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Essay on Understanding Sexual Violence
In discussing the role of alcohol in accounts of violence, Scully offers important insights for research on violence in general. The notion of masculinity is central to understanding rape. One's sense of masculinity is socially constructed and develops in relation to constructions of femininity. The commission of a rape depends, in large part, on how the rapist sees himself as a man, and how that perception is socially reinforced. The rapist's sense of manhood is established through the dual process of distancing himself from his conception of femininity and maintaining the hierarchy and social superiority that he equates with masculinity by devaluing the opposite sex.
Under this feminist theory, violence against women, both sexual and nonsexual, is first and foremost an expression of male domination and social control. Rape and the fear of rape enable men to assert power over women and maintain the existing system of gender stratification. This psychology explains why rape is more prevalent in societies where women are regarded as inferior and as the sexual possessions of men. At the same time, because rape also signifies the act of putting women "back in their place," rapists are often men who feel threatened by the fear that women or a particular woman may achieve equality or superiority over them. In short, misogynist gender roles encourage rape for men who embrace these norms. Rape becomes a perverse extension of normative male behavior, and results from a perceived need to preserve traditional male roles. The norms associated with masculinity, such as dominance and aggression, often lead to the sexual exploitation of women.
Through interpreting and interrupting the experience of sexual violence, feminism intervenes in distinct and critical ways with dominant discourses and assumptions about gender and sexuality that unjustly shore up male power; it does not only "discover" a previously hidden or underlying reality of women's lives within an undifferentiated patriarchy......
