Once I first heard the phrase “rape tradition” years in the past, it sounded so dystopian that I needed to imagine it was an exaggeration.
However then got here surprising revelations from all corners: the Catholic Church sex scandal, the Boy Scout sex scandal, the Fox News sex scandals, the Bill Cosby sex scandal and the quite a few revelations of the #MeToo movement.
Any doubt in regards to the existence of rape tradition merely crumples beneath the load of actuality.
“I don’t all the time use that time period as a result of it’s too obscure,” mentioned Wayne State College social psychologist Antonia Abbey, whose analysis focuses on male sexual violence and aggression in opposition to girls. “I’ll use ‘patriarchy’ or ‘misogyny,’ the concept all through historical past, males have had energy over girls and youngsters.”
Due to #MeToo, and all of the firings, resignations, civil lawsuits and legal prices the motion produced, it actually did appear attainable for a second that we had been on the verge of a real cultural shift. Perhaps males of energy and privilege would lastly perceive that ladies are usually not objects for use for his or her subjugation and pleasure and would, you understand, preserve their fingers off.
If a latest collection of bombshell legal prices in opposition to wealthy, highly effective, well-known males show true, this view was far too optimistic.
Last week, a federal indictment charged three brothers related to the high-flying world of luxurious Manhattan and Miami actual property with drugging and raping dozens of women. If even half of what’s in the indictment is accurate, it would make it painfully clear that a subset of privileged, narcissistic men still believe women exist for their domination and gratification. And perhaps nothing will ever change that.
The Alexander brothers — twins Alon and Oren and their brother, Tal — are accused of a veritable crime wave. For more than a decade, according to Manhattan U.S. Atty. Damian Williams, the brothers “alone and together” repeatedly and violently sexually assaulted and raped women after drugging them with cocaine, mushrooms, GHB and other substances. Lawyers for the brothers have said they are innocent of the charges.
Alon Alexander, top, and his twin brother, Oren, bottom, in court in Miami.
(Matias J. Ocner / Associated Press)
“Our investigation is far from over,” Williams said in a statement asserting the intercourse trafficking indictment. He urged some other victims to come back ahead.
The latest accusations in opposition to music entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs are additionally mind-boggling. Williams introduced in September {that a} federal grand jury had returned a three-count indictment of Combs alleging crimes so heinous {that a} choose has refused three requests to free him on bail. He stays in a jail cell on the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn awaiting trial.
The indictment accuses Combs of operating a legal enterprise for the final 15 years through which many ladies, and a few males, had been systematically drugged, sexually assaulted, punched, kicked and threatened. A lawsuit filed final week accused one other music titan, Jay-Z, of drugging and raping a 13-year-old woman at a 2000 MTV Video Music Awards after-party in Combs’ presence. Jay-Z has vigorously denied the costs, and a lawyer for Combs has mentioned he has “by no means sexually assaulted anybody.”
Sean Combs at a gala earlier than the 2020 Grammy Awards in Beverly Hills.
(Mark Von Holden / Invision / Related Press)
From 2008 via this 12 months, the grand jury alleged, Combs and his workers organized quite a few what they known as “freak-offs” through which intercourse employees had been employed to have intercourse with victims who had been typically drugged to make them compliant. Combs videotaped the encounters and used the tapes as collateral “to make sure the continued obedience and silence of the victims,” based on the indictment.
American celebrities aren’t the one latest topics of such prices. There’s additionally the grotesque case of Dominique Pelicot, the Frenchman who admitted drugging his spouse, Gisele, and permitting dozens of males to rape her of their house. President-elect Donald Trump has been discovered accountable for sexual assault, and several members of his inner circle have additionally been implicated in allegations of sexual misconduct, a few of which have been vehemently disputed.
Rape tradition, Abbey mentioned, “doesn’t disappear in a technology or two, similar to racist beliefs don’t disappear.” It wasn’t even very way back, she famous, that the final states to remove a marital exception for rape did so. (Oklahoma and North Carolina lastly outlawed marital rape in 1993, though loopholes still exist.)
Considered one of Abbey’s recent studies, printed within the journal Psychology of Violence, discovered that as much as 30% of males admit utilizing coercive strategies in opposition to girls who clearly didn’t need to have intercourse. “That’s a part of this concept of rape tradition,” she instructed me, “simply the truth that the road between seduction and coercion is blurry, and folks assume, ‘If I can get away with it, it’s OK.’ If we didn’t have a society that condoned it, it will be rarer.”
It’s straightforward to see how a sufferer may very well be ensnared by a extra highly effective perpetrator beneath such circumstances.
“Somebody well-known and highly effective pays consideration to you — what a lift to your ego,” mentioned Abbey, whereas emphasizing that she doesn’t blame sexual assault victims. “A report deal! Come dwell at my place! For a lot of, it looks as if a dream come true, a ticket to the highest.”
What precisely is it going to take to finish rape tradition? At this darkish second, I’m at a loss.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian
