreement? What’s in the small print? What caveats do we have in our agreement to coalesce? Are you a “me first” kind of ally, you can come along on the ride, but with a caveat that ‘I gotta get there first?’ Are you a “be just like me” ally? ‘I’ll stand with you as long as you make yourself knowable to me in my terms. Let’s talk about gender, about women, but don’t complicate it with that other stuff. It takes me out of my comfort zone.’ Are you a Bette Davis Diva kind of ally: “If I can’t get what I want, then NOBODY DOES. I’ve got it worst so it’s MW or the Highway!” Are you the nice liberal ally -- even though you’re not directly effected you’ll go along with the “We Are the World” approach until it gets too costly? Or are you a Dependent Ally: Whether or not you’ll stand up for issue DEPENDS on whose watching. In the march or at the rally you’re hard to the core, but at the cocktail party or in boardroom your resolve to speak that truth to power suddenly evaporates. Are you a “yes I’ll get to you after we save the gorillas, the whales, and innocent puppies” ally like the ones in the Congo who negotiated with soldiers there not to kill the gorillas but forgot to mention the women. These are all allies with riders, with caveats, with limits. I am here to say we don’t need these kinds of allies. We need allies firmly planted in the intersections, the ones who will say, “I don’t care what traffic hit her. She’s in the middle of the road, let’s get her help and let’s prevent this from happening again.” Intersectionality requires you to be a different kind of ally, one that will go to the mat, one that will give you a ride not only to your destination but all the way to her destination, one that will seek power not to exercise it for your own ends, but for the ends of women and disempowered people all over the world. What kind of allies are we to each other? What kind of allies CAN WE BE to each other? Let us ask ourselves every day, “what do we have to think about, to do, to be reliable, real allies?” That’s our challenge in the aftermath of Katrina -- that we leave no bodies lying in the intersection. 11 African American Policy Forum Co-Founders: Kimberle Crenshaw, Executive Director: Kimberle Crenshaw, Executive Director: Crenshaw is a Professor of Law at UCLA and at Columbia Law School. She writes in the area of Civil Rights, Black feminist legal theory, race, and racism and the law. Her articles have appeared in such journals as the Harvard Law Review, National Black Law Journal and Stanford Law Review. She is the founding coordinator of the Critical Race Theory Workshop, and the co-editor of a volume, Critical Race Theory: Key Documents That Shaped the Movement. Prof. Crenshaw has lectured nationally and internationally on race matters, addressing audiences throughout Europe, Africa and South America. In 1996 she co-founded the African American Policy Forum (AAPF). Prof. Crenshaw earned her J.D. at Harvard; L.L.M. at University of Wisconsin and B.A. at Cornell University. In 2008, she became both a Fletcher Fellow and a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Luke Harris, Program Director: Luke Harris, Program Director: Harris teaches American Politics and Constitutional Law at Vassar College. He co-founded the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) as part of an ongoing effort to promote women’s rights in the context of struggles for racial justice. Prof. Harris earned a B.A. at Saint Joseph’s University, a J.D. and an LL.M at Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton. An expert in the field of Critical Race Theory, he was the co-writer and chief consultant for Kathe Sandler’s 1993 award-winning documentary film, A Question of Color. More recently, his ground breaking essay, "Affirmative Action as Equalizing Opportunity: Challenging the Myth of Preferential Treatment," co-authored with Uma Narayan, was republished in Hugh LaFollette’s, Ethics in Practice, in 2006. In 2009, he will serve as a Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Our Board Members: George Lipsitz,, Chandra Bhatnagar, Devon Carbado, Tim Wise, M. Thandabantu Iverson, Janine Jackson, Beverly Guy-Sheftall African American Policy Forum and Intersectionality The Policy Forum is a leading social justice clearing house providing information pertaining to social inclusion. Our key working concepts are that exclusion is often structural as opposed to intentional or individual, and that vulnerabilities are often overlapping as opposed to singular and discreet. Thus, our policy interventions, workshops, and other activities seek to highlight these dimensions of the social problems that our partners and constituents wish to address. For more information on our workshops, products and expertise, please visit www.AAPF.org. © African American Policy Forum All Rights Reserved. For additional copies, please, contact: Columbia Law School w 435 West 116th Street w 827 Green w Box E-7 Mail Code 4089 w New York, NY 10027 w 212.854.8041 Prof. Kimberle Crenshaw w 405 Hilgard Avenue w UCLA School of Law Los Angeles, CA 90024 w 310.825.1503 (Primary Mailing Address) cmorsch@aapf.org (email) Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack II Daily effects of straight and cisgender privilege: This article is based on Peggy McIntosh’s article on white privilege. These dynamics are but a few examples of the privilege which straight people have. