ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the group and organizational practices and conditions that create in fraternities an abusive social context for women. Rapes are perpetrated on dates, at parties, in chance encounters, and in specially planned circumstances. Many rapes, far more than come to the public's attention, occur in fraternity houses on college and university campuses, yet little research has analyzed fraternities at American colleges and universities as rape-prone contexts. Most of the research on fraternities reports on samples of individual fraternity men. When fraternity members talked about the kind of pledges they prefer, a litany of stereotypical and narrowly masculine attributes and behaviors was recited and feminine or woman-associated qualities and behaviors were expressly denounced. Financial affluence or wealth, a male-associated value in American culture, is highly valued by fraternities. Characteristics of the pledge experience are rationalized by fraternity members as necessary to help pledges unite into a group, rely on each other and join together against outsiders.
