What Is The Difference Between Boswell And Spade

Historically, rich and powerful individuals with more authority have control of labeling what is not normal and what is deviant. Social norms, like laws, are created by the rich and powerful to protect their interest; so that they can socially construct deviance and crime to their advantage. The article Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why Are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women by Ayres Boswell and Joan Spade personifies this process. Specifically, Boswell and Spade analyze social and gendered relations in male fraternities that cause high incidence of violence against women on college campuses. They identify the factors that can create rape culture, and how it may be justified. Rape culture is “a set of values and beliefs
There are many factors Boswell and Spade discuss to be low and high risk. Low risk parties provide a safe and friendly environment for women to interact with opposite genders, while the atmosphere of a high risk party is less friendly with less interaction between opposite genders. Engagement between men and women are also different, in a low risk party men and women have friendly conversation with a hit of flirtatious, while engagement with different genders in a high risk party is strictly flirtatious. The gender ratio is also different between both environment, low risk parties have an equal ratio of men and women while high risk parties have a skewed gender ratio; there might be more men or more women. Furthermore, men and women are more likely to be segregated, with both genders on opposite sides of each other. Lastly, respect for women looks different between the two environments, while the respect for women at a low risk party extends to the women bathrooms, respect for women does not extent to bathrooms and men are usually rude and physically rough towards women at high risk
Every black fraternity party has very loud music throughout the night, it is very difficult to interacts with individuals verbally at their parties. This characterizes their party as high risk because the loud music limits men and women to engage in friendly conversations. Boswell and Spade characterize this to be a high risk factor, because it implies the men are only there to dance and hook up with the women. Furthermore, the men at the parties are very aggressive when it comes to dancing. If a man wants to dance with a woman, he either comes behind her and starts dancing or he grabs her by the arm and pulls her towards him. This promotes a dangerous environment for women because it illustrates an aggressive form of getting consent, making the atmosphere unsafe and unfriendly for women. In addition, men at black fraternity parties pick up women; this is a way men chose to dance with the women. Many times the men at the parties pick up the women without permission, and this promotes a dangerous environment for women because the chances of them getting injured