Why do men rape? Confront abuse
SINCE the passing of Khensani Maseko from Rhodes University on August 3, taking her own life after she could not bear the pain and the shame of being sexually violated by a person she trusted, I have been trying to answer this one nagging question in combing a mountain of research and information – why do men rape?
I agree with Sherry Hamby, editor of the journal Psychology of Violence, when she says: “If you don’t really understand perpetrators, you’re never going to understand sexual violence”.
Why do men rape? What is the key motivator? What are they looking for?
Do they derive any vanity or indulgence in non-consensual sex that is not available in consensual sex. Who are these men?
The rape statistics in South Africa are chilling. According to Statistics SA, one in three women will be raped in South Africa in their lifetime. The statistics further say, a woman is raped in South Africa every 26 seconds.
The first stumbling block many researchers hit almost immediately is just how diverse the background of sexual offenders is, which makes it difficult to deduce any strong pattern. There is no particular defining feature of a rapist, not in terms of class, race, ethnicity or geography. Rapists are everywhere and all around us.
There are however some emerging patterns as multiple researches are conducted by many academics and experts in many parts of the world, including in India, where the rape culture is at its worst.
The first recurring feature about rapists is that they start very young – some research puts that age at 15-19 years of age. These are teenage years with all manner of pressures on young boys for sexual conquests that can lead them to cross the line, most times on girls they are already familiar or even friends with.
Pressures to have sex as a teenager comes to everyone, but this does not explain why any teen would consider non consensual sex as an option.
Teenage years are the height of our vulnerability. Everything is so real and so emotionally charged, being popular at school, being loved, passing at school, celebrated in sports, everything is so intense that losing can feel like the end of the world.
Many young people get a sense of losing control at this age and live the rest of their lives trying to get it.
The culture of validating our manhood through a power spell over women, gained by some, lost by others, is the reason those who lost it in their youth, will never feel complete without dominating women in some way.
Society has made women a prized possession, creating losers and winners among men depending on their ability to conquer. This makes rape, as many experts have said, more about power than about sex itself.
How do we get out of this “toxic masculinity” that makes us all potential rapists.
There are deep-seated issues with each individual that will need intense therapy and character remoulding. We must therefore have immediate solutions, mid-term and long-term solutions in our approach to eliminating this evil among ourselves.
The first step we need to take as a people is to “confront abusive peers”. There is not a single abuser who is not a friend with someone, or a family to someone, who knows that he is an abuser.
We have a divine responsibility to confront one another and man to man, we have to protect women using the equivalent power we have as men to stop other men. Yes there is a risk to this, but given the blood that is already on the floor, it may take a bit more to put a stop to all of it.
Second, we need to be what many researchers call “empowered by stander”. Even if we do not know the victim or perpetrator, we have a God given responsibility to defend any woman who is subjected to physical and verbal abuse. We must make no apologies about that.
Most important, we need a culture shift that can only be driven by the good men. We need to stop making women conquest a validation of our manhood.
We need to talk differently about women, beyond their bodies, beyond their pretty faces.
We must tap inside ourselves, and find that respect that seems to only be reserved for our mothers. We must share that respect to every woman.
It is men who rape, it is men who can stop rape. Yonela Diko ANC Western Cape Media Liaison Officer Cape Town