Book Description

Go to Author's Homepage. A classic. Fraternity Gang Rape is a fascinating analysis of how all male groups such as fraternities or athletics 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, co-editor of No Safe Haven "A powerful and important book. --Contemporary Psychology Full of insights .... an important contribution .... written in accessible prose and ideal for course use. --Women's Review of Books. Powerfully moving and analytically provocative . . . If the college or university at which AJS readers teach has a fraternity or sorority system, this book will be useful in understanding the way those organizations not only construct the gender relations between women and men on campus but also provide a map of male domination that members can take with them for the rest of their lives. --Michael S. Kimmel, American Journal of Sociology. 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. An important book [that] should be read by everyone in higher education–faculty, administrators, and students. --Contemporary Sociology. "Very accessible . . . Sanday's book explores the vulnerability of college women, and of young men seeking to prove their manhood. I read it on vacation. My daughter has just turned 12. I told her I wanted her to read it before she goes to college. --Judy Mann, The Washington Post Chilling. --The Miami Herald "In her well-regarded text, Sanday points out how frequently athletes are involved in group sexual misconduct against women. --The New York Times Told 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 News A rare and valuable book: deeply illuminating and yet unbearably painful. --Andrea Dworkin "Enlightening and provocative. --West Coast Review of Books. Straight 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.