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified folk have a range of different experiences, but cannot count on most of these conditions in their lives. Sexual Orientation On a daily basis, as a straight person… • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • I can go for months without being called straight. I am not asked to think about why I am straight. I am never asked to speak for everyone who is heterosexual. People don't ask why I made my choice of sexual orientation. People don't ask why I made my choice to be public about my sexual orientation. Nobody calls me straight as an insult. People do not assume I am experienced in sex (or that I even have it!) merely because of my sexual orientation. If I pick up a magazine, watch TV, or play music, I can be certain my sexual orientation will be represented. When I talk about my heterosexuality (such as in a joke or talking about my relationships), I will not be accused of pushing my sexual orientation onto others. I do not have to fear that if my family or friends find out about my sexual orientation there will be economic, emotional, physical or psychological consequences. I can go home from most meetings, classes, and conversations without feeling excluded, fearful, attacked, isolated, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, stereotyped or feared because of my sexual orientation. I can be sure that my classes will require curricular materials that testify to the existence of people with my sexual orientation. I can easily find a religious community that will not exclude me for being heterosexual. I can count on finding a therapist or doctor willing and able to talk about my sexuality. I am guaranteed to find sex education literature for couples with my sexual orientation. Because of my sexual orientation, I do not need to worry that people will harass or assault me. My masculinity/femininity is not challenged because of my sexual orientation. I am not identified/definted by my sexual orientation. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has sexual orientation overtones. I can hold hands or kiss in public with my significant other and not have people double-take or stare. I can choose to not think politically about my sexual orientation. I did not grow up with games that attack my sexual orientation (IE fag tag or smear the queer). People can use terms that describe my sexual orientation and mean positive things (IE "straight as an arrow", "standing up straight" or "straightened out") instead of demeaning terms (IE "ewww, that's gay" or being "queer"). I can be open about my sexual orientation without worrying about my job. Adapted from http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~hyrax/personal/files/student_res/straightprivilege.htm Gender Identity On a daily basis, as a cisgendered person… • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Strangers don't assume they can ask me what my genitals look like and how I have sex. My validity as a man/woman/human is not based upon how much surgery I've had or how well I "pass" as a non-transperson. When initiating sex with someone, I do not have to worry that they won't be able to deal with my parts or that having sex with me will cause my partner to question his or her own sexual orientation. I am not excluded from events which are either explicitly or de facto* men-born-men or women-bornwomen only. (*basically anything involving nudity) My politics are not questioned based on the choices I make with regard to my body. I don't have to hear "so have you had THE surgery?" or "oh, so you're REALLY a [incorrect sex or gender]?" each time I come out to someone. I am not expected to constantly defend my medical decisions. Strangers do not ask me what my "real name" [birth name] is and then assume that they have a right to call me by that name. People do not disrespect me by using incorrect pronouns even after they've been corrected. I do not have to worry that someone wants to be my friend or have sex with men order to prove his or her "hipness" or good politics. I do not have to worry about whether I will be able to find a bathroom to use or whether I will be safe changing in a locker room. When engaging in political action, I do not have to worry about the *gendered* repercussions of being arrested. (i.e. what will happen to me if the cops find out that my genitals do not match my gendered appearance? Will I end up in a cell with people of my own gender?) I do not have to defend my right to be a part of "Queer" and gays and lesbians will not try to exclude me from OUR movement in order to gain political legitimacy for themselves. My experience of gender (or gendered spaces) is not viewed as "baggage" by others of the gender in which I live. I do not have to choose between either invisibility ("passing") or being consistently "othered" and/or tokenized based on my gender. I am not told that my sexual orientation and gender identity are mutually exclusive. When I go to the gym or a public pool, I can use the showers. If I end up in the emergency room, I do not have to worry that my gender will keep me from receiving appropriate treatment nor will all of my medical issues be seen as a product of my gender. ("Your nose is running and your throat hurts? Must be due to the hormones!") My health insurance provider (or public health system) does not specifically exclude me from receiving benefits or treatments available to others because of my gender. When I express my internal identities in my daily life, I am not considered "mentally ill" by the medical establishment. I am not required to undergo extensive psychological evaluation in order to receive basic medical care. The medical establishment does not serve as a "gatekeeper" which disallows self-determination of what happens to my body. People do not use me as a scapegoat for their own unresolved gender issues. Adapted from http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/gsc/downloads/resources/Gender_Privilege.pdf 612707 research-article2015 GASXXX10.1177/0891243215612707GENDER & SOCIETYGOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE: