Rape as sport: the culture is at the root - cultural rationalizations for the behavior of Lakewood, California gang members, the Spur Posse, under investigation for molesting and raping young girls - Column

Insight on the News, May 3, 1993 by Suzanne Fields

Remember when the phrase "boys will be boys" referred to kids cussin' and fightin' each other in the school yard? Sometimes they got a little rough, blackened an eye or bruised a cheek, but that's how a young man got his "street smarts."

A father would put up his dukes shadowbox with a left-right-left, then teach his son to "fight back." These ordeals were rituals of manhood, driving Mama to tears and Daddy to brag (and exaggerate) about how the kid earned his spurs.

Today you hear the phrase in quite another context.

"Where |Boys Will Be Boys,' and Adults Are Befuddled" is a headline in a New York Times story describing attitudes toward the teenage boys in Lakewood, Calif., who have been accused of molesting and raping girls as young as 10, all the while keeping score as if such sexual brutality was just another slam dunk or quarterback sack.

"We didn't do nothing wrong 'cause it's not illegal to hook up," says Billy Shehan, 19, who claims to be the top scorer in the competition, with 66 "hookups."

All of the nine boys being investigated in connection with sexual crimes are members of a gang called the Spur Posse -- which links sex to the name of the San Antonio Spurs, a pro basketball team. For these boys, sex is reduced to sport, a ruthless competition in which "scoring" and winning are all that count.

A father of one of the gang members who wasn't arrested, but who bragged about his sexual trophies, observes that the sexual behavior of the boys isn't much different from Wilt Chamberlain's boast of bedding 20,000 women. Magic Johnson, who has AIDS to show for similar sexual prowess, is another such hero. Magic urges schoolchildren to practice safe sex, as if that would apply to the sexual vandals in gangs like the Spur Posse. One of the Spur Posse's "victims" paid with an abortion. (We don't know how many bonus points that might have been worth.)

It's easy to dismiss athletes as poor role models, because many of them are. But they get lots of help from their fans, and from the culture. Eric Richardson, a quick learner on the Spur Posse, employs social messages for his defense. "They pass out condoms, teach sex education and pregnancy this and pregnancy that," he says. "But they don't teach us any rules."

Exactly who "they" are he doesn't say, but it's not hard to figure out. Among the "theys" are those who pass the buck to someone else, like the Los Angeles district attorney, who calls the scandal merely a social issue, "better left to churches, schools and parents." What about the distrit attorney's office, which is charged to prosecute anyone who sexually exploits minors?

When boys were still boys and not rapists, you might hear them talk about "jail bait" and "San Quentin quail," cute but underage girls who could cause them a lot of trouble. Boys passed those phrases on to each other in the hip argot of the time, warning against behavior that could lead directory to reform school or jail. (Sexual intercourse with a minor girl is usually a felony, even if she is the aggressor.)

Also among the "theys" are the fashionable sex educators who mock the 1950s as the age of repression, suggesting that teenagers today should do their own thing as long as they do it properly. Such "educators" may be well-meaning, but their contempt for teenagers' ability to control desires and delay gratification earns the scorn of kids. They don't take such pushovers seriously.

Misreadings of Sigmund Freud haunt our contemporary sexual mores. Freud viewed sexual restraint as a hallmark of civilization, freeing men and women to create positive lives for themselves and society. Slipshod Freudian interpreters preach laissez-faire sexuality. Sexual liberation, which promised a "civilization of contents," in this view merely liberates insatiable, unfulfilled appetites in teenagers as well as adults.

As a contemporary consequence, Lakewood boys, and many like them elsewhere, often run up the big score, only to become big losers in the game called life -- the only game in town.

Suzanne Fields, a columnist for the Washington Times, is nationally syndicated.