Hokay. Here goes:
ReFLeX said:
A class of mine covered rape in a recent lecture, where we learned that:
60% of Canadian college-aged males indicated that they would commit sexual assault if they were certain they would not get caught.
http://www.wavaw.ca/informed_stats.php(2)
I don't know the origin of the Canadian number, but there were several studies by Neil Malamuth and colleagues that asked this question, giving rates ranging between 35-50% (e.g., Malamuth, Sockloskie, Koss, & Tanaka, 1991; Malamuth, 1981)
Euromutt said:
<snip>I suspect something similar is up with that "willingness to commit sexual assault" statistic. Whatever question those 60% of respondents answered "yes" to, I'm willing to bet that it wasn't
If given the opportunity to commit an act of sexual assault without negative repercussions for yourself, would you do so?
Malamuth originally asked "What is the likelihood you would rape a woman if you were sure no one would ever find out and you'd never be punished for it?" Later, Malamuth either added a second question (sometimes replacing the first) with "What is the likelihood you would engage in forced sex with a woman if you were sure no one would ever find out and you'd never be punished for it?"
epepke said:
However, I tracked down the sources of one such claim about the US. It was a study done in Gainesville, Florida in the mid-1970s, partly commissioned by Ms. magazine. The study concluded that more than half of college-aged males had engaged in activities that fit "the legal definition" of rape. I can't remember the name of the people who did this study, but I once xeroxed a copy from the University library and kept it around until it fell apart.
I do know of a
Ms. comissioned study, but it was published in 1987 and involved a national sample in which there were 2972 men. The rates were significantly lower than 50%; 25.1% admitted to engaging in some form of unwanted sexual contact, only 4.4% admitting to engaging in rape. There
is a number close to 50% in the Koss et al. study: 53.7% of women report some form of sexual victimization, ranging from unwanted sexual contact to rape. I don't know of another
Ms. study, but given the hissyfit you threw later in your post, I won't ask you for a reference for the Gainesville one.
TragicMonkey said:
So, any penetration is rape. Does that mean anything non-penetrative cannot be rape? Would it fall under the broader "sexual assault", or not count as a crime at all? The Florida law quoted above doesn't address it.
eta: Whoops. First sentence, I mean, as in assault, non-consenting.
Definitions vary by state. In Missouri, forcible rape is defined as penetration of the vagina by a penis. Forced oral or anal sex using a penis or any penetration not involving a penis is considered deviate sexual intercourse, and is considered forcible sodomy. In some cases there are different penalties, in some cases not. Researchers studying sexual assault tend to use their state's legal definition, or Ohio's (as one of the primary researchers in the area, the first author on the
Ms. associated study mentioned above, designed her study there and folks want to stay consistent).
ReFLeX said:
Does anyone else know why this power quote is so widespread? Even the study actually includes anger as a third motivation, so it would seem rape is not just "all about power". And how can drunken teenaged encounters not be about sex at all? That's the number one thing people seem to infer, that it "has nothing to do with sex." Is there any other research?
AmateurScientist said:
I'm not an expert on it by any means, but I suspect that the "rape is all about power" BS (and I do firmly think it's BS as a categorical explanation) began in the 70s with the Andrea Dworkin/Catherine MacKinnon school of radical feminism that demonized maleness and everything associated with it.
Radical feminists are just that: radical. Many feminists are not going to argue that all heterosexual sex is rape, or that all men consciously use rape as a tool to oppress women. Certainly researchers in the area are not going to take that view. A quote from one of the more prolific and respected researchers in the area notes this:
Conceptualizing rape as a sex act alone ignores that this is a serious crime where the penis is used as a weapon....The force behind the criminal act or rape is a mixture of sexual motives and motives to control/dominate/punish that vary in degree from case to case.... The important semantic distinction is that rape is not a sex act, it is a crime that can be impelled by sexual motives. Acknowledging this mixture of motives is not new. --Mary Koss, in Evolution, Gender, & Rape (2003)
Now, Koss is not considered a radical feminist, but this excerpt may serve to show why power should be the focus. Most will acknowldege that rape is forced sex. Before the 1970's, the focus was often on the "sex" part of that phrase, which served in many cases to silence the crime. Putting the focus on "forced" was, from how I understand it, an effort to get people to recognize that rape is a crime of violence.
AmateurScientist said:
Of course, my criticism of their warped views does not in any sense mean I endorse or condone actual rape or sexual assault. Nevertheless, their definitions of rape and sexual assault were overbroad and included many consensual activities between adults.
True. In feminist writings, you can find many different definitions of rape, and you have to see if the particular philosophy of feminism that claims these definitions is one you agree with. Psychologists doing research on rape prevalence and incidence, however, use rather restrictive definitions.
AmateurScientist said:
Perhaps Dworkin and MacKinnon were not the originators of many of their ideas, and were merely reflecting some of the emerging schools of thought in American universities at the time. I suspect them and their intellectual forebears of instigating and promulgating various studies about rape and sexual assault that probably overestimate their incidence. (emphasis added)
As one of my old professors used to say, this is an empirical question. If you believe that researchers are using definitions of rape that are too broad, it's very easy to tell. Just go the the methods section of the studies you have issue with. You'll find that many of the figures people have such a "I can't believe it!" response to tend to combine percentages for rape and attempted rape. In some cases, all kinds of unwanted sexual contact is counted. However, I very much doubt you'll be able to find a case where research published in a peer-reviewed journal uses the term "rape" when referring to figures aggregated in either of those ways. "Sexual assault" is a broader term that is often used to cover these larger numbers.
AmateurScientist said:
Rape and sexual assault no doubt occur with chilling frequency. It cheapens and trivializes the horrible and insidious trauma that real victims undergo, however, when feminists go too far and include most females in the category of its victims.
This statement is one I can
almost agree with, but you need to tell me who a "real victim" is first. Would you consider a woman who was forced to give oral sex to her perpetrator as a "real victim?" You're obviously working from a definition of rape/sexual assault you find acceptable. What meets your criteria?
AmateurScientist said:
Men in general are not the enemy of women in general. I wish that rape studies and their overblown statistics would quit suggesting that they are.
Maybe you should try some of the psychology literature (Psychology of Women Quarterly, Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, to name a few). All the statistics do say and
can say is what should be obvious: rape is crime where most victims are women and almost all perpetrators are men. It does not necessarily follow from the stats that men in general are therefore the enemies of women in general. I'd suspect that this argument is not made in association with scientific research, but rather philosophical writing or position pieces. It's an important distinction.
(edited for those quote code thingies)
The man then used a condom but continued to hold the knife to the woman's throat. The man was later caught. His defense? That the sex was CONSENSUAL because she asked him to use a condom
!
