Rape Is Unknown In Some Cultures

What a society tolerates or condones is what takes place within it

Some people seem to be under the impression that rape is largely unavoidable. It’s human nature or just what some men do. In fact, it’s so inescapable that even women do it to some extent, but this is an erroneous belief. What takes place in a society is a reflection of that culture and what it allows.

In patriarchal dominance hierarchies (which are most of the world’s cultures at this time), we have laws against rape and almost nobody would say they condone it, but it goes on rather rampantly nonetheless because domination of others is viewed as an intrinsic aspect of manliness. In the US until just a few decades ago, women were overtly viewed as being there for the purposes of serving and pleasing men. Well into the 1970s, women’s magazines routinely offered up articles on how to be as helpful, accommodating, and attractive to your man as possible.

“Rape may be a way of proving one’s manhood, an important concern for adolescent males.” In rape cultures, dominance and control over women become aspects of achieving and experiencing masculinity, and rape, while not condoned, becomes part of the culture at large.

Even the relatively gender-egalitarian Nordic countries have a huge rape problem. Despite some greater opportunities in the Nordic countries, the roles of women are still deeply entrenched, and old myths and stereotypes abound. In 2019 Amnesty International published a report on the gravity of the situation, noting that an absence of consent-based laws, as well as antiquated patriarchal beliefs, contribute to this ongoing problem.

Social stigma and a lack of trust in the justice system often mean that women and girls fail to report attacks, and those that do, are frequently failed by callous and prejudiced justice systems or outdated laws.

However, there are quite a few cultures around the world where rape is either mostly or entirely unknown. These are often matrilineal societies where the role of women is valued, respected, and seen as intrinsic to the culture. These are not reverse patriarchies — dominance hierarchies where women have higher status and greater social power. Instead, they are cultures that believe in balance and mutual support between men and women, usually with particular deference to mothers.

Scully’s (1990) study of sexual violence views rape as learned behavior within a patriarchal culture. According to her findings rapists as compared to other felons are more likely to believe in a double standard regarding gender roles and they identify more strongly with the traditional male role.

In cultures where there is no historical belief in male dominance, or coercion and violence as a demonstration of masculinity, rape is nearly unheard of. In fact, in at least some of these cultures, rape is seen as shamefully unmasculine behavior. The Minangkabau of Indonesia, the world’s largest matrilineal culture, is a place where men move into their wives' homes after marriage. It is also a place where rape is largely unknown, in part because it is considered unmanly.

For several societies, it is reported that rape is not only rare but also seen as a shameful act which puts a man’s virility and his very humanity in question.

Among the Apache (Farrer, 1999), “Until very recent times, no proper male person would rape a female person (local or enemy), because the rapist lost face not being ‘man enough’ to get a woman on his own.” “An Apache man suffers enormous status loss by forcing himself sexually on anyone: ‘He does not even deserve to be called a man, a human being’” (Farrer, 1997, p. 242).

For the Gerai of Borneo, rape is an almost incomprehensible idea, in part because their conceptions of both gender and intercourse are slightly different from Western understandings. Men and women are viewed as largely the same, and work rather than biological sex is what determines gender.

There was no word for rape and no conception that it was even possible for a man to force a woman to have sex against her will.

Although the society is relatively egalitarian, both men and women speak of men being “higher.” In law this means a woman’s testimony is worth 7/10 of a man’s, and husbands have certain rights over women that women don’t have over their husbands. Even so, the social inequality that does exist does not flow over into personal relationships, the construction of gender and conceptions of sex and what intercourse is, that can make rape possible. Violence is uncommon but not absent from society as a whole, and aggression is not valued but derided as a mark of laziness and incompetence.

In this cultural context, conceptions and metaphors of male penetration, conquest and aggression are absent from the way sex is discussed and practiced, along with female passivity, vulnerability and self-protection. The phallus is not the signifier of power it is in Western culture. During intercourse, the penis is “taken into” the vagina — quite a different way of even thinking about what sex entails, than in the dominant Western model of active male dominance and female receptiveness (a model that even permeates the way ova and sperm are discussed). All this together shapes the assumptions of the Gerai about sex, what it consists of and what is even both physically possible and for individuals, desirable, making forced sex something outside of Gerai experience and thought — including, I assume, even fantasy.

The Mosuo of China are a matrilineal culture that does not even have a concept of husbands or fatherhood. Everyone lives in the home of their mother or grandmother and couples never formalize their relationship or even live together. Men help to raise their nieces and nephews, but individual autonomy is considered to be almost a sacred thing and possessiveness is ridiculed. Rates of violence in general are quite low and rape is nearly unheard of. This has been attributed to both a culture of sexual permissiveness where multiple partners are not unusual as well as a culture with high respect for women.

These are just a few of the cultures where rape functionally does not exist.

There are a wide variety of theories about what is behind sexually abusive behavior in adults. Certainly, attitudes like hostile sexism, prejudice against women, and dislike of women (particularly those seen as violating traditional gender norms) can be seen as stronger predictors of rape, they are not necessarily the only causes. Nonetheless, in cultures where women are highly valued and seen as part of a social balance with men, rape is exceedingly rare or even non-existent.

In these cultures, rape is either not tolerated (punished with either death or banishment), construed as a source of shame and unmanliness, or simply socially inconceivable. What is tacitly condoned, justified, and tolerated in a society has a huge impact on what goes on in that culture. Framing rape as something that is unfortunate but somewhat inevitable is simply a way to abdicate responsibility for creating a culture that does not tolerate it. What if instead of a culture that glorifies violence, we had one that derided it as a mark of laziness and incompetence like the Gerai do? What a difference that would make!

© Copyright Elle Beau 2023