Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (43 page)

1. • In Blanchard's interviews, Harry, whose major act of violence had been directed against the boyfriend-he never got his "chance" at the girl-gave this description
     of
     Keith, the leader:
     

     Some girl would be taking a sun bath [at the beach] and have her sun glasses on and he would pour sand all over her, and she would get all mad and everything, you know. You can't be relaxed when you are around him, you know, he'll grab you or pinch you or something. . . . You can't Jay down on the beach with him without the feeling that he will haul off and slug you in the stomach or some thing. When you're around Keith, you always have to be watching for him to pull one of his little stunts. . . . It built up my courage, my being with him.
     

     About himself and the rape event, Harry said:
     

     

     I was scared when it began to happen. I wanted
     to
     leave but I didn't want to say it
     to
     the other guys-you know-that I was scared. Then when this guy got out of his car and wanted his keys back, he pushed me and I hit him. . . . When somebody pushes me I hit him . . . . Almost everything I do is kind of-like on a dare.
     

     Af ter their arrest Harry and Don attempted to repudiate Keith and drew closer to each other. When Blanchard brought them together for the group Rorschach, Keith was quick to reassert his leadership. His interpretations prevailed in readings of three out of four cards. Keith saw sexual images, such as a brassiere, on cards he
     

     

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     AGAINST ouR WILL
     

     hadn't read that way on his
     .
     individual test.
     If
     Harry would dis agree, Keith would snap, "That's what it looks like
     1
     doesn't it, Don?" and Don, his "lieutenant," who had been allowed "sec onds" on the girl, went along. "It was almost," wrote Blanchard,
     

     "as though there was an attempt on Keith's part to re-create the entire rape experience in a symbolic manner. . . . This would tend to substantiate the fact that the sexual relationship and the sexual feeling in the previous rape experience was largely a relationship between the boys rather than between any of the boys and the girl involved."
     

     In an interesting sidelight, Blanchard reported that the mothers of Keith and Don both told him that the entire incident had been "the girl's fault." Af ter all, the girl had told Keith to "do what he wanted," and the girl had "masturbated" Don-a practice, his mother insisted, her son hadn't known about. Wrote Blanchard in irony, "They [the mothers] are so exquisitely sensitive to the unconscious motivation of the girl in this case while being so blind to the dynamics of their own children."
     

     Blanchard's interviews were conducted in 1957, and since that time women's collective consciousness regarding rape has been rising. Yet in 1972 while I was sitting in on a New York City pair rape trial, and was identified in the courtroom corridor as an active feminist-the victim in this case was eleven years old and the offenders were thirteen and fif teen-the fif teen-year-old's mother lunged and tried to take a sock at me. ( Her son had just been given ninety days af ter a lackluster defense by a male lawyer who tried to argue that the boy had taken his directions from the thirteen-year old off ender. )
     

     When Blanchard conducted his interviews with the black youths, he found that they "did not communicate verbally to the same extent as the white boys." He wrote, "The social distance from the white examiner may have been one of the reasons for this." Spontaneity ran high, however, on the group Rorschach.
     

     In this case Blanchard had four youths to examine. A fif th was processed as an adult offender and was not sequestered with his buddies in the juvenile detention center. The group rape had taken place af ter the five youths had picked up three black girls in their car. There was a bit of drinking and the boys suggested a drive into the hills for sex. The girls refused, but the boys drove on anyway.
     

     THE POLICE-BLOTTER RAPIST 191
     

     When they stopped the car, two of the young girls managed to escape. The third was caught and gang-raped by all five males.
     

     The four at Blanchard's disposal were Pete, "the leader," Joe, his "lieutenant," Bill and Kenny. What leadership role, if any, was played by the fif th, the "adult," offender was not recorded. Pete and Joe had previously been involved in a string of street robberies and muggings. Like the white boy, Keith, Pete appeared to his examiner as "a very sadistic youngster with a strong need to prove his masculinity." Pete went first in the gang rape, but he had to push Bill out of the way to do it.
     

     

     In
     the "guarded" interviews the youths gave to Blanchard, the psychologist felt that the boys were trying to "protect" their leader, and "would not admit that there was a definite leader."
     It
     seems to me from what Blanchard presented that in this particular group the leadership lines were not very clear, as of ten happens-psychol ogists and sociologists notwithstanding. On the individual Rorschachs only Kenny "showed considerable creative ability [and] a willingness to give more than one response to a card." Coinci dentally, Kenny was the only youth wpo did not strike the victim and he was also the last to have intercourse with her. His back ground, incidentally, was decidedly more middle class than the rest.
     

