it smells to me of a guy who thinks he’s being unfairly persecuted, and who is up late drunk and worried, and who wants to point out in his pathetic way how he thinks the charges are so ridiculous that they might as well be accusing him of trying to murder and torture for sexual pleasure.

Why would he be feeling persecuted? There had been no charges made at the time the email was sent which was just a couple of hours after the event allegedly occurred. However if he was “worried” as you say, that does point to the assault actually occurring, because otherwise why would he need to be worried?

Fantasizing about killing and skinning a woman for sexual pleasure is common among the more deranged serial killers, although I imagine this thug is too stupid to be a serial killer.

The answer to your last question, I believe, Indy, would be a sense of entitlement in this country based on wealth, gender, and athletic ability, and sometimes amplified by youth and (dominant) race.

Please insert that hypothesis somewhere in your indentity theory study if it hasn’t already raised its head. And if it hasn’t raised its head, please ask yourself why.

Of course it has. You couldn’t know this, of course, but I’ve been a feminist since I was a kid in the 70s, I’ve been studying feminist theories in depth for well over a decade now, and I was a double minor in women’s studies and philosophy in college.

I was also raped of my virginity by my jock boyfriend when I was 15, and I’ve always sought to understand the precise mechanism by which this otherwise seemingly “nice” boy nonetheless managed to rape me and then rationalize having done so. And part of it was about jock culture, constructions of masculinity, youth, and entitlement, but part of it was about his individual psychology — not all the boys on his team were rapists, and the young man who helped to cover up that rape for him was not a part of the jock culture at my school.

So, part of the identity study is very personal to me, as it is to many women who’ve been victimized by rape. My particular defense mechanism against lots of things that terrify me is learning how to understand the nuances of how they function, and when you combine that with my interest in theory, I tend to pick things apart down past the level where most other people do.

I think most well-read feminists, such as myself, are all overly familiar with the general themes in jock culture, and the intersecting identity issues in both jock culture and society at large such as race, class, age, gender, and entitlement that you mention. But I think there are still lingering unresolved questions about identities that are worth further study. I think we understand rape generally very well, but I don’t think we yet understand very well the dynamics on a more individual, each-to-each level. In other words, I think we understand fairly well why men as a class rape; but I don’t think we frequently understand very well why a particular man rapes. And I think further explication on that level will help us better understand how to effect the kind of structural social changes that will, at least, lower the frequency of rape.

And, it goes with the territory, the jokiness and “team” rush.

I keep coming back to this as a parallel, but: “Our Guys,” the excellent if grim chronicle of the case in New Jersey where another group of disgusting little overprivileged asshole jocks, high school this time, gang raped a mildly retarded girl, using a baseball bat and a dirty stick in the process. You have to read the whole thing to really get a full sense of just how fucked up not just “our guys” but the whole damn town and zeitgeist is. Which, it’d pretty much have to be.

anyway, Lefkowitz (the author) spends some time talking about the other jaunts and exploits of these high-spirited lads. One of the favorite group activities was really destructive partying. There’s one anecdote of a girl, Mary Ryan, who wanted to be popular, so she invited “everybody” to come to her house for a party when her parents were out of town for the weekend. Big mistake. It turns into an orgy of hate and destruction: they chop up furniture, kill the goldfish (and try to kill the cat at one point), deliberately break everything that could possibly be breakable…it goes on and on. Ryan at one point got so overwhelmed that she stood on a balcony and threatened to jump if they didn’t stop it; apparently a bunch of the kids started chanting “Jump, Jump, Jump.” (she didn’t). Finally *someone* called the cops, which, according to Lefkowitz, broke the code (as always) of silence. No one likes a narc, you see.

so, to tie this back to the email business: no one was sorry for this, and no one was punished, except Ryan, who got sent to boarding school or suchlike. The genearl sense was that she somehow “deserved it,” because she wasn’t popular. But in the yearbook that year, there were a lot of fond tributes to “Ryan’s Wreck” among “best memories.”

Please insert that hypothesis somewhere in your indentity theory study if it hasn’t already raised its head. And if it hasn’t raised its head, please ask yourself why.

