Fraternity Gang Rape

Book excerpt: “Very accessible . . . Sanday’s book explores the vulnerability of college women, and of young men seeking to prove their manhood.” —The Washington Post This widely acclaimed and meticulously documented volume illustrates, in painstaking and disturbing detail, the nature of fraternity gang rape. Drawing on interviews with both victims and fraternity members, Peggy Reeves Sanday reconstructs daily life in the fraternity, highlighting the role played by pornography, male bonding, and degrading, often grotesque, initiation and hazing rituals. In a substantial new introduction and afterword, Sanday updates the incidences of fraternity gang rape on college campuses today, highlighting such recent cases as that of Duke University and others in the headlines. Sanday also explores the nature of hazing at sororities on campus and how Greek life in general contributes to a culture which promotes the exploitation and sexual degradation of women on campus. More broadly, Sanday examines the nature of campus life today and the possibility of creating a rape-free campus culture. “Sanday 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 is powerful.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “A classic. Fraternity Gang Rape is a fascinating analysis of how all-male groups such as fraternities or athletic teams may create a rape culture where behavior occurs that few individuals acting alone would perpetrate. The new introduction and afterword shed light on how this pernicious problem continues today, insightfully illuminating the complicity of society in the failure of accountability for acquaintance rape.” —Mary P. Koss, coeditor of No Safe Haven “Chilling.” —The Miami Herald