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From: tami@calmasd.UUCP (Tami Morse)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Re: Re RAPE, etc.../ "understanding" horrible behavior and people
Message-ID: <525@calmasd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Aug-85 20:55:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: calmasd.525
Posted: Thu Aug  8 20:55:20 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 06:40:01 EDT
References: <739@udenva.UUCP> <540@hou2g.UUCP> <3014@hplabsb.UUCP> <6443@ucla-cs.ARPA> <1698@mnetor.UUCP>
Reply-To: tami@calmasd.UUCP (Tami Morse)
Organization: Calma Company, San Diego, CA
Lines: 50

In article <1698@mnetor.UUCP> sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) writes:
>
>I personally don't think there is anything wrong with trying to
>understand what goes on through a rapist's mind.  I think it is an 
>obsolutely necessary pursuit in order to stop rape.
>
...
>The best work on rape that I have seen so far has been Susan
>Brownmiller's book, which she wrote already 10 years ago, I believe.
>The title is something like "men, women, and rape".
>

Susan Brownmiller's book is called "Against Our Will: Men, Women and
Rape", and it is a very good analysis of the societal bases for rape.

>
>By the way, my opinion (and that of quite a few feminists) is that rape
>is not a personal problem of a few individuals with a distorted world
>view, but a deep societal problem of the inequality between the sexes.
>Society will have to be cured if we want the individuals cured.  

Another good book that answers to this and also the observation that we
need to understand what goes on in a rapist's mind to end rape once and 
for all is the book 'Men and Rape' (I've forgotten the author's name),
in which a man interviews other men on the subject of rape. The
interviewees include rapists and men whose SOs have been raped, as well
as men who had had no such direct contact with rape. One of the most
striking (to me) interviews was with a male file clerk who felt women 
used their good looks to make men feel powerless. He watched women in
the office where he worked come in dressed up and looking good, and 
flirting with the more powerful men there, totally ignoring him. The 
sense I got was of frustration and powerlessness, and he said it made
him so mad that he might very well rape. This isn't a personal problem,
this is a societal one -- a matter of class distinctions, women as
status objects, sexual baiting in a professional environment... As long
as power is an aphrodisiac, as long as sex is a valid way for women to 
improve their positions in life and more effective than ways that are
more personally rewarding, as long as women are seen on any level as
prizes to be claimed, rape will exist.

Sorry to get so preachy, I just got carried away. Anyway, check out
these two books; they are enlightening.

>-- 
>Sophie Quigley
>{allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie

Tami Morse
G.E. Calma Co., San Diego, CA
{ihnp4,decvax,ucbvax}!sdcsvax!calmasd!tami