You keep hearing about a possible record, but NOONE seems to know what it is.

“According to a 2002 police report, the woman, currently a 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University, gave a taxi driver a lap dance at a Durham strip club. Subsequently, according to the report, she stole the man’s car and led deputies on a high-speed chase that ended in Wake County. Apparently, the deputy thought the chase was over when the woman turned down a dead-end road near Brier Creek, but instead she tried to run over him, according to the police report.”

“The case was resolved when she admitted she made a mistake, paid restitution and served probation and some jail time.”

In the article, her former defense attorney says some nice things about her.

Speculative mode here: the pseudonym usage is a behavior I see as being employed specifically and consciously to cover up their traceable identities because they knew they were doing something wrong to the victim and/or started off with the intent to do something wrong to her. I assume they figured if she couldn’t identify them, they’d be harder to prosecute, or something up that alley.

But signing an email that presumably went out only (or predominantly) to his teammates with his jersey number seems different. Obviously, his teammates know his jersey number, and know who he is, so he is not “covering up” in the same way when he does that. But I do wonder if he was “covering up” in a different way.

Put another way, I’m wondering the extent to which “Ryan” is one persona, and “41″ is a different persona who would do things that “Ryan” might not choose to do. Further, I wonder about the extent to which these two personas might be confused inside of the young man’s own mind. I’m not suggesting a multiple personality here, and I’m not a shrink so I’m probably screwing the terminology all up, but I do study identity theory and I’m examining it from that perspective.

The reason for this line of inquiry is that, as discussed in one thread or another that I’ve read lately about this case (maybe here at Alas?), there’s a tendency by some folks to view rapists as “monsters” rather than “normal” men who have adjusted themselves in a psychological fashion that makes them capable of rape. I tend toward the latter interpretation. I don’t view most rapists as “bad seeds”, although some may be, but rather as men who started off as normal little boys but then acquired beliefs and an identity somewhere along the way that allow them to objectify women enough to rape them. I’m trying to peel back the layers of the identities that men might acquire which would affect their behavior in such a fashion as to turn some of them into rapists.

Ginger, I’ve tried reading the email with your spin on it, but I don’t think so… I think it’s just what it seems. Not ironic, not disgusted, but f-d up, the kind of sick mentality that would lead to raping strippers actually.

Actually, I’m personally reassured that I didn’t know that someone had codified that term to that degree. (But, then, I don’t care who wins TV talent shows either.) I do wish we had shorthand for “private school for rich, white, conservative kids,” though. I.e. an American version of what Brit’s call “public” schools.

I’ve read about that sort of thing before, how sometimes membership in a powerful group can induce actual alterations in identities, and how renaming is often used (whether consciously or subconsciously) to affect those changes. I wish I could remember where I’ve read about it. Something about cults and renaming maybe? Or somewhere in one of Foucault’s books? Anyone else know?

Wow! I hadn’t heard that before. Peter Wood, a historian at Duke, told a Dean a few years ago that the team was “out of control.” Wood has coached lacrosse in the past (although not at Duke.) He also wrote a great book on slavery in South Carolina called _Black Majority_.

The e-mail boggles the mind. It’s insight into a scary mind.

I’m glad someone turned in the e-mail and is apparently co-operating with the police.

Disgusted by the night’s events, McFayden sends out the over-the-top sarcastic question of what could possibly top that night’s violence/rape. To me, that seems to make the phrase “tonights show” make more sense. Also, if you’re reading it this way, his request for “all in besides arch and tack” makes sense as well, if he’s implicating Arch and Tack in the crime. Basically, Arch and Tack are so morally repugnant that the author is sure that they’ll be in for the sarcastically suggested “activities.”

That’s just how I saw it, and I’m in no way suggesting that McFayden is some kind of moral figure, because if he was so disgusted he could have gone to the police instead of cravenly covering for his teammates. Also, if you read the email the way I do, then it suggests that the whole team (all of whom the email was CC’d to) knew exactly what had gone on during the night’s “show”–a brutal rape.

The language you use does mean something.