Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus (Feminist Crosscurrents)

A powerful and important book.--Contemporary Psychology[F]ull of insights .... an important contribution .... written in accessible prose and ideal for course use--Women's Review of BooksPowerfully moving and analytically provocative.-- Michael S. Kimmel,American Journal of SociologySanday 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 InquirerAn important book [that] should be read by everyone in higher education - faculty, administrators, and students.--Contemporary SociologyTold with boldness and clarity, and drawing on insight from other cultures, this is one of the best books on rape and male socialization in several years.--Feminist Bookstore NewsEnlightening and provocative.--West Coast Review of BooksStraight out of today's headlines, this widely acclaimed and meticulously documented volume illustrates, in painstaking and painful detail, how gang rape occurs with regularity in fraternities, athletic dorms, and in other exclusively male enclaves. Drawing on interviews with both victims and fraternity members, Peggy Reeves Sanday reconstructs the daily life in the fraternity, highlighting the role played by pornography, male bonding, and degrading, often grotesque, initiation rituals.According to the research of Sanday and others -- the documentation is compelling -- gang rape occurs widely on our college campuses. Yet, these incidents, during which an often drunk or stoned woman is repeatedly assaulted by a train of fraternity brothers, are rarely prosecuted or even labeled rape, part of an institutional attitude that seeks to protect the university, privileges men and sanctions sexual power and abuse. In this dramatic expose, Sanday explores this darker side of college life with insight, sensitivity, and clarity.