Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus

by Peggy Reeves Sanday

Overview

This widely acclaimed and meticulously documented volume illustrates, in painstaking and disturbing detail, the nature of fraternity gang rape. Drawing on interviews with both victims and fraternity members, Peggy Reeves Sanday reconstructs daily life in the fraternity, highlighting the role played by pornography, male bonding, and degrading, often grotesque, initiation and hazing rituals.
In a substantial new introduction and afterword, Sanday updates the incidences of fraternity gang rape on college campuses today, highlighting such recent cases as that of Duke Universityand others in the headlines. Sanday also explores the nature of hazing at sororities on campus and how Greek life in general contributes to a culture which promotes the exploitation and sexual degradation of women on campus. More broadly, Sanday examines the nature of campus life today and the possibility of creating a rape-free campus culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814740385
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2007
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	254
Sales rank:	919,452
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Peggy Reeves Sanday is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of many books, including A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance Rape on Trial and, most recently, Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Second Edition
Foreword by Judge Lois G. Forer
Introduction to the First Edition
Acknowledgments
I The XYZ Express
1 Campus Party Culture
2 The XYZ Express
3 Rape or “She Asked for It”?
4 Other Victims, Other Campuses
II Phallocentrism, Male Power, and Silencing the Feminine
5 “Working a Yes Out”: Fraternity Sexual Discourse
6 The Initiation Ritual: AModel for Life
7 The Law of the Brothers
8 Constructing a Sexist Subjectivity
Afterword: 2006—Has Anything Changed?
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

"Powerfully moving and analytically provocative. . . . If the college or university at which AJS readers teach has a fraternity or sorority system, this book will be useful in understanding the way those organizations not only construct the gender relations between women and men on campus but also provide a map of male domination that members can take with them for the rest of their lives."

Michael S. Kimmeln Journal of Sociology

"A classic. Fraternity Gang Rape is a fascinating analysis of how all-male groups such as fraternities or athletic teams may create a rape culture where behavior occurs that few individuals acting alone would perpetrate. The new introduction and afterword shed light on how this pernicious problem continues today, insightfully illuminating the complicity of society in the failure of accountability for acquaintance rape."

Mary P. Koss

"Sanday draws a chilling picture of fraternity society, its debasement of women and the way it creates a looking-glass world in which gang rape can be considered normal behavior and the pressure of group-think it powerful."

The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Full of insights . . . an important contribution . . . written in accessible prose and ideal for course use."

Women's Review of Books

"A powerful and important book."

Contemporary Psychology

"Powerfully moving and analytically provocative. . . . If the college or university at which AJS readers teach has a fraternity or sorority system, this book will be useful in understanding the way those organizations not only construct the gender relations between women and men on campus but also provide a map of male domination that members can take with them for the rest of their lives."

American Journal of Sociology - Michael S. Kimmel

Sanday draws a chilling picture of fraternity society, its debasement of women and the way it creates a looking-glass world in which gang rape can be considered normal behavior and the pressure of group-think it powerful.”
• The Philadelphia Inquirer

From the Publisher

Reeves (psych, U. of Penn.) presents case studies of rape--usually the victim is drunk or high on drugs. The work ends with details of frat initiations demonstrating the inculcation of sexist and brutish attitudes. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews