Magaluf: what causes this pack mentality in some men?

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Just read the judge’s comments from the recent gang rape of a young British woman in Magaluf. Phone evidence (from the men’s own phones!) shows eight men either involved in sexually assaulting or passively watching (and recording) the unconscious girl, who was in no position to give consent.
Looking at the photos of the men arrested, they appear to be fairly young. What on Earth leads a young group of friends on holiday to perform this action? Why did they all go along with it?
I can understand how evil people find each other online to commit atrocities, but can’t understand how a group of friends can all be of the same mentality. How many others would do the same? It’s terrifying.

So you are saying the OP is wrong, it's nothing to do with a pack mentality.

Sure, that's reasonable.

I think you can probably still find comparisons to the kind of mindset where people don't intervene, or even being involved in, terrible things. I don't see that kind of emotional or psychological phenomena to be especially male, even though the sexual violence element is. It can be very disconcerting what terrible things people will sometimes do.

I don't see that kind of emotional or psychological phenomena to be especially male

Then you aren't paying attention.

Would they be sentenced in Spain? It's up to 15 years apparently

I think it's the implicit pack mentality amongst men contemplating sexual violence against a woman. Those guys invited some other men to join them in a rape, knowing nothing about them other than their sex & approximate age.

They weren't afraid the strangers would call the police, they assumed willing complicity - and they were right. It's similar in quality to those events where a man, observing a rape in progress, doesn't try to stop it or call for help but says "Can I have a go?" The unspoken bond between the men as rapists holds good, although they've never met before.

NAMALT, obviously and thank god.

In combat situations, we know that a group of rapists will goad & threaten any man holding back or showing disapproval. Enforcement of the male bond through sexual violence takes priority over all other concerns.

I can think of some other kinds of violence where a similar mechanism operates: it's happened in football violence, racist, homophobic and ageist beatings. It's quite possible that an anti-immigration male in a supportive environment could successfully invite strangers into a room to join him in beating up an immigrant. A soldier with a captive enemy certainly could.

Those are both political motivations, with the aggressors assuming a bond through being on the same 'side'. But random blokes on holiday? The only thing linking them is their sex, and the sex of the victim. It speaks to a near-universal and universally recognised male bond through hatred of women.

I can't think of any equivalent amongst women - do correct me if I'm wrong!

Women might bond in violence against a certain person deemed awful. But not because of a global characteristic like sex, or even race. It might be because they think he's a child molester; not merely because he's a man.

I can imagine women successfully enjoining female passers-by to take part in a robbery, say in a similar hotel where they'd found a room full of Chanel goodies or iPhones. Then, too, men could do the same. That's a bond of temporary greed, if you like, not a general bond of half the human race against the other half.

people generally are a bit shit. I mean think of all the great atrocities committed by humans.... the holocaust.... so many other genocides in our history... the cultural revolution in China... etc. etc. we are all very prone to allowing terrible things to happen under the right circumstances.

Certainly I wish porn was renamed extreme sexual violence and it was called out for what it is.

I am so sad for the young woman and the ongoing implications for being attacked so violently.

Reminds me of the group in Auckland who called themselves the "Roastbusters".

Holocaust: Look away & pretend it isn't happening. Fear of social rejection or worse, in a country where Nazi membership was mandatory.
Cultural revolution: Join in or you and your family will be tortured and disappeared.

These things are awful and you're right that humans will do awful things - or condone or ignore them - out of self-preservation. Malicious regimes rely on it.

But we're not looking at political or social coercion here. We're looking at voluntary inclusion in an act of aggression, for no obvious reason. This thread discusses what their reason may be.

It's nothing to do with pervasive threat or pressure because there wasn't any. It wasn't mob violence because there was no mob. I'm afraid "but genocides" won't cut it. This is a very specific phenomenon.

But all the great atrocities in history have one thing in common. They’re led by men. This isn’t a ‘human’ thing, per se. it’s men.

I’m not saying women are perfect aren’t never commit violence. They are not, and they do. There were women in the gas chambers and who worked for Nazis.

But name me one human atrocity /genocide that was thought up, implement and led by women.

I mean maybe many others said no .Although you would think one of these would have raised the alarm

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-60172176

If only it was a one off

Good (if utterly depressing) post garlic.

There is a phenomenon of deep hatred of women that runs through men. They bond by committing sexual violence against women. Mass rape has occurred in most wars through history.

Thanks.

Innit 😭

@GarlicGrace has it really.

You see this with riots too - previously non-violent men get swept up in riots and can’t really explain it afterwards.

Do men have a higher need for bonding through power play and establishing their role in that hierarchy? Watch a group of 10 year old boys and you hear “I’m the best at X”, “I’m better at Y”. We indulge that: we see it as competitive and boys being boys.

Women bond through social connections and relationships. Their is a hierarchy but much less need to get an agreed consensus on the hierarchy and on an individual’s role within it.

I agree it would happen more if they thought they’d get away with it. That’s why rape during war is so prevalent .

NAMALT, obviously and thank god

i don't even think this holds true given how easy it was for the initial rapists in this case to step out into the corridor and find other rapists. Clearly a high proportion of men are willing to rape. If there were no legal consequences to being a rapist, the number would be even higher.

I think we need to stop with the NAMALT. Not every single man is like that but shockingly high numbers are. There are other examples of a woman being raoed by multiple random men in the same night that have been in the news recently.

@GCAcademic: Everything you say, but I'd rather encourage the good guys (and discourage the misandry-hunters stalking these boards)!

But it's that just part of the same issue - fear of men and their over-reaction to being held accountable for their unacceptable behaviour?

People can just be really fucking horrible. Presumably someone decent came along EVENTUALLY and called security.

Whats the saying about evil is allowed to happen when good men do nothing..

Once convicted I would want the full names addresses and details of the rapists including analysis of their backgrounds to be shared on TikTok. The security guard to be lauded as a hero. Might give other young men pause for thought.

Honestly, I found it unbelievable that the pp I was quoting first thought was 'do women do stuff like this?' And their answer to themselves was 'sure!'

No. Pack mentality as an explanation is really the easy way out here.

We really have to stop deflecting the hard questions with NAMALT.

We are living in a society where the odds of nearby men joining in with such an atrocity were high, with no coercion. None of them raising the alarm. Absolutely terrifying.

It was proven in the 1960s that most people will do abhorant things in the right circumstances - when someone who you admire or respect or has authority tells you to

The research was aimed at showing why the nazi atrocities happened - because they could rely on the normal ordinary people to support then
It was squashed because it showed that normal Americans would behave just as the Germans had done. Replace American with woman and yes women would ( and always have )

So yes pack mentality does come into it

Why the leader of the pack would lead such acts and why other men see them as the leader is the next level down of questions

Toxic masculinity plays it's part there

And that's why bringing boys up to be big and strong rather than kind and clever matters

don't diss people who get only the first level of "why"

You don't think women will casually participate in horrific abuses, or stand by without intervening?

History is littered with people doing these kinds of things. There's clearly a component of human psychology that allows us to do it.

I cannot envisage this scenario in our society now where a group of women not known to each other collude to rape a drunk teenaged boy no. Can you?

I'm not convinced that's really some kind of slam dunk.

Where there are large scale atrocities, if they are able to be involved in terms of their social roles, women show the same ability as men to become immersed in group norms. Particularly where you see women who are in charge of other groups of women, in camp detention type situations, sometimes in schools run by women or nunneries there can be terrible abuse, there have been cases of groups of women encouraging things like torture, women seem just as keen on public executions where they occur. Sometimes they can be extremely callous in policing the behaviour of other women.

What you rarely see among women is sexual violence - that seems to be an overwhelmingly male phenomena. That's not however, as I understood it, the question the OP was asking, but rather what kinds of psychological mechanisms allow people to do things they would not do alone, or to overlook things that they know to be wrong in certain settings.

I don't know how we could think bystander syndrome wouldn't be a factor in people not reporting this kind of thing more immediately, for example, and we know that affects men and women both.

Was the OP asking specifically about rape, or group behaviours? I read it as the latter.

I said in my response sexual violence is a male thing, but the group behaviours and capacity for evil seem pretty universal. So the same mechanisms that allow people to ignore what would normally be recognized as anti-social behaviours are likely at play, even when the evil acts differ.

If the question is, why do male people seem to have this capacity for sexual violence, that seems like an entirely different question to me.