Our Brotherhood and Your Sister: Building Anti-Rape Community in the Fraternity

SUMMARY

Research shows that male peer influence is a significant predictor of violent sexual behavior. However, men challenging sexual violence within their male peer communities may exert a counter-influence, shifting community norms and behaviors. Using the Fraternity Peer Rape Education Program as a case study, this article examines the ways that fraternity men in a peer rape education program make sense of and interact within their communities. Through coded interviews, this article examines participants' perceptions of change within themselves, within their interactions with fraternity brothers, and within their fraternities. Learning about sexual violence altered participants' worldview and created a communal sense of partnership and responsibility, while simultaneously limiting the traditional ways that fraternal communities are maintained. This experience provides lessons for how we may begin creating communities of men against sexual violence, as well as what support may be required for such messy, nonlinear change processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Community
• education
• fraternity
• men
• rape

The author thanks Anita Hund for her encouragement and faith in this project; and the men of the Fraternity Peer Rape Education Program for continuing to challenge themselves.

Notes

It is important to note that Banyard et al. (2004) advocate that bystander education should approach everyone, not just men, and they are critical of the all-male education advocated by Berkowitz (2004).

I have chosen to use verbatim quotes as opposed to cleaning up messy language. Although this preserves the honesty and emotion of the statement, it may also mislead the reader into further stereotyping of fraternity men. The reader is asked to remember that these men are incredibly complex individuals.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ross A. Wantland

Ross Wantland is the Coordinator of Sexual Assault Education and a Masters Student in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.