 Feminists have also attempted to explain what it is about a person’s motivations or attitudes that prompt him to engage in sexist behavior. Several feminists writing about various explicitly sexist behaviors attribute the behaviors to the person’s endorsing sexist stereotypes. Kathleen Waits describes the woman-batterer as endorsing traditional sex roles, believing that the man should be “the master” of the house and that it is the woman’s job to satisfy all his needs and wants (1993, 193). The batterer often projects a macho exterior, has a tremendous need to dominate and control his wife, and believes that he has the right to use violence against her in order to enforce his will (193). Susan Griffin cites studies and social data describing the convicted rapist as having, on a statistical average, a normal sexual personality, differing from the normal, well-adjusted male only in having a greater tendency to express violence and rage (1981, 318). The rapist endorses stereotypical views about male dominance and female submission, which Griffin notes are the same views erotically expressed in the practice of heterosexual love in our culture. According to our culture’s heterosexual norms, male eroticism is wedded to power, and the man must demonstrate his superior strength with gestures of dominance which are perceived as amorous (317–318). One reason the courts have had a hard time distinguishing consensual sex from rape is that the same gender stereotypes that are present in “normal” heterosexual sex are present in rape, though in rape they are carried to more violent extremes. The practice of female genital mutilation, or FGM, also reflects the acceptance of sexist stereotypes about male dominance and female submission. Although FGM is typically carried out by female relatives or a midwife, the whole society, particularly its male leaders, are the ones who set the social norms. We might think of the women who perform the procedure as vessels through which the real proponents of the practice act. Semra Asefa argues that FGM has long been justified by the belief that women are unable to control their own sexuality in the face of their strong desire for sex (1994 and 1998, 98). The practice of FGM aims to diminish or destroy the woman’s capacity for sexual enjoyment, making her into a breeding machine to perpetuate her husband’s line. Cultures that practice FGM often also require domestic confinement as another element of the husband’s control, and include severe punishment of women for adultery, while encouraging males to be polygamous because it is believed that a man’s virility increases proportionately with the number of children he has (99). The practice of FGM reflects the view that men are dominant in that they control a woman’s capacity to have sex for pleasure and whether she has a choice to have sex with men other than her husband (see Nussbaum 1999b).