     When Blanchard got the boys together for the group Ror schach, the "rather sterile" individual responses evaporated and a lively exchange took place, marked by a pull in one direction by Pete and a puil in another direction by Kenny. None of the indi vidual Rorschachs had stimulated any sexual imagery, but in the group process Pete, "who had shown perhaps the least imaginative ability," suddenly began to see sex symbols, and homosexual sym bols at that. He was overruled by Kenriy who had to win the support of Joe. Blanchard quotes the following response to Card
     

2. We must make careful note, however, that the role of the examiner is far from neutral.
   

KENNY:
It look like two men picking up something.

BILL:
It look like two ladies to me.

KENNY:
Yeah, you can see the high heels down there.
PETE:
It look like two homosexuals. (Laughter.)
KENNY:
Ah, man, what you thinkin'?

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JoE:
It
do, man, it dol

BILL: It got high heels on, huh?

PETE (laughter ) : See, it got this up here and this down here.

( Pointing
to
the
breast area and phallic area.) KENNY: Man, that's a knee.

PETE ( more laughter ) : Man, that ain't no knee. JoE: That ain't no knee.

BILL: Man, what you talkin' about?

THE EXAMINER: Yes, show us what makes it look like a homo sexual.

PETE (giggling ) : This sticking out up here and this stickin' out down here.

THE EXAMINER: You mean the person has a breast and a penis both?

PETE: Yeah, that's it.

KENNY: It don't look like that to me. JoE:
It
sure look like it to me.

BtLL: It don't look like it to me either, man.

PETE: The way it's drawn, like that-ana'Jike that.

BILL:
It
look like two ladies washing clothes or beating on something.

JOE: To me, in my estimation, it look like opossums hanging on a tree or something.

KENNY: Well, what is it?

BILL: I don't know.

KENNY: Could be two ladies beating on something, on a drum. JoE: Two ladies. I say it's two ladies.

Bn,L: Two ladies beating on a drum. THE EXAMINER: Have you decided? JoE: Two ladies beating on a drum. THE EXAMINER: Do you all agree? ALL: Yes, yeah, that's it.

Of Freudian persuasion, Blanchard introduced his paper with the comment, "The idea of 'sharing the girl among us fellows,' congregating around a common sexual object, and being sexually stimulated together as a group certainly have their homosexual implications." Af ter presenting his evidence, he concluded that Harry's admiration of Keith's toughness was "almost masochistic" and an "erotized attachment . . . so strong that it is just short of being overtly homosexual in its content." Pete and Keith as leaders, he felt, were sexually stimulated by the group's presence

THE POLICE-BLOTTER RAPIST
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• and were able to stimulate the group in turn, but Keith's feeling was "not as obviously homosexual" as Pete's. Presented with one Rorschach card, Pete tried to get his group "to accept the concept of an anus," the psychologist reported. ( Whatever the concept, the word was clearly Blanchard's, not Pete's. )
  

Blanchard wrote in his summation,
"It
is felt that the most interesting and unique aspect of the group examination is the degree to which the sexual feeling in the leader is stimulated by the presence of the group, his feeling that he must perform for them, and, in a sense, 'exhibit himself .'* The degree to which the leader channels, crystallizes, and directs the attention of the group to sexual matters seems to be of primary importance in the develop ment of a group rape."

I don't think we need go as far afield as Blanchard to gain some understanding of the group-rape phenomenon. Homosexual ity, overt or latent, may be present in a variety of innocuous situations, such as Friday-night bowling "with the boys," and so what?
(It
may also be present in a Tuesday-night consciousness raising session with the women, m1d so what? ) The Freudian approach to latent homosexuality, or ambivalence about homo sexuality, has always been to sniff it out as a dangerous, causative factor, and
this
I believe is dangerous.

Harry may indeed have had a crush on Keith, and Pete, if he continued his life of crime, may today be happily raping other men in Soledad prison, but the reinforced sadistic impulses of both gangs, stemming from a need to find or prove their masculinity-a far cry from the need to either hide or "act out" their homosexual ity-is much more central to the rape of women. I have seen boys like Harry on New York City subway trains being jabbed and pummeled
by
"leaders" like Keith or Pete, and I have seen the mixture of fear and respect in their eyes and watched them in turn jab and pummel younger boys or Wrigley gum machines. This has nothing to do with masochism or homosexuality. I read it as di rectly related to Wolfgang's theory of the subculture of violence. These youths on the subway platform, or hanging around a rural gas station, are schooling themselves in the ways of violence; they