Which Way Nigeria?

In trying to figure out why sexual assault continues to be a problem in Missoula (80 alleged cases in the last three years) and at the University of Montana (more than a dozen in the last year and a half) – it seems important to understand why men rape.

Michael Kimmel has been researching that question for many years, and has written several books about it. Kimmel is distinguished professor of sociology at the State University of New York and a leading authority on male sexual violence. He was an expert witness for the prosecution in a high-profile rape scandal at the University of Colorado a few years ago, where numerous football players and recruits were charged with sexual assault.

Kimmel has also been an expert witness for the civil rights division of the Department of Justice in sex discrimination cases involving the Citadel and Virginia Military Institute. That’s the same federal division that is currently investigating how the Missoula police, county attorney’s office, and UM have handled sexual assault allegations over the last three years.

One of the leading assumptions about why men rape is that they are overcome by lust and testosterone, and in certain situations, just can’t help themselves.

“Rape is not a crime that is driven by lust,” Kimmel said. “Rape is a crime that is driven by contempt – it’s driven by contempt for women, by seeing women as basically the object of a conquest. And if she doesn’t want to [have sex], [these] men feel entitled to take what they want anyway.”

Kimmel calls it an “adversarial” view of sex, where men are competing against the woman – and someone must win.

“Where women have something that men want and men have to break down their resistance and conquer them. So if she gives and he gets, then he wins and she loses.”

Peer support for this attitude of sex as a competition is strong, according to Kimmel. He says men are often encouraged at a young age by their male peers not to listen to “no” from a woman, but to continue to pressure her to “give in.”

And then there is the sanctioned aggression that is hard to turn off.

“This is why for example the military and sports, that foster aggression, tend to also be arenas in which there’s an elevated risk of sexual assault,” said Kimmel.

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Kimmel says sexual assault committed by male athletes can be traced to their privileged status – the feeling they can do whatever they want and get away with it.

“They’ll always have somebody watching out for them,” said Kimmel, “always have somebody to cover for them, clean up their messes etc.”

Kimmel believes this “culture of support” is why, when a rape scandal breaks out, it shouldn’t be a surprise. And he says it’s that culture that leads to a variety of levels of “not listening.”

“First, the individual case of the guy who doesn’t listen when the woman says ‘no, I don’t want to,’ ” says Kimmel. “Second, the individual coach, or athletic director, assistant coaches who know about it but they don’t really hear what people are saying. Then the administration, which may hear complaints from women saying ‘this stuff’s going on, you gotta do something’ – they don’t hear it. Then the police say ‘oh come on they just gave us free tickets to the game, we love these guys’ – they don’t hear it.”

That refusal to listen is a big reason why, according to Kimmel, so many women who are sexually assaulted don’t feel they can report the assault and be believed. And he says the ones who do report, having overcome all that skepticism and pressure to keep quiet, are not likely making it up.

“My feeling is, if a woman is brave enough to come forward and say that this happened to her, I would say odds are she’s telling the truth,” said Kimmel, “because she has had to go through every one of those obstacles – people telling her not to do it, people trying to talk her out of it – all the way along. So I think if she’s part of the 2 percent that actually goes and reports and says ‘I want to file charges’ – [we should] believe her.”

The message Kimmel most wants to get across is that silence is what keeps rape possible – not the silence of women, but the silence of witnesses and bystanders and most importantly, men.

“Rape culture – the permission men seem to feel that they have, to act on that contempt for women that leads to rape – it turns out that the thing that will really stop that is if other guys stand up and say ’don’t do that – you can’t do that: This isn’t just a women’s problem, rape and sexual assault are men’s problems, and men have to be part of the solution, and part of that solution is men learning to challenge each other.”

And all of us learning to listen.

Sally Mauk is news director at Montana Public Radio in Missoula.