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Abstract:
This paper looks at the causes and consequences of the extremes of male impulsive and predatory behaviors as evidenced by a recent spate of high profile child rape cases in South Africa, especially focusing on the rape of infant girls under two years of age. The paper refers to the disciplines of psychology, history, psychohistory, psychiatry and traumatology to support two main hypotheses. First, that the ‘virgin myth' is an historically potent example of the ‘poison container' construct, which has been responsible for violence perpetrated by adults against children for hundreds of years. Lloyd De Mause's studies of psychohistory and historical childrearing practices support this view. Second, that male predatory or impulsive violence is a function of the slow evolution of empathetic parenting, with specific reference to the intergenerational role in transforming and reshaping expressed masculinity to be culturally and socially functional. The literature on intergenerational violence and trauma is used to support this premise.
INTRODUCTION
The heinous crime of child rape shocks us as no other. The recent spate of highly profiled infant rape cases in South Africa have galvanized us to undergo a more thorough and extremely painful search – through the discourses of psychology, social theory, criminology and politics, and by examining the social politics of HIV/AIDS, and the issues of gender, power and violence. The result has been an increase of studies and a cacophony of voices. Now, it is this author's feeble attempt not to add to the din, but only to contribute in a small way to answering that question – whispered or shouted – WHY? Why do (mostly) men, rape infant (defined here as under two years of age) girls? This paper – which should be properly called an exploration – attempts an answer by simultaneously looking at an under explored area of research – the role and importance of parenting, especially boys; and by asserting the power of constructing a cultural and personal narrative about the rape of a five-month-old infant within an academic text.
Let me begin by declaring my incompetencies, not in the usual attempts at academic hubris disguised by protestations of inadequacy and feigned ignorance, but for the purposes of a real disclosure of my lack of academic authority on the subject of infant rape. I'm not a sociologist. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a criminologist and I'm not an anthropologist. I'm just a mom.
By training I'm a biologist, by profession I'm a midwife, by career I'm an international development specialist. I'm studying for a doctorate in economics at Wits, and I lecture and practice in rural and urban business economics. I'm a Renaissance Woman. A highly educated, First Nations and African American woman, born and raised in the Bronx, transplanted to South Africa by way of the rest of the world. My passion remains with the concerns, fears and aspirations of women, and with my four children, and at core – I'm just a mom.
Why are these attributes part of this exploration of infant rape or part of my disclaimer about my suitability to be speaking on the subject? Because it was as just a mom that I found myself the caretaker of a five-month-old South African girl who had, 11 days before she found herself a part of my household, been brutally raped here in Johannesburg. And it was my personal exploration of her trauma and my task in healing her that led me to this line of research.
In the midst of the antriretrovirals, the colostomy bags, the hospitalizations, the arguments with the pediatric surgeons, the care of her torn perineum and her wounded spirit, I spent months on the internet, in email conversations with the world's true academically and professionally defined authorities on infant trauma, and on international message boards with the parents of emotionally or physically vulnerable children. I began to search for and read journal articles. (And we all know when an academic starts reading journal articles a paper has been thus impregnated!)
I undertook this search for a number of reasons. First, the effort at research was a good vehicle for an intellectually gifted person to heal her own trauma of the rape of her daughter – for the instant I took this baby girl into my arms she was and always will be as much my child as if I had given birth to her.
Second, this research was my way of rising to the challenge that was issued by the first question that came to the lips of every person who met us in those initial few months – WHY?
As well, this exploration was my attempt to rationalize the emotional reactions of my three, adult sons – all of whom have reached sexual maturity – the oldest of which, now at age 28, was physically ill when he was told of the particular cabbage leaf under which his new sister had been found. How could I dare to be 99.99 percent sure that I had raised three men who would not even dream of defiling an infant girl, even as the very fact of my outrage in those early days was a heightened suspicion of all men, ALL MEN!? What had I done, as a single working mother, to raise non-violent, non-predatory, non-impulsive men, especially against all the sociological odds within my strange family that is definitively categorized as “other” “ non traditional” “not intact” and even “pathological” in all mainstream social and psychological treatises about the family (Bilblarz and Raftery 1999).
However, the fundamental reason for this exploration is that I immediately realized that in taking on the care and healing of this bruised little girl, I was also taking on the responsibility to answer her when she asked that question – WHY? Her courage demanded my thoroughness. My hubris is in sharing what I am learning, what I suspect, and what I am hypothesizing with all of you today. Thank you for putting up with this – I hope it adds something to your understanding of the subject of infant rape. (And because I am just a mom I also hope it adds something to the resolution of this issue of raising non-violent men, and in seeing that no other parent has to face the tragedy of healing a raped child.)
My interests, and the following observations of my research, focus on raising non-violent men. Therefore, I am attempting to deconstruct violent masculinity – predatory and impulsive. I will begin by clarifying my definitions. I will then look at the issues of parenting and infant rape – especially the virgin myth - from a psychohistorical perspective. I will briefly look at the functionality of masculinity and an examination of the neurobiology of violence and trauma. I will end with some comments on parenting as an exercise in intergenerational transformation.
I should also now declare that this research is in a highly unfinished state, and is definitely an ongoing literature review. This is not empirical research, except perhaps in the ways that as a feminist single mother I have experimented on my own sons for the last three decades.
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