Sexual violence blamed on male stereotypes

BOSTON — Until Americans recognize that rape and other forms of sexual aggression are linked to pervasive stereotypes about sex and masculinity, the nation will not be able to curb sexual violence, several researchers said at a meeting here this week.

Most men consider themselves very different from those who rape women and children or sexually exploit them in therapy, researchers said. For example, many male mental health professionals prefer to see the problem of sexually abusive therapists as a “pathology” afflicting only a “few bad apples who need to be drummed out of the profession.”

“What they need to understand is that this is a male problem,” said Gary Brooks, a psychologist at the O.E. Teague Veterans Administration Medical Center in Temple, Texas.

Brooks and other researchers, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, blamed traditional stereotypes about appropriate male behavior for the unacceptably high levels of sexual aggression in U.S. society. According to current estimates, 1 in every 5 women and 1 in every 6 men will be raped at some point in their lives.

The researchers said powerfully ingrained stereotypes may be one reason why. Boys are taught from an early age that it is manly to want and demand sex, for example; that the more sex a man has, the better, and that pornography and fantasies about raping women are harmless.

Males also learn to think about sex in recreational and/or violent terms, the researchers said. Some of the language adolescents and young men commonly use about sex reinforces the idea that sex is a violent activity, devoid of mutual intimacy, they said.

“Sexual violence is embedded in our language and our culture,” said Joseph Weinberg, an educational consultant for the Wisconsin Institute for Psychotherapy in Madison, who works with a group known as Men Stopping Rape. “When we break rape into its component pieces, we have to see it is a part of normal male behavior,” he said.

Weinberg said he is often asked to counsel fraternities, athletic teams and other all-male groups that foster admiration for macho behavior. Research shows that members of these groups are more likely to engage in inappropriate sexual aggression.

“At some point in my sessions with these groups, someone will say, `It’s the language we use that causes rape,’ and they’re right,” Weinberg said.

At the same time, men are taught that they are not supposed to express their feelings or show emotions, he said. “Normal men are perceived as tough, strong, alone and carved in rock,” Weinberg said.

“The only two sanctioned emotional outlets for men are anger, which is often expressed through organized sports, or sex,” said Don-David Lusterman, a psychologist from Baldwin, N.Y., who studies problems of male infidelity. “Many men have difficulty relating interpersonally without the sexual experience. Just touching or crying is simply forbidden.”

As a result, researchers said, many men feel that they are entitled to sex. Recent research found that men who are particularly likely to engage in infidelity or sexual abuse are those who cannot openly express their emotions to their wives or primary partners and who therefore try to satisfy their repressed emotional needs through forbidden sexual encounters.

Lusterman cited the case of a New York police officer who felt he needed to protect his wife from the “crap and filth of his job” and as a result never confided to her about the demands of the job. He did, however, feel comfortable confiding in a succession of mistresses and could not understand why his wife eventually divorced him.

Other men use sex to gain power and control over women, researchers said. In a recent study of psychotherapists who sexually abuse their patients, researchers concluded that these men are acting out of a desire for power or out of deep, underlying anger and a sense of sadism.