Something is happening with a part of men (a minority, it must be clarified), especially with the youngest. It is unacceptable that every week the media echo group rapes, many carried out by adolescents, against women who have barely reached the age to vote (in many cases, not even that). This is indicated by experts in equality and sexology, who do not speak of a single factor, but of many and that would explain why gang rapes have increased by 54% since 2016 (data from the Ministry of the Interior for 2021). That year three rapes every two days, just over 10 every seven.
Among the causes: access to hard and dehumanized pornography at a touch of the smartphone screen, as Alejandro Villena, psychologist and clinical sexologist who has just presented the book Why Not? How to prevent and help in addiction to pornography. But also the expansion of the objectification of women thanks to social networks, or the reaction of men to the advancement of women’s rights, among others. But also another, less mentioned: the imitation effect, something that had already been detected in cases of the murder of women at the hands of their partners or ex-partners.
The former Government delegate against Gender Violence and collaborator of the Observatory against Gender Violence of the General Council of the Judiciary, Miguel Lorente, points precisely to imitation as an element to take into account in the increase in this type of aggression sexual. Above all, among the youngest, who, “camouflaged in the groupâ€, see in these acts an element to “show their manhood and their machismo, without control and without caring at all about the victimâ€, he explains.
This copycat effect would explain why, after the group rape of a young woman in Pamplona in 2016, another group emerged shortly after, calling itself La nueva Manada, or why a women’s soccer coach asked his technical team to “make one like those of Arandina.” (Three players abused a 16-year-old teenager). Of course, that she was not a minor so as not to get “in ‘jaris’ and kill us all together there.”
The key is in the group, says Lorente, in the feeling of impunity that this entails. Committing a sexual assault together with others dilutes responsibility, encouraged by the feeling of impunity. “The idea has spread among minors that nothing is going to happen to them, that at most they go to a center for minors. In most cases they do not think about the consequences. They feel unpunished.”
Should the media be silent, then? The equality expert is clear. No. Because hiding reality prevents action. But it does focus on the consequences that these acts have both on the victim and on those who commit them. In gender violence between couples or ex-partners (sexual assault is also gender violence), men are clear that aggression has consequences.
An imitation effect that was pointed out years ago by the psychologist Victoria Trabazo, who, dealing with the case of the Pamplona herd, put it on the table. In her opinion, the “group” phenomenon always generates greater imitation, which, together with the diffusion in the media, which she believes is necessary, but which can “create ‘characters’ that for certain individuals are models to imitate”, says the psychologist.
Imitation and uncontrolled access to hard pornography (sexologists point out that the scenes of a woman with several men have increased), we must add the growing machismo among young people, something that is well appreciated in the reports and studies on gender violence between couples and ex-partners.
According to the latest data from the INE, provided last week and referring to 2022, gender violence increases during courtship (between boyfriends or ex-boyfriends): it has increased by 29.5% compared to the previous year. “Aggressors under 18 years of age represent 3.1% of the total. And if we go to the group of those under 25 years of age, they are 18.2%, â€says the forensic Miguel Lorente. These data are “striking for their meaning and for the fact that they are young people who have grown up under the framework created by the Comprehensive Law against Gender Violence,” says the specialist.
And behind all these figures and situations, what lies behind is an increase in machismo among young people, a reaction to feminism that leads them to understand their masculinity over that idea of ​​virility based on the ability to impose their ideas and will, and on punish those who do not assume them, according to experts.