Gender, Domination, and Mobilizing Rape C. J. PASCOE JOCELYN A. HOLLANDER University of Oregon, USA W hen the University of Oregon Ducks football team defeated the Florida State University (FSU) Seminoles at the Rose Bowl in early 2015, the content of their post-game revelry may have surprised some viewers. In celebrating their victory, several Oregon players were filmed singing “No Means No!” to the tune of the “War Chant”1 regularly sung by FSU fans. The song was presumably directed at a particular FSU player, quarterback Jameis Winston, who had been accused of (though not charged with or convicted of) raping a female student. Some commentaries on this incident lauded it as a moment in which young men were collectively and publicly reprimanding another man accused of sexual violence by using a long-time feminist slogan: “no means no.”2 Certainly, on first read this appears to be exactly the sort of phenomenon antirape activists have been waiting for: normatively masculine men shaming other men for sexually assaulting women. It seemed to call into question assumptions about the central role of sexual assault in enforcing gender inequality. We propose an alternate interpretation of this moment, however. What if the chanting football players were using the accusations against Winston AUTHORS’ NOTE: The authors would like to thank Kemi Balogun, Tristan Bridges, Sarah Diefendorf, Aaron Gullickson, Patricia Gwartney, Jill Harrison, Matt Norton, Jianbinn Shao, and Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, the editorial team at Gender & Society, for their comments on earlier iterations of this article, as well as Andrea Herrera for her research assistance. Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to C.J. Pascoe, University of Oregon, 736 Prince Lucien Campbell, Eugene, OR 97403-1291; e-mail: cpascoe@uoregon.edu. GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 30 No. 1, February 2016 67–79 DOI: 10.1177/0891243215612707 © 2015 by The Author(s) 68 GENDER & SOCIETY/ February 2016 not (or not only) to decry the practice of rape but to publicly shame their opponent in a way that specifically preserved or even enhanced their own gendered status as masculine? That is, perhaps they used the chant as an opportunity to celebrate their own dominance in two ways—over the losing team and over Winston himself. What if the point of the chant was not to make a statement about sexual assault but to position their opponent as a failed man—a man who needed to use force to secure sexual access to a woman’s body? A real man, the chant implies, would be so sexually desirable as to render force unnecessary. A real man—like, presumably, the chanters themselves—would also be able to control his own sexual and violent urges such that they would not overwhelm him or others (Pascoe and Bridges 2015). Reading the post-game revelry from this perspective brings masculinity to the fore in the task of theorizing rape and other forms of sexual violence. Of course, men and masculinity have long been central to feminist theorizing about gender and sexual violence. We suggest, however, that the ways scholarship and activism have tended to address men—as those who perpetrate sexual violence against women and as those who must be taught to not rape—may elide some of the complicated ways in which sexual violence and masculinity are intertwined. What is needed, and what we begin in this article, is a further interrogation into the changing relationship between masculinity and sexual violence in an era in which men both engage in and speak out against sexual violence. We argue that both of these practices—participating in and publicly opposing sexual assault—may serve as resources that enable young men to solve the “identity dilemmas” (Wilkins 2009) posed by changing and conflicting expectations of gendered selves by drawing on cultural resources that affirm expectations of normative masculinity. Even though it may appear that some deployments of such resources support while other enactments challenge gender inequalities, Wilkins argues that both may actually achieve similar ends; that is, both may support meaning-making systems that invest in gendered inequalities (Wilkins 2009). We suggest that contemporary relationships between masculinity and rape may be a concrete example of “hybrid masculinities,” using new kinds of masculinity resources to “fortify existing social and symbolic boundaries in ways that often work to conceal systems of power and inequality in historically new ways” (Bridges and Pascoe 2014, 246). Thus, young men can simultaneously position themselves as “good guys” who don’t rape while symbolically engaging with sexual assault to signal the dominance that is constitutive of Western masculinity at this historical moment. Pascoe and Hollander / GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE 69 We call this approach “mobilizing rape.” Rape, in this sense, may be symbolically utilized in a variety of ways to reinforce the contemporary ordering of gender relations, a specific form of what Patricia Yancey Martin calls “mobilizing masculinity” (Martin 2001). While sexual assault has been defined as a situation in which “one or more persons impose a sexual interaction upon another unwilling person” (Cahill 2001, 15), through the concept of “mobilizing rape” we suggest that sexual assault is not simply an individual incident but a wide-ranging constellation of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and talk that work to produce and reproduce gendered dominance in everyday interaction. We conceive of mobilizing rape as a way of doing gender (Fenstermaker and West 2002; West and Zimmerman 1987): as an interactional accomplishment that includes not only engaging in activities legally defined