Please respond if you have any insight, or if you could point me to an applicable thread:
What is the psychology/motivation behind gang rape? Basically, what makes someone in a group think, "This is a good idea." I'm assuming issues like peer pressure, hazing, and group acceptance in war situations, etc. apply, but has any research been done to propose any solid theories into a specific motivation to engage in an activity? I'm looking for something beyond the obvious.Well IANAGR, but my understanding was it was largely due to men engaging in hazing, or trying to intimidate ‘uppity’ women.
The word tournantee is a French adjective meaning “turning” and is used as a slang term to mean a gang rape. According to the testimony of numerous victims, local women who stray from traditional conduct in the immigrant neighborhoods, such as behaving and dressing like a westerner, or wanting to live as Europeans or refusing to wear traditional clothes have been targeted for tournantes
The gang rape of Teena Branden (which was documented in the movie ‘boys don’t cry’) seems to have been a rape that fit this design too (intimidating someone and keeping them in their place).
Here is a book with a chapter on the subject.
There was also a case in the early 90’s the Glen Ridge rape where a retarded girl was gang raped (with a bat and broomstick) by a bunch of jocks.
If you have’t already read Our Guys, which is a very good book about it.
Well… people in groups often don’t think and many gang rapes involve a lot of alcohol and drugs for both victims and perpetrators.
In other cases, such as war crimes and honor killings, the rape is designed as a punishment. It’s considered shaming to the victim in a way that not much else would be, especially when a culture elevates issues of sexual purity, virginity and paternity/racial purity. One recent gang rape/honor killing in the Arab world was motivated by the belief that virgins get special treatment in Heaven.
Victims of rape also tend to internalize the experience in a way that doesn’t generally happen with other attacks or torture. If you beat someone up, they hate you; if you rape them, they hate themselves (or at least tend to look at themselves as dirty, damaged, shameful, etc.). The motivation here is really not about the sex per se, just the emphasis on damaging the other person.
There’s no “psychology” to it at all! The men involved in gang rapes are just sociopathic savages; there’s no thought process behind it. The biologist Edward Wilson put forth a theory in his Violence Initiative that there is a certain small percentage of humankind that is simply “broken” from birth, destined to be violent, evil people. It has nothing to do with their environment, upbringing, or anything else; it’s just in their DNA. I agree with this theory, for the most part. Sociopathic brutes gravitate towards each other, and gangs of them practice their savage behavior on the rest of normal society.
The Medical Research Council conducted a survey into gang rape in South Africa recently and discovered that 25% of men surveyed had committed rape. It found that gang rape was seen as a form of “male bonding”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8107039.stm
http://www.mrc.ac.za/gender/violence_hiv.pdf
This theory ignores peer pressure, the strange group dynamics that cause “mob mentality” and the madness of crowds, that Stanford prison experiment (I think that’s the one I’m thinking of), and basically the entire environment involved in shaping a human being (individually and in groups), their personalities and their day to day actions.
I’m sure some people are broken from birth, but many, many others have been twisted that way.
Zimbardo (the Stanford Prison Experiment guy) mentions gang rape a bit in his book The Lucifer Effect. He doesn’t go into much detail on gang rape specifically, but does discuss various atrocities committed by groups of people.
Zimbardo’s contention is that it’s not the bad apples, it’s the bad barrels - social environments that lead to people behaving in ways that seem atrocious to those not immersed in those situations. He stresses that many of the people discussed are often seen as having been exemplary citizens, or “normal”, by the expectations of society. A good chunk of his book is spent drawing parallels between the SPE and Abu Grahib.
In addition to peer pressure and the like mentioned above, Zimbardo notes that quite a bit of study has been done that indicates that dehumanizing or even demonizing the “other” is a common feature of groups that eventually engage in such atrocities. It’s a lot easier to justify torture, assault, or rape, if the victim is seen as inhuman scum, or vermin.
That last part about the “other” I think is true of warfare but not of general crime. Most crime is intra-racial - black on black, white on white, etc.
“Sociopathic savages” have psychologies and thought processes. Someone with “no psychology” and “no thought process” wouldn’t be capable of doing more than sit in a corner and drool.
In that case, they want to fuck, and the easiest way to obtain sex is to gang up on someone smaller or weaker with several other like-minded sociopathic apes and take what they want.
My thesis is that it mostly about power in one form or another. The ability to degrade someone who is not of your own group. This could include a racial other, but don’t kid youself that race is the only or even prime motivator.
A friend of mine was gang raped. The girls held her down whilst their b/fs raped her. Everyone was white. My friend was quite convinced she was going to die.
Their are a lot of very naive ideas about motivation. Anyone who thinks it is about sexual gratification is kidding themselves.
Social repression seems to have been the “cause” also for Phoolan Devi (as seen in the movie “Bandit queen”).
No-one was actually raped during the Stanford Prison Experiment, were they? Another interesting test where humanity rather failed was the Milgram experiment, but that was more on an individual level.
If only the world was that morally black and white. No human being is born more “evil” than any other. As Milgram and Zimbardo’s imfamous studies indicate, anyone can become a savage.
Race isn’t the only way one can be percieved as “other”.
Maybe anyone can become a savage (in a psychology experiment), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone has the same capacity to engage in actual criminal behavior. Antisocial personality disorder is recognized in the DSM-IV; some features of the disorder include a lack of regard for the law and social contract, and a tendency to engage in criminal behavior. Many violent offenders have been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy. (Whether APD is due to nature or nurture, or both, is still being researched). cite, cite and cite.
Per the OP here are some articles that seem to be on point
http://www.liv.ac.uk/Psychology/staff/LAlison/european.pdf
http://www.liv.ac.uk/Psychology/staff/LAlison/lalison29.pdf
http://www.liv.ac.uk/Psychology/staff/LAlison/lalison11.pdf
I’m sorry but anyone who rapes anyone is automaticly inhuman scum. It’s about being incredibily misgyntenic (sp?) It’s hatred of women/race/disabilty (I know SO many disabled women who have been raped!)
WTF?!?!?! The girls were inhuman bitches and I hope they went to jail.
Not that I disagree with you, but interesting that you single out the girls as being inhuman. I realise why, but the thinking absolutely relates to the relative ease of inflicting pain/distress/suffering on ‘the other’ - even to the extent that the other might be women, disabled, ethnically different, perceived as lower/higher class or a whole host of other characteristics. This ease becomes even more apparent in multiple gatherings and ‘groupthink’ or mob mentality takes over. I think it’s absolutely true that given the right ingredients, almost all of us are capable of extreme and horrific acts, it’s just that the bar varies depending on our individual and cultural values and mores.
Agreed ANY rapist is worse than scum.
I haven’t got a link, but this week 16 members of a football team in Victoria, Australia have been charged with gang rape.
And, even more horrifying, it seems that they are in the 17-18 year old range.
I have no words to describe my disgust.