The fact that the traditional male privilege has continuously faded away through time has resulted in the increasing use of violence in order to ensure that women are put women "in their place" as indicated by Sheffield (1987).The resulting fear of violence has therefore made women to modify their way of living since they are depraved of certain fundamental freedoms. Racial oppression

Slavery has been note to be a key factor in the occurrence of rape cases. The African-American women were exposed to institutionalized rape while the African-American men who raped white women were lynched. A historical account reveals that most of the rapists who were executed in America were African-Americans. This is despite the fact that more Black American women got rape but just did not report it (LaFree, 1989).

Class oppression

The issues of racism and sexism in the societal system got reinforced by the dominant class system that resulted in more benefit for the rich and powerful. This is coupled with the fact that rape cases and laws have historically had an inclination or rather bias to class has resulted in the protection of rapists and the oppression of their victims. The main reason as to why the upper class sort protection from law is in order to protect their status as such assaults on their wives and children eroded their social status. In this society where women are regarded as the property of men, the rape of women has always not been given much concern by the existing legislative systems (Davis, 1981) .The criticism of this outlook is that it pays no attention to shared values and social stability.

Symbolic interactionism portrayal of rape

The social learning theory postulates that rape is a learned behavior. All the discussions regarding the physical abuse of women have to include a strong element of societal beliefs regarding the concerned gender at a macro level. The case in a patriarchal society is that men are taught to be aggressive so as to exude dominance as opposed to the case of women who are highly encouraged to be both passive and dependent on the men. These beliefs are unfortunately reinforced by the mainstream media. This portrays sexual violence as a sign of masculinity.This outlook has been heavily criticized for focusing mainly on the micro level while ignoring the more macro issues involved.

Misconception

As much as most cases of rape have been perpetrated by men against women, there is a silent form of rape perpetrated against men by women (Reich, 2001).There has been a lot of questions as to why rape scholars have shown a lot of reluctance in the discussion of female-on-male. Maybe they believe that no man can be raped by a woman and that "rape comes...

All men, women and children must be respected equally by our laws and societal norms. Rae should therefore be shunned and perpetrators should be deal with to the fullest extent of the law regardless of their gender.
References

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Davis, a., (1981), "Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist," in Women, Race, and Class, New York: Vintage Books

Fattah, E.A. (1994). Some problematic concepts, unjustified criticism and popular misconceptions. In G.F. Kirchhoff, E. Kosovski, & H.J. Schneider (Eds.), International debates of victimology (pp. 82-103). Moenchengladbach, Germany: World Society of Victimology.

Funk, RE (1993)Stopping Rape: A Challenge for Men (Philadelphia: New Society, 1993), p19.

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MacKinnon, C.A,(2006), Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

MacKinnon, CA. 2006. "Defining Rape Internationally: A Comment on Akayesu." Pp. 237-246 in Are Women Human? Catherine MacKinnon. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Maletzky, B.M. (1996). Denial of treatment or treatment of denial? Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 8(1), 1-5.

National Center for Victims of Crime & Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center. (1992). Rape in American: A Report to the Nation. Arlington, VA: National Center for Victims of Crime.

Kendall, TD (1996) Pornography, Rape, and the Internet

LaFree, G. (1989). Rape and Criminal Justice: The social construction of sexual assault. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company

Scully, D.(1990). Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted Rapists. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Sheffield, C (1987).Hate Violence

http://spot.pcc.edu/~rwolf/sheffield.html

Thornhill, R. And Palmer, C. (2000), a Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Cambridge: MIT Press

Warren, J. & Hazelwood, R.R. (2002) Relational patterns associated with sexual sadism: A study of 20 wives and girlfriends. Journal of Family Violence, 17(1), 75-89.