as rape but also engaging in other forms of sexual assault and nonconsensual sexual interaction, talking about rape and sexual assault, making jokes about it, laughing at imagery about it, labeling oneself or others as rapists, blaming sexual assault survivors for their own victimization, or otherwise symbolically deploying the idea of rape. From a “mobilizing rape” perspective, practices, discourses, and symbols associated with sexual violence and assault may be deployed in the service of masculine dominance3 at interactional, discursive, structural, symbolic, and global levels. As other scholars have pointed out, dominance is a hallmark of contemporary Western masculinity (Connell 1995; Jaggar 1983; Mackinnon 1989; Pascoe 2007; Peirce 1995). Indeed, sexual assault has long been theorized as a form of masculinized dominance over women’s bodies (Cahill 2001; Dworkin 1991; Jeffreys 1998; Mackinnon 1989). However, as Raewyn Connell argues, gender inequality is sustained by men’s dominance over other men, as well as men’s dominance over women (Connell 1995). As such, we suggest that these hierarchical relations between men are in part constituted by processes of “mobilizing rape.” These hierarchical relations can be established or supported by the rape of (other men’s) women, by the rape, real or symbolic, of other men themselves—and, we suggest, by claims of not raping. In other words, mobilizing sexual assault as a masculinity resource allows men to do the dominance work not only over women, but also over other men, that comprises masculinity at this historical moment, even as rape itself becomes increasingly framed as socially undesirable. RAPE CULTURE Feminist scholars have pointed out that heterosexual relationships take place in the context of a “rape culture” (Buchwald, Fletcher, and Roth 70 GENDER & SOCIETY/ February 2016 1993) in which rape is normalized and sexual dominance is rendered “sexy” (Jeffreys 1998, 75). As Pascoe (2007) argues in her research on young men in high school, heterosexual violence (symbolic or actual) plays a central role in crafting a masculine identity. From sexualized “horseplay” in school hallways (such as a situation in which a boy jabbed a girl in the crotch with a drumstick while yelling “GET RAPED! GET RAPED!”), to flirtatious cross sex touching (as when one boy wraps his arms around a girl’s neck while another punches her lightly in the stomach as she laughs and squeals), to descriptions of sex that sound more violent than sexy (“I did her so hard I ripped her walls”), this research echoes the feminist claim that rape is “the defining paradigm of sexuality” (Dworkin 1991, 62). Sexual violence, rape, and threats of rape are deeply integrated into the fabric of young people’s lives such that it is a normative rather than an unusual part of their emotional and physical relationships (Hlavka 2014; Pascoe 2007; Phillips 2000). These forms of symbolic sexual violence are central to constitutions of normatively masculine and feminine identities. Precisely because “normal” heterosexual relationships take place in a “rape culture,” the last 30 years have seen very public struggles over where, exactly, the border between rape and non-rape lies, ranging from controversies over Mary Koss’s (1988) strategy of measuring rape behaviorally in the late 1980s, to the gradual criminalization of marital rape, to more recent debates over “incapacitated rape” (i.e., sex when one party is drunk, drugged, or otherwise unable to consent). Many of these struggles have eventually led to the acceptance of a broader understanding of rape. Nonetheless, there remains a wide zone of experience—between clear examples of bodily violation, on the one hand, and “enthusiastic consent” on the other—where the relationship of an experience to rape remains contested. For example, what if consent is achieved not through violence but coercion—for example, through explicit or implicit threats to the relationship or to one’s job or children? What if consent is achieved through simple but relentless persistence? What if there is no active consent, but also no resistance? Because of this definitional blurriness, a range of behaviors that fall between the categories of rape and not-rape are available to enact male dominance while still allowing men to preserve their identity as non-rapists, and perhaps even allowing them to shame other men for being rapists. This definitional murkiness allows for the mobilization of rape as a symbol with no clear referent, such that men can engage in sexual assault and simultaneously distance themselves from it discursively in ways that not only reinforce dominance over women but, impor- Pascoe and Hollander / GOOD GUYS DON’T RAPE 71 tantly, also over other men. Even active disavowals of rape may reaffirm normative understandings of masculinity as dominance over other men, thus rendering some moments of seeming resistance congruent with rape culture, rather than in opposition to it. MOBILIZING RAPE The depathologizing of rape that followed from conceptualizing rape as a culture, not (only) as a behavior, presents identity dilemmas for men. In a rape culture, sexual assault is not caused by a few deviant or depraved bad guys; “normal” men can be rapists, and rape is part of the very culture in which we live and forge romantic relationships. In a rape culture where rape is increasingly stigmatized and where any man is a potential rapist, how can a man distance himself from rape while still doing the dominance work demanded by cultural expectations of normative masculinity? Men are accountable to both these notions (Hollander 2013) and must find a way of navigating between them. Jay, one of Pascoe’s high school–aged respond...
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